ES or TS: How to Identify Where the Error Occurs — and Why It Matters

Imagine a typical situation. You receive a live SRT stream from a content provider, transcode it, and deliver it to your IPTV network. Everything works as usual until users suddenly start reporting visible artifacts and dropped frames during playback.

The key question becomes: where exactly is the problem? Is it in the elementary stream (ES) or in the transport stream (TS) level?
It sounds straightforward, but this step often saves hours of troubleshooting and helps you quickly pinpoint which piece of equipment needs attention.

How to approach the issue

1. Start by capturing a short recording of the output stream of your IPTV network.
2. Open the file in both ES-level and TS-level analyzers at the same time and synchronize them. This will help you quickly locate where the error appears.

Look for correlations between artifacts and errors:

• Do you see a visual artifact but no packet loss?
• Or the opposite: TR 101 290 errors appear at the exact moments when the picture breaks up?

These answers will point you toward the true source of the problem.

Diagnosing ES level issues

If no packet loss is detected, the issue may lie in the elementary stream level. This often happens when the input arrives corrupted before demultiplexing and transcoding.

In this situation:

• the report shows no TR 101 290 errors,
• QoS metrics look clean,
• but artifacts are still visible in the video.

This is a strong sign that you should check the equipment used for signal transmission across the backbone before the encoders.

Diagnosing TS level Issues

If the issue is caused by packet loss during delivery, the error occurs at the transport stream level. In this case, the analyzer will show continuity counter errors (TR 101 290 P1). The timestamps of these errors almost always match the moments when artifacts appear.

These errors indicate that some TS packets were lost, preventing the decoder from reconstructing a complete video frame sequence.

Here it makes sense to inspect the reception quality on the multiplexer side.

Looking for more practical examples?

This scenario is just one of five real-world cases we cover in our white paper. You’ll find additional examples of diagnostics, optimization, and common pitfalls engineers face when working with broadcast and OTT streams. If you want to dive deeper, take a look — it’s worth it.