Root cause (2026-08-12 11:50 test): merge ffmpeg hit a transient YouTube
403 and exited code 8 BEFORE prepareStream attached its input listeners
(voice release+join takes ~10s). The input's end/error events fired into
the void, the encoder stdin never received EOF, demux resolved with
fallback 0x0 metadata, setSpeaking fired anyway → stream 'started' with
zero frames for 8+ minutes (black tile, both ffmpeg processes hung).
Fixes:
- mediaSource: pass yt-dlp http_headers (UA/referer) to the merge ffmpeg
via -headers to suppress transient 403s; destroy the returned stream
with an error when the merge exits non-zero before producing bytes.
- screenShareController: resolveInputWithRetry — tee the merge stream and
wait for the first readable byte (12s timeout) before proceeding; on
error/EOF/timeout retry the whole resolution with a FRESH yt-dlp run
(signed DASH URLs expire fast) up to 3 attempts. Stuck merges get
EPIPE via input.destroy() so no process leaks per attempt.
- prepareStream: race guard — if the input already ended/destroyed before
listeners attach, EOF the encoder stdin immediately; first-frame
watchdog in playStream rejects 'started but nothing flowing' after 10s
instead of resolving with a silent black stream.
Tests: +2 (merge-fail zero-byte terminal state, -headers forwarding).
getDirectVideoUrl used yt-dlp --get-url with bestvideo+bestaudio, which
prints the video-only and audio-only URLs on SEPARATE lines. Only the
first (video-only) line was used, so ffmpeg had no audio track and the
GoLive stream had no sound.
Replace with getDirectScreenInput which:
- uses --dump-single-json to fetch both fresh URLs in ONE yt-dlp run
(signature URLs expire quickly)
- returns the merged progressive URL directly when one exists
- otherwise merges the video-only + audio-only DASH URLs locally via a
child ffmpeg into a single NUT stream consumed as a Readable
- tracks the merge ffmpeg process in cleanup() so shutdown kills it too
Verified end-to-end with real YouTube URLs: yt-dlp pair → live ffmpeg
merge (NUT) → H264+opus transcode yields both streams. Added
tests/screenShareInput.test.ts covering URL / DASH-pair / error paths.
asepharyana