Troubleshooting
Best Practices
CC Errors on SRT-Based Failover Channel (No-Merge)
7 min
this applies to failover channels configured in no merge mode in this mode, the channel carries a single active source at a time and performs a hard cut when switching cc errors on the failover output in this configuration are generally expected and fall into two distinct categories root causes 1\ switch correlated cc errors (expected behavior) in a no merge failover, any source switch adds a discontinuity in the mpeg ts continuity counter the outgoing stream transitions abruptly from one source's counter state to another abruptly when this happens the counters will not be in sync, and a cc error will occur on each switch event this is not a defect it is the inherent nature of hard cut switching there is no way to eliminate this without moving to a merge/redundancy ( 7) configuration, which can stitch streams together at the packet level mitigation error concealment (ec) if the cc error at switch time is causing downstream issues (e g , alerting systems, decoders), the following ec options can mask the problem continuous timeline makes the output stream appear as a single continuous timeline across switch events, reducing visible discontinuity to downstream equipment renumber cc renumbers continuity counters on output to suppress cc error reporting effectively masks counter breaks induced by the switch error concealment configuration menu these are cosmetic fixes only, the underlying switch event still occurs but downstream detection is suppressed 2\ source p1 errors passing through (configuration note) the channel is not configured to switch on p1 error events this means if a cc error exists in the active source feed, it will be passed through to the failover output without triggering a switch if the goal is to fail away from a source that is generating cc errors, enable p1 based switching be aware that the switch itself will also introduce a cc error (see above) 3\ srt jitter introducing cc errors (transport layer) srt inputs can introduce packet timing jitter that does not manifest on the source monitoring points, but does appear after the failover channel's processing path this explains cases where cc errors appear on the failover output but not on the individual srt inputs mitigation increase the srt search window (latency buffer) on the srt inputs feeding the failover channel a wider window gives the receiver more room to reorder and recover packets before they're passed downstream, which can reduce or eliminate jitter induced cc errors decision tree cc errors seen on failover channel output do errors correlate with source switch events? → yes → expected behavior for no merge failover enable ec with continuous timeline + renumber cc to suppress are cc errors also present on the srt source inputs? → yes → source feed issue consider enabling p1 error based switching to fail away from a bad source cc errors on failover output but not on srt inputs? → yes → likely srt jitter introduced in the failover path increase the srt search window no clear cause found → capture tr 101 290 data at both srt input and failover output and escalate to zixi support escalation checklist when escalating to zixi support, include the following zen master version and broadcaster version(s) involved channel name and failover mode (confirm no merge vs 7 merge) srt input names and connection details (listener/caller, latency settings, search window size) whether ec is enabled and which options are active (continuous timeline, renumber cc) whether p1 error based switching is enabled or disabled timestamp and timezone of cc error events tr 101 290 error counts at srt inputs vs failover output source event log and channel event log export covering the error window any recent changes to channel config, srt settings, or source routing configuration summary setting current state recommendation failover mode no merge (hard cut) acceptable; 7 merge eliminates switch cc errors entirely switch on p1 errors disabled enable if you want automatic failover on source cc errors error concealment not confirmed enabled enable with continuous timeline + renumber cc to suppress switch errors srt search window default/narrow widen if jitter induced cc errors are suspected notes moving to 7 merge mode is the only way to fully eliminate switch correlated cc errors ec options suppress reporting but they do not prevent the underlying counter discontinuity if alerting thresholds are being hit by switch correlated cc errors, ec with renumber cc is the fastest resolution to mitigate for srt jitter investigation, compare tr 101 290 p1 cc error timestamps on the source inputs versus the failover output to confirm possible jitter causes before widening the search window
