Teradek video does not always start

I tried out the new, improved automated system today and it is really nice, almost. Sometimes the Teradek starts up all the way and begins streaming. Other times it stops at not ready with a no video message.

So far when the box does not pick up the video, it never happens twice in a row. So the fix for now is just to reboot again.

But I am nervous. Where do I begin troubleshooting?

lajackson wrote:I tried out the new, improved automated system today and it is really nice, almost. Sometimes the Teradek starts up all the way and begins streaming. Other times it stops at not ready with a no video message.

So far when the box does not pick up the video, it never happens twice in a row. So the fix for now is just to reboot again.

But I am nervous. Where do I begin troubleshooting?

Make sure that when you reboot/ turn on the Teradek, your event in the portal says "begin encoding" on the broadcast icon or the Teradek will not start streaming after it boots. If you happen to boot up the device and your event was not ready for streaming, the Teradek will give-up trying to connect. If that happens you could either reboot the device after your event says "begin encoding", or you could start it manually with the red start/stop button on the Teradek VidiU.

For the no video message, make sure you have a good HDMI cabel, I have seen bad HDMI cables be the soruce of issues several times.

seanhyte wrote:For the no video message, make sure you have a good HDMI cabel, I have seen bad HDMI cables be the soruce of issues several times.

If you use a HDMI splitter, the Teradek might be sensitive as to which port it's placed on. For my broadcast, I put it on the first port. I think that's the one used as a "reference" by the splitter to talk to the camera. The other port gets whatever is negotiated.

I had a similar experience with our Vidiu in our recent stake conference. The preview window showed the Terradek logo and "no video available"; when I tried to broadcast, the portal showed it was getting a receive rate of 0 from our site. I tested the video signal going into our HDMI converter box and the HDMI signal coming out, and they worked just fine. I ultimately had to reboot the Vidiu, and it showed "Not ready" for a time. Once it showed "Ready" the video preview and broadcast appeared to work.

This hasn't happened before. I did update the firmware to the newest version as I saw it was now supported. I also tried using the automatic configuration but it showed some error popups when trying to parse the configuration, so I fell back to manually configuring it.

I'm also nervous about this. It delayed our test webcast for an hour, and it was happening until 10 minutes before our Saturday night session.

I am about to run a test in seven minutes. Our box is still at 3.0.7, and I plan to upgrade it later this evening. If it does not come up with the video, I will upgrade it earlier this evening.

The release notes said 3.0.8 solved a video problem.

The box came up fine in 3.0.7, but after we finished the main test, I upgraded to 3.0.7 and the box still came up just fine.

The only problem we had is that we could not access the encoder through its IP address to monitor it and control it. We finally discovered that the permanent IP assignment for the encoder was removed from the firewall, so it was finding its own IP address which was different from the one we all have programmed into our browsers.

It is always the little things, no? Now I have to find out who was playing with the firewall.

lajackson wrote:We finally discovered that the permanent IP assignment for the encoder was removed from the firewall, so it was finding its own IP address which was different from the one we all have programmed into our browsers.

Give it an IP address in the 192.168.108.2-31 range using TM (ours is 108.20). You'll need to search for the MAC address, but that's an easy step.

Something I did on our system was to assign it an IP address, but to also manually put that address in the Teradek. The IP in the firewall to warn everyone else, but the IP in the Teradek to keep it from renewing it's lease mid-broadcast.

Mikerowaved wrote:Give it an IP address in the 192.168.108.2-31 range using TM (ours is 108.20).

I did that (108.10) and it worked for over a year. But it was missing from the firewall when I finally thought to look in TM last evening.

russellhltn wrote:Something I did on our system was to assign it an IP address, but to also manually put that address in the Teradek.

I was not aware I could do that in the Teradek.

lajackson wrote:I was not aware I could do that in the Teradek.

I don't remember if I did that from the web interface or the VidiU Android app. I do remember that each has some features that don't work or are not available in the other.

russellhltn wrote:

lajackson wrote:I was not aware I could do that in the Teradek.

I don't remember if I did that from the web interface or the VidiU Android app. I do remember that each has some features that don't work or are not available in the other.

In case someone sees this discussion and wants to set a static IP address on the VidiU device, in addition to the web interface and the app, it can also be done from the front panel of the device itself.

If I change it on the Teradek (either at the box or through the interface) it is also asking for the mask and the gateway addresses. I know the IP address I want, but not the others.

That can be found in TM on the main page for the Firewall.

Typical for user zone would be:
Mask: 255.255.252.0 (watch out for that 3rd octet. It's NOT 255).
Gateway: 192.168.108.1

Thanks.

If you assign a static IP through the TM and include the MAC address, you should not need to manually assign it in the Teradek, the router should assign it automatically each time it boots for you, just an FYI.

johnv wrote:If you assign a static IP through the TM and include the MAC address, you should not need to manually assign it in the Teradek, the router should assign it automatically each time it boots for you, just an FYI.

Yes, but I prefer to put it in the Teradek manually. That way, there's no lease that needs to be renewed in the middle of the broadcast.

At one time I had a home router that didn't play well with my computer. The IP lease was only for one hour and I'd have connection issues when it went to renew. Granted, that was years ago on different equipment, but I don't like taking chances.

The Teradek said Ready. I held the red button down and it popped up a menu to start broadcasting. I selected yes and that did the trick.