Reduce HLS latency from +30 seconds

Question

Ubuntu 12.04

nginx 1.2.4

avconv -version

avconv version 0.8.10-4:0.8.10-0ubuntu0.12.04.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the Libav developers
  built on Feb  6 2014 20:56:59 with gcc 4.6.3
avconv 0.8.10-4:0.8.10-0ubuntu0.12.04.1
libavutil    51. 22. 2 / 51. 22. 2
libavcodec   53. 35. 0 / 53. 35. 0
libavformat  53. 21. 1 / 53. 21. 1
libavdevice  53.  2. 0 / 53.  2. 0
libavfilter   2. 15. 0 /  2. 15. 0
libswscale    2.  1. 0 /  2.  1. 0
libpostproc  52.  0. 0 / 52.  0. 0

I'm using avconv and nginx to create an HLS stream but right now my latency is regularly well over 30 seconds. After much reading I am aware that HLS has built in latency and that 10s is expected and even preferred but 30s seems quite extreme.

I've seen a lot of discussion on the nginx-rtmp google group, this thread in particular had a lot of suggestions. I have attempted to reduce solve my issue by reducing the hls_fragment and the hls_playlist_length but they haven't had a significant effect.

nginx.conf:

#user  nobody;
worker_processes  1;

error_log  logs/error.log debug;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    sendfile        on;
    keepalive_timeout  65;

    server {
        listen       8888;
        server_name  localhost;

        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' "*";

        location /hls {
            types {
                application/vnd.apple.mpegurl m3u8;
                video/mp2t ts;
            }
            root /tmp;
        }

        # rtmp stat
        location /stat {
            rtmp_stat all;
            rtmp_stat_stylesheet stat.xsl;
        }
        location /stat.xsl {
            # you can move stat.xsl to a different location
            root /usr/build/nginx-rtmp-module;
        }

        # rtmp control
        location /control {
            rtmp_control all;
        }

        error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
            root   html;
        }
    }
}

rtmp {
    server {
        listen 1935;
        ping 30s;
        notify_method get;

        application myapp {
            live on;

            hls on;
            hls_path /tmp/hls;
            hls_base_url http://x.x.x.x:8888/hls/;
            hls_sync 2ms;
            hls_fragment 2s;

            #hls_variant _low BANDWIDTH=160000;
            #hls_variant _mid BANDWIDTH=320000;
            #hls_variant _hi BANDWIDTH=640000;
        }
    }
}

avconv command:

avconv -r 30 -y -f image2pipe -codec:v mjpeg -i - -f flv -codec:v libx264 -profile:v baseline -preset ultrafast -tune zerolatency -an -f flv rtmp://127.0.0.1:1935/myapp/mystream

Edit

I know that it's not avconv that is the bottleneck because I am also producing an RTMP stream using nginx. This RTMP stream has a very small delay (couple of seconds).

Answer 1

The answer detailing reducing the hls_playlist to 4s and the hls_fragment to 1s is good. However, it is important to note that if the source video has a key frame interval greater than the hls_fragment length then nginx will usually have to create longer fragments and the latency will increase.

The lowest latency we have achived was with the hls_fragment at 1s and the source video key frame interval also at 1s. With these settings we achieved latency of less than 7 seconds.

Answer 2

I once had the same problem. I added two parameters in nginx.conf then the latency was cut to 10s even less. Here is my conf:

    application hls {
        hls_playlist_length 4s; 
        hls_fragment 1s
    }

However, I have to say 10s seems to be our limitation. Any better solutions?