"Pause stream" does not pause the stream

[DerZerstoerer187]

Hi Steve,

I noticed that when viewing a VDO.Ninja stream (preview/view mode), pressing "Pause stream" does not stop the WebRTC connection or prevent bandwidth usage.

I tested this in both Firefox and Edge — the stream continues to consume network bandwidth even when paused.

Would it be possible to have a true "disconnect" or "suspend receiving" function in the UI, or perhaps a parameter to disable incoming streams without leaving the page?

Best regards

I had this parameters:
https://vdo.ninja/?room=[MY ROOM]&hash=600f&l&np&meshcast&m

[steveseguin]

Thank you. Normally in VDO.Ninja, you can mute a video track and it will go to zero bitrate (or close to it), as the sending peer will stop publishing to you. It depends on how you are mute it, but that dynamic control is possible down to evening changing resolution and bitrate.

If using Meshcast however, the SFU (meshcast) server doens't support pausing like a normal peer would. Meshcast has been standardized to use WHIP/WHEP, and that protocol doens't have a pause track I believe. As you mentioned, I'd have to add a full disconnect, and it would probably have to be specific to Meshcast/WHEP sources.

It also means that starting the track up again will take a few seconds, or perhaps longer if there is a lengthy keyframe interval. Anyways, it's a request I can add. I suppose where I'm stuck is exactly how this UI would look like. I can make it automatic, like when the video is paused/hidden, but for most users I'd imagine they wouldn't want it to fully stop when paused, as it would take a lot of time to continue.

I also can't just stop the video and not the audio in this case; and commonly the desire is to stop video but keep audio going. Who knows, maybe I can figure a solution to that also.

[DerZerstoerer187]

Thanks for clarification, good to know, I didn't figured out that publishing can be stopped by muting until now.

For my case, it won't matter if it takes longer to starting up the track again but I assume for others users this might be an issue. A full stop wouldn't be a solution I guess, more like an "almost stop" as you said.

Also, good to know that Meshcast don't support pausing, g onna try out P2P therefore 😄

In case you will have implemented a way to "truly" pause a stream, an information in here would be appreciated so I can check if it works as intended :)