Error messages reported by HLSValidator

HLSValidator reports error messages that indicate possible errors during the multiplexing process.

An error message consists of a message that describes the error and a class that identifies the portion of the test file that generated the error. Error messages can be logged in the logfile.txt file.

This table lists the error classes that can be reported by HLSValidator.

Error class Description
Usage errors Incorrect use of tool
Run-time errors Likely system resource error (error unrelated to either usage of the tool or to segment compliance)
Compliance errors Noncompliance of transport stream under test with specifications as described in the document Dolby Digital Plus for HTTP Live Streaming

This table lists the error message that can be reported by HLSValidator.

Error message Error class Error description
ERROR: Invalid input file format. Usage error The input file format is not supported. The tool only supports .m3u8, .m3u, or .ts as the input file formats.
ERROR: Opening destination file failed. Usage error The tool was unable to create the destination file. Possible reasons are:
  • The destination file is already present and not writable.
  • The parent folder is not present or not writable.

Possible reasons for the file or directory not being writable are:

  • The file has the wrong permissions set.
  • The file destination would be on a partition or network drive mounted as read only.

On Windows, the reason may also be that the destination file is already opened with another program and therefore locked by the operating system.
ERROR: Opening segment file failed. Usage error The segment file was not found because it is not present at the specified location in the file system.
ERROR: Command line parsing error. Usage error Unknown command-line options, an incorrect combination of command-line options, or invalid parameters; for proper usage, refer to the examples provided in this document or to the usage help printed by the tool.
ERROR: You must specify -i and -o. Usage error Options -i and –o are mandatory.
ERROR: Found [..] Dolby Digital Plus access units with invalid sync word. Compliance error There were Dolby Digital Plus access units (beginning at the start of an audio PES packet) that did not start with a known sync word.
ERROR: Found [..] Dolby Digital Plus access units starting with the wrong endianness (LE) sync word. Compliance error One or more Dolby Digital Plus access units (beginning at the start of an audio PES packet) started with the little-endian byte-order sync word 0x77 0x0B, indicating a little-endian elementary transport stream. This endianness should not be used.
ERROR: Segment's smallest Dolby Digital Plus audio PTS must be >= segment's smallest video PTS (audio: [..]; video: [..]). Compliance error The first PTS of the audio track in the current segment is smaller than the first PTS of the video track in that segment. This is in violation of the specifications as described in the Dolby Digital Plus for online delivery content creation system development manual.
ERROR: Segment's smallest audio PTS differs more than 2,879 ticks from smallest video PTS (audio [..], video [..], difference is [..]). Compliance error In the analyzed segment, the first audio PTS differs by more than 2,879 ticks from the video PTS. This is in violation of the specifications as described in Dolby Digital Plus and HTTP Live Streaming.
ERROR: Wrong endianness sync word or unknown sync word at beginning of Dolby Digital Plus access units found. Compliance error One or more Dolby Digital Plus access units (beginning at the start of an audio PES packet) did not start with the expected sync word of 0x0B 0xFF. This message comprises a summary of errors for one sequence of segments. It is followed by statistics on the number of noncompliant sync words for all of the segments of that sequence.

ERROR: Lost sync, or did not find sync frame where expected. Garbage in stream?

ERROR: Lost sync.

Compliance error No transport stream sync bytes were found; this probably means that there is garbage data in the transport stream; therefore, the transport stream either has not been multiplexed properly or the file has been damaged.
ERROR: Unexpected end of file (EOF). Compliance error The transport stream ended unexpectedly. This can occur due to improper multiplexing, or truncation of the file while writing or copying to disc.
ERROR: Dolby Digital Plus stream must set stream_id = 0xbd in PES header. Compliance error For each PES packet that contains Dolby Digital Plus audio data, the stream_id field in the PES packet header must be configured as 0xbd.
ERROR: Dolby Digital Plus info tool returns error when parsing the payload data. Compliance error The Dolby Digital Plus parser tool can not complete the parser process, because there are errors in Dolby Digital Plus audio data.
ERROR: A PES package does not contain at least one Dolby Digital Plus access unit. Compliance error There is no access unit in one PES packet.
ERROR: Dolby Digital Plus descriptor is not identical to Dolby Digital Plus audio data information. Compliance error Fields in the .ec3 descriptor must be identical with information in Dolby Digital Plus audio data.
ERROR: File read error. Run-time error After successfully opening one of the transport stream segments, there was an error reading the data from that file. Potential causes are either loss of connectivity to the network drive containing the segments or the local drive becoming inaccessible. (For example, the drive has been physically disconnected or is experiencing file access errors due to physical disc failure.)
Memory allocation error. Run-time error There was an error allocating memory (RAM). This usually means that the computer is running too many memory consuming processes. Free some RAM by quitting processes not required for testing or for proper system operation.