OpenDCT: An open source digital cable tuner.

[Telecore]

On a different note, ENE, did you see in the other thread where the HDHR Extend may be sending MPEG-2 initially, then changing to MPEG-4 in the case where transcoding is on? Is an easy fix possible for OpenDCT to be able to change codecs on the fly and successfully record the MPEG-4 program?

(See threads below)

https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64584

https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/...?f=116&t=66217

Honestly, I don't truly need to record MPEG-4 transcoded OTA material but it is always nice to support more capabilities in SageTV. Thanks for reading.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by AlphaCrew

Thanks but this does not help me, I used NATGEO (Not HD) as one example, but there are other shows (Not channels) that end up getting flagged x02.

I need a way to stop sage (or the DCT) from continuously trying to tune the channel.

Oh, sorry. I was hoping that would help. Maybe it's a mistake on Verizon's own rule allowing anything thru that's not copy-once. You could contact them about it.

In our region, we don't have channels that broadcast both copy-freely and copy-once programs.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Telecore

On a different note, ENE, did you see in the other thread where the HDHR Extend may be sending MPEG-2 initially, then changing to MPEG-4 in the case where transcoding is on? Is an easy fix possible for OpenDCT to be able to change codecs on the fly and successfully record the MPEG-4 program?

(See threads below)

https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64584

https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/...?f=116&t=66217

Honestly, I don't truly need to record MPEG-4 transcoded OTA material but it is always nice to support more capabilities in SageTV. Thanks for reading.

I thought we already had people using the Extend versions with OpenDCT successfully. The MPEG2 video (if some of that is passed through initially) would be so little that OpenDCT is unlikely to consider it for remuxing anyway.

[Telecore]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I thought we already had people using the Extend versions with OpenDCT successfully. The MPEG2 video (if some of that is passed through initially) would be so little that OpenDCT is unlikely to consider it for remuxing anyway.

My understanding was that the person(s) who used the HDTC-2US, turned off transcoding to get it to work. It didn't work for me with transcoding on, not via the HDHR drivers, and not with OpenDCT either.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Telecore

My understanding was that the person(s) who used the HDTC-2US, turned off transcoding to get it to work. It didn't work for me with transcoding on, not via the HDHR drivers, and not with OpenDCT either.

I believe when using OpenDCT with the extend, the transcoding profile is set in opendct.properties, not in the HDHR drivers (which are NOT required to use any HDHR with opendct).

hdhr.extend_transcode_profile=heavy
This is the profile to be used for all tuners that support hardware transcoding.
heavy - transcode to AVC with the same resolution, frame-rate, and interlacing as the original stream. For example 1080i60 AVC 1080i60, 720p60 AVC 720p60.
mobile - trancode to AVC progressive not exceeding 1280x720 30fps.
internet720 - transcode to low bitrate AVC progressive not exceeding 1280x720 30fps.
internet480 - transcode to low bitrate AVC progressive not exceeding 848x480 30fps for 16:9 content, not exceeding 640x480 30fps for 4:3 content.
internet360 - transcode to low bitrate AVC progressive not exceeding 640x360 30fps for 16:9 content, not exceeding 480x360 30fps for 4:3 content.
internet240 - transcode to low bitrate AVC progressive not exceeding 432x240 30fps for 16:9 content, not exceeding 320x240 30fps for 4:3 content.

[rickgillyon]

Would it be possible to use OpenDCT to tune Sat/IP streams from tvheadend?
If so any idea how the control from SageTV would work?

I'm trying to find a way for unRAID to work for me before wiping it and installing Win10...

Edit / Update: Okay, I've worked a few things out, I have a channel created with sage and opendct and tvheadend, works absolutely fine. But does this mean I'd need a different sage lineup and opendct device for every channel? That might not be workable... I can't see a way for Sage to pass the requested channel to opendct and opendct change the channel number part of the url.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Would it be possible to use OpenDCT to tune Sat/IP streams from tvheadend?
If so any idea how the control from SageTV would work?

I'm trying to find a way for unRAID to work for me before wiping it and installing Win10...

Edit / Update: Okay, I've worked a few things out, I have a channel created with sage and opendct and tvheadend, works absolutely fine. But does this mean I'd need a different sage lineup and opendct device for every channel? That might not be workable... I can't see a way for Sage to pass the requested channel to opendct and opendct change the channel number part of the url.

Sage can most certainly pass channel requests to OpenDCT, which can then include said request in it's URL request to whatever stream you are getting to. I know nothing about tvheadend, but the way to include the channel number in the URL is listed in the openDCT instructions for HTTP sources.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Sage can most certainly pass channel requests to OpenDCT, which can then include said request in it's URL request to whatever stream you are getting to. I know nothing about tvheadend, but the way to include the channel number in the URL is listed in the openDCT instructions for HTTP sources.

Are those the instructions in the first post? I think I only read them five times. I thought the channel numbers were for a tuning program rather than URL. I'll try again when I get in tonight... Thanks.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Are those the instructions in the first post? I think I only read them five times. I thought the channel numbers were for a tuning program rather than URL. I'll try again when I get in tonight... Thanks.

Actually, it looks like the post doesn't explicitly state this, but I THINK you can include %c% in the URL to have it replace that with a channel number.... I do see that referenced in the code, but not in the documentation.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Actually, it looks like the post doesn't explicitly state this, but I THINK you can include %c% in the URL to have it replace that with a channel number.... I do see that referenced in the code, but not in the documentation.

This looks perfect. If a url can handle 4 streams, I assume I just have to add the same details under 4 different "tuners"? There's no "maximum streams" type of setting?

Edit: Well, 3-and-a-bit hours later and I have a working (although not yet fully-tested) system. This seems to be working a treat, one fake OpenDCT tuner per remote physical tuner, two lineups and I'm in business... Full functionality in SageTV using TVHeadend as a back end. Thanks for the help!

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

This looks perfect. If a url can handle 4 streams, I assume I just have to add the same details under 4 different "tuners"? There's no "maximum streams" type of setting?

Edit: Well, 3-and-a-bit hours later and I have a working (although not yet fully-tested) system. This seems to be working a treat, one fake OpenDCT tuner per remote physical tuner, two lineups and I'm in business... Full functionality in SageTV using TVHeadend as a back end. Thanks for the help!

Thanks for pointing out the omission. I have corrected the first post to mention it. This thread might have also been of assistance.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

This thread might have also been of assistance.

Yep, missed that one.

TVheadend can be tuned with a simple:

sagetv.device.<unique_id>.streaming_url=http://[tvheadend_ip]:[tvheadend_port]/stream/channelnumber/%c%

[reggie14]

I've increasingly been having problems with corrupted recordings. I'll get a warning in SageTV saying a halt was detected, and then I'll discover the recording isn't playable on my HD300 extenders. Worse than that, actually, is that it will hard crash the extender, usually requiring a full power cycle of the extender to get it functioning again.

There seems to be a common theme to these problems. Far as I can tell, Sage/OpenDCT tries to tune a channel, but it gets stuck. It eventually retries, which works.

The resulting file seems to work OK on a software client, but not the extenders. I even tried repairing a recording using ProjectX (simply replacing the old recording file), but it still failed.

A log is attached. In this log, the offending recording is of: TheWalkingDead-S08E03-Monsters

Any ideas? This is a pretty recent problem. This happened once every few months previously, but its happened a few times now over the last month.

Edit:
After looking at more examples of failed recordings, I see another common theme: out of memory errors with ffmpeg. I always seem to see some lines like this before seeing messages saying the recording was stuck.

22:00:00.725 [SageTVRequestHandler-135790:DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-0 > DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-1] DEBUG DynamicConsumerImpl - Using default consumer 'opendct.consumer.FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl' for channel '731'
22:00:00.786 [SageTVRequestHandler-135790:DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-0 > DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-1] WARN  FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl - There was a problem allocating a new buffer. Ran GC => java.lang.OutOfMemoryError

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I've increasingly been having problems with corrupted recordings. I'll get a warning in SageTV saying a halt was detected, and then I'll discover the recording isn't playable on my HD300 extenders. Worse than that, actually, is that it will hard crash the extender, usually requiring a full power cycle of the extender to get it functioning again.

There seems to be a common theme to these problems. Far as I can tell, Sage/OpenDCT tries to tune a channel, but it gets stuck. It eventually retries, which works.

The resulting file seems to work OK on a software client, but not the extenders. I even tried repairing a recording using ProjectX (simply replacing the old recording file), but it still failed.

A log is attached. In this log, the offending recording is of: TheWalkingDead-S08E03-Monsters

Any ideas? This is a pretty recent problem. This happened once every few months previously, but its happened a few times now over the last month.

Edit:
After looking at more examples of failed recordings, I see another common theme: out of memory errors with ffmpeg. I always seem to see some lines like this before seeing messages saying the recording was stuck.

22:00:00.725 [SageTVRequestHandler-135790:DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-0 > DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-1] DEBUG DynamicConsumerImpl - Using default consumer 'opendct.consumer.FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl' for channel '731'
22:00:00.786 [SageTVRequestHandler-135790:DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-0 > DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-1] WARN  FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl - There was a problem allocating a new buffer. Ran GC => java.lang.OutOfMemoryError

I can't tell from the log if you're on the latest version of OpenDCT. If you're not, the first thing I would do is upgrade because issue similar to this used to be a problem that should now be resolved.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I can't tell from the log if you're on the latest version of OpenDCT. If you're not, the first thing I would do is upgrade because issue similar to this used to be a problem that should now be resolved.

How do you tell?

I'm pretty sure I'm running 0.5.28-x86 because: 1) that's what installer I found on my system, and 2) re-downloading and running the installer only gives me the option to uninstall. I also thought I saw the version in the log, but now I can't find it.

Edit:
I see opendct-0.5.28.jar in the lib folder, so that's probably definitive.

[reggie14]

I'll simply add that I was previously running SageTV v9.1.2 (on Windows). I upgraded to v9.1.7 after seeing a note about a problem with G1GC (presumably that's tied to the garbage collector) in the release notes for v9.1.6.

But, I'm guessing that wouldn't impact OpenDCT, since OpenDCT seems to run separate from SageTV itself.

Also, the only other atypical thing with my setup is that I have tuner pooling enabled. But, that doesn't seem to explain the out-of-memory error with FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I'll simply add that I was previously running SageTV v9.1.2 (on Windows). I upgraded to v9.1.7 after seeing a note about a problem with G1GC (presumably that's tied to the garbage collector) in the release notes for v9.1.6.

But, I'm guessing that wouldn't impact OpenDCT, since OpenDCT seems to run separate from SageTV itself.

Also, the only other atypical thing with my setup is that I have tuner pooling enabled. But, that doesn't seem to explain the out-of-memory error with FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl.

The OOM errors are happening when it's using the Java API to create a new native ByteBuffer. The issue you're seeing sort of emphasizes my biggest grip with Java: you can't immediately dispose of an object. This is exacerbated because ByteBuffers do some kind of delayed de-allocation that allows for this kind of thing to even happen. If you can post wrapper.log, it will actually contain the garbage collector information. I'll see if maybe there's something more that we can do.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

The OOM errors are happening when it's using the Java API to create a new native ByteBuffer. The issue you're seeing sort of emphasizes my biggest grip with Java: you can't immediately dispose of an object. This is exacerbated because ByteBuffers do some kind of delayed de-allocation that allows for this kind of thing to even happen. If you can post wrapper.log, it will actually contain the garbage collector information. I'll see if maybe there's something more that we can do.

I PMed you links to the logs. Let me know if anything else would be helpful.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I PMed you links to the logs. Let me know if anything else would be helpful.

Thanks. Unfortunately, other than confirming that a full GC happened before it determined that a buffer couldn't be allocated, I don't know why it was unable to find enough space in RAM to do so. The actual heap RAM usage is extremely lean in your logs.

I did enable G1GC for this build which did cause some issues for SageTV a few months back. Based on what those looked like, this kind of looks like the same idea. Stop OpenDCT, backup, then overwrite "C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenDCT Authors\OpenDCT\jsw\conf\wrapper.conf" with the wrapper.conf I have attached. Start OpenDCT again and let me know if things get better.

[tmiranda]

Question. If I change the lineup that is being used by my HDHR Prime, do I need to do anything special to tell Open DCT?