Can't Play MJPEG files from my digicam

[DaveGoodrich]

I am new to SageTV, so please bear with me.

As the title says, I am unable to use STV to play the AVI files created by my Canon A620 digital camera. These files play fine in WMP and MPC. The detailed info STV gives for these files is "AVI [MJPEG 640x480@30FPS, PCM_U8/88Kbps@11KHz]

The error message I get is "There was a Playback error in playback.Details:sage.PlaybackException:ERROR (-4,0x80040217):There was a problem rendering the video portion of the content for playback"

I did a search and found a previous thread which describes using a setting in ffdshow to fix a problem with MJPEG playback. I didn't have ffdshow installed, but I installed it thinking it might help. I found no settings in ffdshow that seemed to be related to MJPEG files (installing ffdshow did fix a problem I was haviing with xvid encoded files in MPC, however )

Any ideas? I would really like to get this to work, since I have quite a few of these clips of family stuff that I would love to be to be able to view through the STV interface. If all else fails, I will just convert them all to MPEG2 files.

Thanks,

[DaveGoodrich]

Bump (this moved down pretty quickly without any replies, if I get nothing this time, I will let it die a peaceful death).

Can anyone tell me what codec/filters etc., that STV uses to play these files, and how to get it to use the same one that WMP and MPC use?

Thanks,

[ke6guj]

If you don't get any help from other users, which you may not, since the format you are using may not be commonly used by others, is to get official support from Sage. These forums are for user-to-user support, not official support. http://sage.tv/request.html

Sage may need you to submit a sample video, or to create some log files to help them help you.

[DaveGoodrich]

Thanks, since I am new to STV, I didn't want to bother the official support until I made sure I am not just making a simple configuration mistake.

[SHS]

MJPEG is an outdated and inefficient codec the best thing to do is to Transcoding them in to MPEG-2.

[bastafidli]

Just for the benefit or users who will come accross this old thread, the problem with MJPEG was resolved and Sage and HD100 can view the MJPEGs without any issues.

[IanJohnson]

I ran across this old thread because I can't get the current version of Sage to play the MJPEGs from my camera. Is it supposed to do it "out of the box" now, or is there something else I need to do to make it happen.

I would rather not transcode, that adds another step after copying them off of the camera, and is bad for WAF.


Ian

[Fuzzy]

Bad for WAF, but considerably better for HD space

[CollinR]

x2 mjpeg is horrid for storage

[IanJohnson]

Any ideas how I might automate transcoding for mjpeg files as they are loaded in from the camera?

[CollinR]

Sage Job Queue
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25147

I have just started using it but thus far I like it, very powerful. You can automate many aspects of your server with it.

[Fuzzy]

This is something that should be fairly easy to do in DirMon2 (if you have it). Set up a job that monitors what ever folder you will be importing into, looks for .avi, runs the transcode, and deletes/overwrites the original. I'm not an expert on the command line options, but you can use SageTVTranscoder.exe in your sage directory, as it is basically a tweaked version of ffmpeg mencoder.

[bastafidli]

btw, I thing sage is transcoding on the fly. I have sent them few samples and they added the support very quickly and the mjpegs work very nicely on the HD extender. Maybe you just need to submit a bug report.

[matt91]

Originally Posted by IanJohnson

Is it supposed to do it "out of the box" now

I don't know which version you're using, but if you have the last stable release, you might try the beta and see what happens. There are also HD100 betas too. (I have no idea if the MJPEG is being addressed in the betas, though.)

[bastafidli]

It was addressed in 6.3.x series. Also I am watching mine on HD extender, what kind of client are you using?

[IanJohnson]

The problem was that I didn't have an mpeg decoder installed yet. I realized that when I tried to play a DVD. I guess Sage transcodes the mjpeg to mpeg to play it.


Ian

[bastafidli]

it is possible. I view it on HD extender so I do not have to worry about decoders.