Help on stuttering video after FMS call Stream.get('liveBroadcastStream').play('liveFeedFromFMLE', -1, -1, true)

Question

Hi,
We recently encountered a very strange issue that we urgently need help:
With FMS 3.5, we created a new live application according to relevant documentations. Within this application (main.asc), on periodically basis (e.g. 45 seconds), we use Stream.get('liveBroadcastStream').play('liveFeedFromFMLE', -1, -1, true) to (potentially) switch between different live feeds published by different FMLE. All work like charm except one annoying/important issue: sometimes (but not always), after a server-side call of Stream.play, we see severe stuttering/choppy video from flash client player.
Any help that will lead to the resolution of the problem will be greatly appreciated!
Some background information:
1. All testing were done within LAN environment with just a few machines which mean loads were very low; so we can rule out bandwidth insufficiency issue. Also CPU usages were low across all computers involved.
2. The stuttering and choppyness occurs with the 'liveBroadcastStream', not with the source stream which is 'liveFeedFromFMLE'. In other words, we used flash player to check out the source stream, and it looked fine.
3. When the video was jerky, the accompanying audio sounded OK.
4. We tried to set the flash client buffer length to be 15 seconds, and it did not help.
5. The stuttering occurs immediately after the Stream.play function call.
6. The described sympton occurs quite often, but not always. We were not able to identify the exact cause. It does not seem to show any easy clue.
7. In the repro case, we called Stream.get('liveBroadcastStream').play('liveFeedFromFMLE', -1, -1, true)  every 45 seconds with no parameter changes.
Again, we are urgently waiting for professional help!
Regards.
Xiaohai

Answer 1

Thanks for your info. We are desparate for any help that we can get. We will do as you said, but it is a semi-production scenario and we are not allowed to set up debugging scenarios often.
We have spent tremendous amount of time trying to flush out the issue with no luck. What really frustrated us is that our application scenario is really simple, and yet it won't work as expected. We have downgraded to FMS 3.0.1 and it performs a bit better than 3.5. We have issue with 3.0.1 too. The stuttering video is still there, but player recovers eventually. That is the best we can get so far. As we investigate more, we become more convinced that FMS's stability is not up to production quality (sorry).
I simplified our application to the following and it is still problematic (pseudo codes):
Prerequisite: stream 'liveStream1' and 'liveStream2' published from to FMLE
FMS server side codes (pseudo codes):
function onPeriodicalCall ()
        if (application.currentStream == 'liveStream1')
             applicatin.currentStream = 'liveStream2')
        else
          application.currentStream = 'liveStream1'
        Stream.get('liveBroadCast').play(application.currentStream, -1, -1, true);
application.onStart = function () {
     setInterval (120, onPeriodicalCall);
With the above codes, the players shows stuttering video with each .play call. And sometimes, clients even could not play anything. When client can not play anything, we found it correlates to netstream not getting into data start mode (e.g. normally unpublish, stop, publish, start, but sometimes it only gives unpublish stop publish, thus lacking 'start').