HD extender doesn't playback mpgs after fixing them with VideoReDo

[gveres]

I am about to file a bug and provide an example to tech support but I figured I would post it here too.

I am using an R5000 w/ StarChoice. The mpg files that come out of the R5000 have a number of timeline errors and I have enabled the flag that strips the padding. This is the only useful way to use an R5000 in my opinion. But it leads to a number of problems. The media extender and Sage in general, has a hard time skipping forward and backwards through the file. VLC doesn't see a timeline for the file so you can't skip around in VLC at all. BTV doesn't play the file at all.

I found yesterday that VideoReDo has this feature called QuickStream Fix. This will clean up the time code issues with the file. It does a great job and it runs pretty fast. I am working on getting it setup to run automatically on every recording.

Once I run QuickStream Fix on my R5000 generated mpgs, I can play it back in Sage Client and the results are much better. Sage can seek around easier and faster. There are no lags. I have done this on a Mac Client and on a PC based placeshifter. I can play the recording back in VLC with a timeline so I can do seeks. I can even play it back in BTV.

I can't however, play it back on the HD extender. I get a 4 second pause and then an error that says:

There was a Playback Error in playback. Details:
sage.Playback Exception

I have done enough to narrow this down to a problem with the files after processing them with VideoReDo. If I record something and don't run videoReDo on it, then everything is fine.

Has anybody else seen this? It might be the nature of the files coming from StarChoice.

Greg

[Lucas]

I have the same issues with any HD mpg2 files. Mine play fine though. The problem is just skipping backwards and forward.

[gveres]

Hi Lucas,

I am not sure what part you are agreeing with. After VideoReDo,all the HD mpg files play perfectly in all players that I have tried except the HD extender (I haven't broken out the old MVP yet to see if the SD VideoReDo processed files play on it).

Before processing the HD files, seeking around was problematic everywhere. To me, VideoReDo is a life saver. It allows me to do all the things I used to do with the SD files from the PVR250 to the HD files coming from the R5000.

Greg

[Lucas]

I am agreeing with the problems faced in playing back .mpg files on the extenders. Mine play, albeit with problems when skipping but I have not processed them using VideoRedo.

In your case it seems that VideoRedo is making them totally unplayable.

[gveres]

Yes, that is correct. Before that the extender could handle them ok if you played them start to end without jumping around or skipping commercials. But the Sage client had similar problems. With the videoReDo processing, the Sage client plays them back flawlessly - just as good as BTV did with my PVR250 SD recordings, which is great given the extra amount of data and processing required.

Greg

[dotheDVDeed]

Question: Are you bringing your Videoredo fixed recording into the SageTV Recordings folder or the Imported Videos folder in the Media Center?

I seem to have difficulty with the fixed recordings in the SageTV recordings folder but not if they are in the Imported Videos folder. Maybe there's a timing issue with the quickstream fixed videos not matching the original recordings and sageTV's database?

[gveres]

I overwrite the original recording (the bat file I am using processes to a temp file, the moves the file back to the original location).

I have tried to play them back as recordings and by navigating in the video folders to play them as an imported video.

Neither worked for me. I have been talking with support and I sent them a sample. The support guy says that he can play back my file with the beta firmware on the HD extender. I have not been able to yet. I get a different result with the beta firmware (the screen is just black and there is no audio, but there is no error message coming up)

Greg

[gveres]

Last update on this:

I had to power cycle my extender after flashing it with the beta firmware. Once this was complete, I was able to play back the VideoReDo processed mpgs.

I am happy camper now. Playback of the R5000 files is now fantastic in Sage. It was very, very iffy before doing the VideoReDo processing.

Now I am off to the videoReDo website to purchase it.

Greg

[dgeezer]

From what I understand the QuickStreamFix is just a run through the editor with no cuts defined. You may want to have comskip output a .vprj file and run this through videoredo. This can also be automated with your batch file. Videoredo seems to run at about the same speed through the file whether you are cutting commercials or just doing the quickstreafix.

[gveres]

That is assuming you trust any of these commercial detection programs to be 100% accurate. I don't.

I had to build in a delay and starting offset on the auto skip based on comskip edl files. If I didn't do this my wife would have thrown Sage out the window. She hates missing a couple seconds of the show on either side of the commercial break. Its amazing how important those two seconds can be to some shows.

Greg

[ehlfg]

Just to make sure that I understand, the QuickStream Fix is still necessary for 6.4.2 beta and the beta firmware (with the timeline fix)?

I don't have an HD100 yet, but I am using an R5000 and intend to get an HD100 when it becomes available. My recordings seem to be fine when played on the server (using service mode), but I do have some problems with the timeline using Placeshifter.

[gveres]

I believe so, but you know, I upgraded to the beta to fix the problem of not being able to playback the VideoReDo files. I should check that.

I will check and post back here. I suspect the answer will be yes it is still needed.

Greg

[MarkV]

Any updates? Considering an HD-extender for use with DirecTV R5000-HD mpeg2 transport streams.

I usually strip the headers and trim the files with HDTVtoMPEG2 and only run them through VideoRedo Plus QuickStream fix if Sage says they're not the full timeline. Sort of sad that I'm primarily using HDTVtoMpeg2 and I've bought VideoRedo. I need to make a donation.

Off topic - I drive Sage playback using Nielm's webserver by specifying specific sageids of each file. Should I expect this to work with the extender ?

[gveres]

Ok, this all got resolved at the end of last week. The support guys were great and stuck with me through this. (Thanks Guys!!!).

But at the end of the day they said that this is not considered a bug because you are not supposed to modify the favourite recordings after Sage creates them. But we did come up with a work around that is working fine.

Here is the situation:

The mpeg files coming out of the R5000 when you drop the padding are no longer properly formated mpeg files. Just load one up in VLC and you will see it has no timeline. So I was running the files through videoReDo's QuickStream Fix because it make the files smaller and they play back much better. VLC even sees the timeline.

(BTW, even though Sage sees the timeline on the R5000 mpegs, jumping ahead 30 seconds at a time is painfully slow and error prone - this is all fixed by running VideoReDo)

Here is the problem:

when VideoReDo runs, it changes the TS stream to a PS stream. It seems all the programs in the world other than the video decoder on the HD extender can handle this properly and will silently switch to handling a PS stream. The HD extender is looking for a TS stream (the sage server scanned the mpg file when it was added and cached this information) and gets confused when it finds the PS stream. The end result is that no video or audio is played.

Here is the work around:

The thing is that we need to get Sage to rescan the recordings directory and pick up the new file. It turns out that when you rescan your imported videos directory, Sage also scans the recordings directory (this surprised me a bit, but indeed it does). It also turns out that Sage rescans the recording directory every 5 minutes automatically, so you don't have to manually start a re-scan.

But, the challenge is what does Sage notice that will triger a rescan. It is not a timestamp, instead it is an extension change. Since the original file was called .mpg the Sage developer suggested that I make some changes to my sage.properites file to get Sage to record to .ts files instead of .mpg. Then when I run VideoReDo, it creates a new file with a .mpg extension and I remove the original .ts file. (all with the same base file name). Then when Sage wakes up and rescans, it notices the extension change and updates its cached information. At that point, all is good. I didn't even have to change my VideoReDo script to get this working.

This works for me because I rarely watch something while it is recording or within 10 minutes of the recording being completed. I typically watch shows days after they are recorded. You can still watch things live, Sage is quite happy playing back the .ts file.

Here are the instructions that I got for modifying my sage.properies file to produce .ts files.

Here's some instructions I sent to someone a few weeks ago on that. The
numbers are probably different for your properties file (i.e. the 12346) but
the rest of the instructions should be the same. Let me know if you have any
questions on this.


First, change all of the lines that start with:

mmc/encoders/12346/1/0/

to instead start with

mmc/encoders/12346/100/0/ 


Then edit the line:

mmc/encoders/12346/100/0/video_crossbar_type=10

(this line used to have /1/0/ instead of /100/0/, but you should have
changed that already)

and change it to:

mmc/encoders/12346/100/0/video_crossbar_type=100

 
and make sure this is set:


mmc/encoders/12346/100/0/encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=false

Greg

[BobPhoenix]

Did you try a /t4 parameter on your QuickStreamFix script call.

When you setup something like this:

cscript //nologo "C:\Program Files\VideoReDoTVSuite\vp.vbs" "V:\VideoEditing\GetOut-FreeportBahamas-897537-0.mpg" "V:\VideoEditing\GetOut-FreeportBahamas-897537-0.ts" /t4 /q /e

It produces a .ts file according to the properties of VideoReDo anyway (see graphic included) and my limited understanding of this. But it was a SD resolution so maybe that is the difference.