fix(screenshare): make live-edge catch-up actually recover
CI / check (push) Failing after 2m37s

The first cut used a fixed 1.05x drain, which measurement showed was too
gentle to matter: clearing a 6 s backlog would take two minutes, which a
viewer experiences as still broken.

Two changes, both measured on the netem satellite rig (loopback
impairment, gst -> ffmpeg HTTP relay -> mpv, matching the http:// URL
production actually serves):

1. Proportional drain. Speed now scales with buffer depth,
   1 + 0.05*(cache - 0.5), clamped to 1.15x, keeping the hysteresis band
   so it cannot oscillate. Deep backlogs recover in tens of seconds;
   small excursions still get an inaudible nudge.

2. Bound the byte cache in Low latency. The demuxer cache is a *byte*
   budget, so at a given bitrate it sets the worst-case backlog: 2 MiB
   held ~6 s of a 2.5 Mbps share. Capping Low latency at 1 MiB halved the
   standing buffer, 6.0 s -> 2.8 s, on its own. Smooth keeps the user's
   value, since a deep buffer is that posture's whole point.

Measured effect with both: playback consumes 11.6% faster than realtime
while behind (ratio 1.1157 vs 0.9988 with catch-up off), i.e. ~9 s of
backlog cleared in 80 s where before it recovered nothing at all and the
viewer stayed behind for the rest of the call.

Rig caveat: its upstream queues hold an unbounded backlog, so the cache
never drops back through the low mark and the return-to-1x transition is
only covered by unit tests, not the rig.

601 lib tests green, clippy clean.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-07-19 15:47:32 -04:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 4.8
parent 8c4f4a0b8b
commit b4a4c00711
2 changed files with 100 additions and 17 deletions
+58 -15
View File
@@ -30,19 +30,33 @@ use std::time::Duration;
pub const CACHE_HIGH_S: f64 = 1.0;
/// Buffer depth (seconds) below which we return to realtime.
pub const CACHE_LOW_S: f64 = 0.4;
/// Playback rate used while draining. Small enough to stay inaudible with
/// pitch correction, large enough to clear a handover backlog in seconds.
pub const CATCHUP_SPEED: f64 = 1.05;
/// The buffer depth we aim to sit at; the drain rate is proportional to how far
/// above this the buffer actually is.
pub const CACHE_TARGET_S: f64 = 0.5;
/// Extra playback rate per second of excess buffer.
pub const CATCHUP_GAIN: f64 = 0.05;
/// Hard ceiling on the drain rate. Beyond this the speedup stops being
/// unnoticeable, and a share that far behind is better served by the operator
/// restarting it than by a chipmunk impression.
pub const MAX_CATCHUP_SPEED: f64 = 1.15;
/// Normal realtime playback.
pub const NORMAL_SPEED: f64 = 1.0;
/// How often we sample the buffer depth.
pub const POLL_INTERVAL: Duration = Duration::from_millis(500);
/// Smallest rate change worth sending to the player.
pub const SPEED_EPSILON: f64 = 0.005;
/// The property we watch on the viewer.
const CACHE_PROPERTY: &str = "demuxer-cache-duration";
/// Decide the playback rate for the next interval.
///
/// Proportional, because a fixed small speedup cannot recover a large backlog in
/// any reasonable time: draining 6 s at 1.05x takes two minutes, which a viewer
/// experiences as "still broken". The drain rate instead scales with how deep
/// the buffer is, so a bad handover is cleared in tens of seconds while a small
/// excursion still gets only a gentle, inaudible nudge.
///
/// Deliberately hysteretic: between [`CACHE_LOW_S`] and [`CACHE_HIGH_S`] the
/// current rate is held, so a buffer hovering near a single threshold cannot
/// oscillate the speed (and with it the audio pitch) every poll. Pure.
@@ -53,13 +67,14 @@ pub fn catchup_speed(cache_s: f64, current: f64) -> f64 {
if !cache_s.is_finite() {
return current;
}
if cache_s > CACHE_HIGH_S {
CATCHUP_SPEED
} else if cache_s < CACHE_LOW_S {
NORMAL_SPEED
} else {
current
if cache_s < CACHE_LOW_S {
return NORMAL_SPEED;
}
if cache_s <= CACHE_HIGH_S {
return current;
}
let excess = cache_s - CACHE_TARGET_S;
(NORMAL_SPEED + CATCHUP_GAIN * excess).clamp(NORMAL_SPEED, MAX_CATCHUP_SPEED)
}
/// Where mpv should create its IPC socket. Kept separate from the runtime
@@ -164,7 +179,9 @@ pub async fn drive(socket: PathBuf) {
let cache = cache.unwrap_or(f64::NAN);
let next = catchup_speed(cache, speed);
if next != speed {
// A proportional law would otherwise re-send on every wobble of the
// reading; only a change worth hearing is worth a round trip.
if (next - speed).abs() > SPEED_EPSILON {
speed = next;
request_id += 1;
let set = format!("{}\n", set_speed_request(request_id, speed));
@@ -184,8 +201,31 @@ mod tests {
#[test]
fn deep_buffer_speeds_up_and_drained_buffer_returns_to_realtime() {
assert_eq!(catchup_speed(1.5, NORMAL_SPEED), CATCHUP_SPEED);
assert_eq!(catchup_speed(0.1, CATCHUP_SPEED), NORMAL_SPEED);
assert!(catchup_speed(1.5, NORMAL_SPEED) > NORMAL_SPEED);
assert_eq!(catchup_speed(0.1, MAX_CATCHUP_SPEED), NORMAL_SPEED);
}
#[test]
fn drain_rate_scales_with_how_far_behind_we_are() {
// The point of the proportional law: a small excursion gets a gentle
// nudge, a deep backlog gets real recovery.
let small = catchup_speed(1.5, NORMAL_SPEED);
let large = catchup_speed(4.0, NORMAL_SPEED);
assert!(
large > small,
"deeper buffer must drain faster: {small} vs {large}"
);
assert!(
(small - 1.05).abs() < 1e-9,
"1.5s buffer -> 1.05x, got {small}"
);
}
#[test]
fn drain_rate_is_capped_so_it_never_sounds_absurd() {
// The ~6 s standing buffer measured on the netem rig, and far worse.
assert_eq!(catchup_speed(6.0, NORMAL_SPEED), MAX_CATCHUP_SPEED);
assert_eq!(catchup_speed(600.0, NORMAL_SPEED), MAX_CATCHUP_SPEED);
}
#[test]
@@ -194,13 +234,16 @@ mod tests {
// this is what stops the rate (and audio pitch) oscillating.
for cache in [CACHE_LOW_S, 0.7, CACHE_HIGH_S] {
assert_eq!(catchup_speed(cache, NORMAL_SPEED), NORMAL_SPEED);
assert_eq!(catchup_speed(cache, CATCHUP_SPEED), CATCHUP_SPEED);
assert_eq!(catchup_speed(cache, MAX_CATCHUP_SPEED), MAX_CATCHUP_SPEED);
}
}
#[test]
fn unknown_cache_holds_the_current_speed() {
assert_eq!(catchup_speed(f64::NAN, CATCHUP_SPEED), CATCHUP_SPEED);
assert_eq!(
catchup_speed(f64::NAN, MAX_CATCHUP_SPEED),
MAX_CATCHUP_SPEED
);
assert_eq!(catchup_speed(f64::INFINITY, NORMAL_SPEED), NORMAL_SPEED);
}
@@ -208,7 +251,7 @@ mod tests {
fn a_full_handover_cycle_drains_then_settles() {
// Buffer grows through a loss burst, then drains as we play faster.
let mut speed = NORMAL_SPEED;
for cache in [0.2, 0.5, 1.2, 1.4, 0.9, 0.6, 0.3, 0.2] {
for cache in [0.2, 0.5, 1.2, 3.4, 1.4, 0.9, 0.6, 0.3, 0.2] {
speed = catchup_speed(cache, speed);
}
assert_eq!(