HLS live window is shorter than three target durations
The playlist holds too little content, so any player that falls slightly behind runs off the end of the window.
What it means
A live media playlist must contain at least three target durations of media. Yours holds less.
Why it matters
Players deliberately start a few segments behind the edge to absorb jitter. If the window is barely longer than that offset, a moment of slow network pushes the player past the oldest segment in the playlist, and it must seek forward — visible as a stall followed by a jump.
How to fix it
- Increase the number of segments retained in the live playlist.
- For a DVR window, retain considerably more than the minimum — minutes, not seconds.
Check your own stream
The free HLS analyzer runs this check on every analysis and links each finding straight back here.
Open the HLS analyzer →Frequently asked questions
- What does "HLS live window is shorter than three target durations" mean?
- A live media playlist must contain at least three target durations of media. Yours holds less.
- Why does it matter?
- Players deliberately start a few segments behind the edge to absorb jitter. If the window is barely longer than that offset, a moment of slow network pushes the player past the oldest segment in the playlist, and it must seek forward — visible as a stall followed by a jump.
- How do I fix it?
- 1. Increase the number of segments retained in the live playlist. 2. For a DVR window, retain considerably more than the minimum — minutes, not seconds.
- How do I check an HLS playlist for this automatically?
- Paste the master or media playlist URL into the free HLS analyzer. It runs this check on every analysis alongside the ladder, timing and live-edge audits, and links each finding back to the page that explains it.
- What is the first thing to try?
- Increase the number of segments retained in the live playlist.
Related HLS checks
- HLS ladder has a bitrate inversionA lower-resolution variant is allocated more bandwidth than a higher-resolution one, so adaptive switching picks the wrong rendition.
- HLS variant is missing the CODECS attributeWithout CODECS, players must download a segment before they can tell whether they can play the rendition at all.
- HLS variant references an undeclared rendition groupA variant points at an AUDIO or SUBTITLES group that has no matching EXT-X-MEDIA entry, which breaks playback on strict players.
- HLS segment is longer than EXT-X-TARGETDURATIONA segment rounds to more than the declared target duration, which violates the HLS specification.
- HLS playlist has no EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIMEWithout program date-time the stream cannot be mapped to wall-clock time, which breaks DVR seeking and multi-stream alignment.
- HLS live edge has drifted from wall-clock timeThe newest segment’s program date-time is far from the current time, meaning the playlist is stale or the clocks disagree.