ffplayout v2.4.0

ffplayout 2.4 focuses on live takeover reliability, timestamp-safe recording and subtitles, and more flexible FFmpeg output configuration.

Highlights

More reliable live takeover

• Playlist playback now continues until the first live video frame is available.
• Improved switching between scheduled playback and incoming RTMP streams.
• Playlist playback resumes at the position it would have reached without the takeover.
• Delayed or temporarily missing audio is padded with silence while maintaining A/V synchronization.
• Late audio samples are trimmed or discarded when their time range has already been replaced by silence.
• Video-only live sources receive synchronized silent audio.
• Live audio buffering is bounded to prevent uncontrolled memory growth.
• Improved backpressure handling prevents unnecessary frame loss and output stalls.
• Timestamp jumps from unreliable publishers are detected and safely re-anchored.
• Stuck live-input readers are bounded and cleaned up without indefinitely blocking new connections.
• Navigation commands cannot race with live activation, while stop and restart remain available.
• Improved recovery when returning to desktop, HLS, or stream output after a takeover.

Timestamp-safe recording

• Corrected recording timestamps around live takeovers and generated audio padding.
• Preserved audio padding order when buffered live audio resumes.
• Prevented stale or overlapping audio from producing invalid recording timestamps.
• Improved synchronization between segmented Matroska recordings and the main output timeline.

Safer HLS WebVTT subtitles

• WebVTT cues are now submitted as playback reaches their actual position instead of being muxed for the entire clip in advance.
• Returning from live takeover to a later position in the same clip no longer leaves subtitle packets from the future in the HLS muxer.
• This prevents non-monotonic subtitle DTS errors that could otherwise interrupt HLS output.
• WebVTT files extending beyond their associated media are now reported as warnings instead of validation errors.
• Desktop subtitles can still be loaded locally without affecting the encoded HLS timeline.

Custom FFmpeg muxer options

• Added an advanced muxer-options editor to the playout configuration.
• Options are persisted per output and validated against the selected FFmpeg muxer.
• Unsupported or unused options are rejected instead of being silently ignored.
• HLS flags such as program_date_time can now be enabled without replacing ffplayout’s required internal HLS flags.
• Existing segment duration and retention settings remain managed by their dedicated configuration fields.

Example:

:::text
hls_flags = program_date_time

Custom audio encoder options

• Added advanced FFmpeg audio encoder options for regular outputs.
• Added separate audio encoder options for re-encoded recordings.
• Options are validated against the selected codec before restarting the output.
• Invalid, unsupported, or ffplayout-managed options are rejected.
• No additional codec defaults are imposed when the option map is empty.

Defensive handling of live playlist URLs

• Network sources that inherently behave as live streams are no longer treated like seekable media.
• Playlist in values are ignored for these sources.
• Invalid seek attempts and unintended looping at the declared duration are avoided.
• HTTP and HTTPS sources remain treated as ordinary potentially seekable media.

Resource and lifecycle improvements

• Bounded live-input queues and reader counts reduce the risk of memory growth during stalled inputs.
• Improved shutdown, restart, skip, and fallback handling.
• Channel reset during fallback is once again handled as a normal playout restart.
• Glyph caches now use bounded eviction to prevent long-running text rendering from retaining unlimited entries.
• Additional regression coverage for live timing, delayed audio, output backpressure, recording timestamps, playlist handover, and WebVTT resume behavior.

Upgrade notes

A database migration is included. Existing RTMP live-ingest settings are migrated automatically, but backing up the database before upgrading is recommended.

No manual configuration changes should be required for existing standard output, recording, or live-ingest setups.