Will Placeshifter ever play .TS files properly?

[owilsky]

My SageTV machine records TS files with Stéphane's LM DVB Smart Recorder.
When I use Placeshifter on LAN without transcoding, TS files are played, but whenever I skip some seconds back or forward, playback restarts at the beginning.
When force transcoding, it works, but quality gets worse.

Will we ever be able to play these files without transcoding on LAN?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by owilsky

My SageTV machine records TS files with Stéphane's LM DVB Smart Recorder.
When I use Placeshifter on LAN without transcoding, TS files are played, but whenever I skip some seconds back or forward, playback restarts at the beginning.
When force transcoding, it works, but quality gets worse.

Will we ever be able to play these files without transcoding on LAN?

Yeah, I have the same issue Kind of makes the placeshifter useless for most of my content.

[Comitizer]

Agreed. It means that I can't use comskip on the LAN. Not cool.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by Comitizer

Agreed. It means that I can't use comskip on the LAN. Not cool.

Of course you can use Comskip on your LAN...just use SageTVClient instead. SageTVClient is designed for LAN usage while the Placeshifter is for streaming over the Internet.

TS files playback just fine in SageTVClient...the Placeshifter has a different media player architecture which doesn't handle them as well.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Of course you can use Comskip on your LAN...just use SageTVClient instead. SageTVClient is designed for LAN usage while the Placeshifter is for streaming over the Internet.

TS files playback just fine in SageTVClient...the Placeshifter has a different media player architecture which doesn't handle them as well.

The problem, for me, is that my "clients" are linux based, and as such I don't have the option to run the Windows client

The playback of the .ts files are fine, whether or not the i'm transcoding on the fly, or using direct lan connection. It's just when you try to hit ff or rew it jumps randomly to different locations in the file Why would the hd300, 200, and 100, which are also running linux, have no issues skipping?

I haven't tried this in the 7.1 yet, but I did see that you added a new switch to "fake" the placeshifter into thinking that it is remote, even when it's only the same network... will this fix the issue with the skipping (even though I need to transcode on the fly)

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by stuckless

The problem, for me, is that my "clients" are linux based, and as such I don't have the option to run the Windows client

The playback of the .ts files are fine, whether or not the i'm transcoding on the fly, or using direct lan connection. It's just when you try to hit ff or rew it jumps randomly to different locations in the file Why would the hd300, 200, and 100, which are also running linux, have no issues skipping?

I haven't tried this in the 7.1 yet, but I did see that you added a new switch to "fake" the placeshifter into thinking that it is remote, even when it's only the same network... will this fix the issue with the skipping (even though I need to transcode on the fly)

Because the Placeshifter is using MPlayer for media playback which has its own demux for handling MPEG2-TS content. The transcoder uses a different one as does the server when streaming to media extenders.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Because the Placeshifter is using MPlayer for media playback which has its own demux for handling MPEG2-TS content. The transcoder uses a different one as does the server when streaming to media extenders.

I see... so when mplayer can handle the file correctly... so will sage.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I see... so when mplayer can handle the file correctly... so will sage.

It's not even that simple...we're quite a few versions behind on MPlayer so we'd have to update that as well (we keep FFMPEG pretty updated...but MPlayer is another story because it had far more bugs we had to correct so there's a lot more patches we've done for it).

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Narflex

It's not even that simple...we're quite a few versions behind on MPlayer so we'd have to update that as well (we keep FFMPEG pretty updated...but MPlayer is another story because it had far more bugs we had to correct so there's a lot more patches we've done for it).

You don't want me to have a shred of hope do you Any chance that the "player" could be abstracted out, so that something like vlc or more current versions of mplayer could be used as the playback engine?

Or, can the HDPVR be configured to produce .mpg files instead of .ts files? (ie,mpeg2 vs h264)

[Spectrum]

The encoder chip in the HDPVR is h264 only. The new colossus' chip is capable of mpeg2 but it is not (yet?) available in the drivers. The version of TME that comes with the HDPVR is capable of using an mp4 container instead of a .ts but I've never seen a way to get Sage to use a .mp4 or if it would make a difference. I'll record a test clip and report back

Playback over local network when using an mp4 container works fine. Skipping forward/backward worked as expected. Would it be possible (with an update) for Sage to record into a .mp4 container rather than a .ts?

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

The encoder chip in the HDPVR is h264 only. The new colossus' chip is capable of mpeg2 but it is not (yet?) available in the drivers. The version of TME that comes with the HDPVR is capable of using an mp4 container instead of a .ts but I've never seen a way to get Sage to use a .mp4 or if it would make a difference. I'll record a test clip and report back

Playback over local network when using an mp4 container works fine. Skipping forward/backward worked as expected. Would it be possible (with an update) for Sage to record into a .mp4 container rather than a .ts?

MP4 containers don't support watching while recording due to how the indices in the files work (they're critical for playing back the content, but are not written until the file is completely created). So it's not possible to use MP4 files in SageTV for recording.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by stuckless

You don't want me to have a shred of hope do you Any chance that the "player" could be abstracted out, so that something like vlc or more current versions of mplayer could be used as the playback engine?

Or, can the HDPVR be configured to produce .mpg files instead of .ts files? (ie,mpeg2 vs h264)

You really won't let it rest, will you? There's far more trickiness to a player when you're doing things like pausing live TV or dynamic streaming; not to mention integration with 3D renderers like OpenGL or Direct3D. So it's not a s simple as 'dropping in' another player.

And the HDPVR can only produce TS files.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by stuckless

You don't want me to have a shred of hope do you Any chance that the "player" could be abstracted out, so that something like vlc or more current versions of mplayer could be used as the playback engine?

Or, can the HDPVR be configured to produce .mpg files instead of .ts files? (ie,mpeg2 vs h264)

Does a recent mplayer play the files back? If so, I believe at one point sagetv's mplayer patches were made available as part of a GPL request. You could always attempt to forward-port their changes (or at least the hooks that allow placeshifter to control mplayer).

Maybe while you're at it, you could fix the whole OSD flashing mess that so many of us linux users who don't use Nvidia cards see..

Drew

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by Narflex

MP4 containers don't support watching while recording due to how the indices in the files work (they're critical for playing back the content, but are not written until the file is completely created). So it's not possible to use MP4 files in SageTV for recording.

Details, details
There's that whole pesky live viewing thing to contend with again!

[wayner]

I want to bring this back to life. Is there any possibility of PS playing back all files properly on LAN as well as an extender?

[JimG]

Originally Posted by wayner

I want to bring this back to life. Is there any possibility of PS playing back all files properly on LAN as well as an extender?

Anyone? Anyone? Please make it work