OpenDCT: An open source digital cable tuner.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by AlphaCrew

Well to my utter amazement the 2 shows recorded last night. . I've not been able to get this working for more then 4-8 hrs and for some reason the stupid card worked last night.

How would one go about diagnosing an RTP,UDP,UPnP problem?

I can appreciate the frustration that comes when you think you can reliably reproduce a problem and then when it needs to fail, it just works.

Good question. Since Ceton never provided any good utilities to test this, you have to be a little creative. I would suggest configuring RTP through the web interface and then receiving it with VLC.

1. Goto http://<ip_address>/Services/1/Tuner.html
2. Set a channel.
3. Set the destination IP to the IP address of the computer you want to playback on. If this InfiniTV adapter isn't exposed to your network and you only have one adapter, it will likely be 192.168.200.2 and playback can only happen on the same computer that contains the card. If you have more than one, you'll have to see what the local IP address is for the network adapter correlating with the InfiniTV.
4. Set the destination port to any available port and use this port on step 9.
5. Protocol should already be RTP
6. Change the state to Started. Note that there might be a timeout here that will change this back to Stopped if nothing tries to initialize the RTP stream within a certain amount of time.
7. Click Save Streaming Settings.
8. Open VLC.
9. Open a network stream using the URL rtp://@:<destination_port>
10. Playback should start.

[AlphaCrew]

Thank you VERY much ENE,

What does it mean if nothing plays?

If I followed your instructions correctly this is what I get. (see screen shot). I RDP'd into the machine that contains the Ceton and performed all test there.

I've included a few other screen shots (there are a metric ton of those errors in the adapters log:

Jan 1 12:06:55 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 12:06:55 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (3,4,8)
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (2,4,8)
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (3,4,8)
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (0,4,8)
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (1,4,8)
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 12:06:56 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (2,4,8)

PS: I must be doing something wrong, as even when the card is working (can tune in SageTV) I can't get it to stream in VLC

[AlphaCrew]

Let me add some logs also..

PS: I've noticed whatever the problem, OpenDCT is able to "get past" the issue most of the time, however If I'm just trying to tune in, it almost never works.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by AlphaCrew

Thank you VERY much ENE,

What does it mean if nothing plays?

If I followed your instructions correctly this is what I get. (see screen shot). I RDP'd into the machine that contains the Ceton and performed all test there.

I've included a few other screen shots (there are a metric ton of those errors in the adapters log:



PS: I must be doing something wrong, as even when the card is working (can tune in SageTV) I can't get it to stream in VLC

Actually I think it's a problem with VLC. I could have sworn this worked at some point in time, but I can't get it to work for me either. Sorry for the hassle.

Just use WireShark. Set everything up like you were going to use VLC and you should see RTP packets in WireShark. You should also see the UPnP packets that are apparently berating your poor tuner.

[AlphaCrew]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Actually I think it's a problem with VLC. I could have sworn this worked at some point in time, but I can't get it to work for me either. Sorry for the hassle.

Just use WireShark. Set everything up like you were going to use VLC and you should see RTP packets in WireShark. You should also see the UPnP packets that are apparently berating your poor tuner.

Thank you ENE,

I think I may have found the problem or at least the cause, and I just can't believe this would be it.

I took your advice and installed Wireshark and captured some communications on the Ceton interface. Holy cow there was a lot going on, thousands and thousands of 'entries'. I had no idea what I was looking at but I knew there shouldn't be that much going on.

So i focused on anything that had Upnp in the info field. I could not determine what program was causing it within WireShark but the source and destination IP's were 192.168.200.1 and 192.168.200.2. Which I thought was strange.

Anyway...

So one-by-one I starting killing process that could possibly be using Upnp and as soon as I got to MCEBuddy.service the communication halted.

To test this, I rebooted the machine and watched the interface, I saw nothing but small 'chatter'. So I started a short recording, and shortly after I stopped it I noticed massive amounts of communications again. Killed MCEBuddy and sure enough It all stopped again.

Went into MCEBuddy and turned off Upnp, restarted the machine and now I can't get the flood of comms to take place no matter what I try

I don't understand how MCEBuddy could be causing this but Man-O-Man I hope I fixed this. I'm thinking the Ceton interface was just overwhelmed with all the communication and could not function properly???

Well time will tell...

[rickgillyon]

I may have posted my problem in the wrong thread, or I may just be too damn impatient. Anyone got any ideas why OpenDCT would peg a CPU at 100%? Happened again tonight...
https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...2&postcount=15

[Zogg]

I'm continuing to see errors where all my tuners just stop working. It happened again this evening and first showed up with a recording that tried to start at 8:59 PM. It looks like a buffer or memory problem maybe? I have attached the log files and error logs from that time frame. Thanks!

[bigbill]

Is there a decent write up on what OpenDCT does and how it works? I see lots of stuff about installing it, but no overview to help me get understanding of how it might be of use to me. Can it be used to pool HDHR tuners so multiple sage servers can use open ones if nothing is recording from the other machine on that tuner?

I just finished watching a youtube video on it, but it was how to install it.

Thanks, Bill

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by bigbill

Is there a decent write up on what OpenDCT does and how it works? I see lots of stuff about installing it, but no overview to help me get understanding of how it might be of use to me. Can it be used to pool HDHR tuners so multiple sage servers can use open ones if nothing is recording from the other machine on that tuner?

I just finished watching a youtube video on it, but it was how to install it.

Thanks, Bill

Yes there is pooling ... you need to read the first page of this thread.

Tuner Pooling.
This new feature enables OpenDCT to intelligently select a tuner based on merit and lock status in that order. It does two passes over the tuners. The first one tries to find the highest merit tuner that is not currently in use by SageTV; it checks each one in order to see if it's locked. If they are all either in use or locked, it then it goes through a shorter list of tuners not in use by SageTV, but locked and checks if it's allowed to unlock any of them forcefully. If it's not allowed on any of them, then it gives up. These locked checks are surprisingly fast. Since the InfiniTV devices do not have a locked indication like the HDHomeRun Prime devices, enabling pooling with only InfiniTV devices will just remap them based on merit.
To enable the pooling feature change the property pool.enabled from false to true.
Because of this new feature, the force unlock feature is now set per capture device. To enable forced unlocking, change the value of sagetv.device.<unique_id>.always_force_external_unlock to true for each device that you want this feature enabled on. The global setting no longer has any effect.
Merit is set by changing the value of sagetv.device.<unique_id>.encoder_merit. Higher numbers mean higher priority. This is also the merit that will be sent on discovery.
Pools are automatically assigned based on capture device type the first time you run OpenDCT. You can change the pools by changing the value of sagetv.device.<unique_id>.encoder_pool to another name for all of the capture devices that you want to put into a different pool. The name is case sensitive. Also be sure to not have any extra spaces. I highly do not recommend putting capture devices that cannot tune the same channels into the same pool. It will create a problem per paragraph two in the issue created for this feature.

[bigbill]

I did read that, but I could not tell if that was pooling between two sagetv servers as I would like to do, or just that single server which works fine pooling 4 HDHR tuners without DCT on a single machine.

I think that is why I need an overview doc, what are its true capabilities. Maybe even figure at way to view my Blueiris recordings on my TV's PIP..

One thing I would like to do is share those 4 HDHR's between two sagetv servers. Currently I have one machine that I put one of them dedicated on it and the other 3 on my main sagetv server. As the main one mostly records during prime-time it would be nice if the other server could use them the rest of the day and night.

I just want to know its capabilities. I am starting to there there really isn't an overview?? -Bill

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Zogg

I'm continuing to see errors where all my tuners just stop working. It happened again this evening and first showed up with a recording that tried to start at 8:59 PM. It looks like a buffer or memory problem maybe? I have attached the log files and error logs from that time frame. Thanks!

If you're using the BM3000, you don't need to use FFmpeg at all. In fact, I don't us FFmpeg for that device and I wouldn't recommend it. You just need to change to use the raw consumer. Change sagetv.device.parent.<unique_id>.consumer=opendct.consumer.FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl to opendct.consumer.RawSageTVConsumerImpl.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by bigbill

I did read that, but I could not tell if that was pooling between two sagetv servers as I would like to do, or just that single server which works fine pooling 4 HDHR tuners without DCT on a single machine.

I think that is why I need an overview doc, what are its true capabilities. Maybe even figure at way to view my Blueiris recordings on my TV's PIP..

One thing I would like to do is share those 4 HDHR's between two sagetv servers. Currently I have one machine that I put one of them dedicated on it and the other 3 on my main sagetv server. As the main one mostly records during prime-time it would be nice if the other server could use them the rest of the day and night.

I just want to know its capabilities. I am starting to there there really isn't an overview?? -Bill

This is as you might have guessed, an advanced feature and in the documented details, there are some assumptions made partly because the people who original asked for this feature already understood that the HDHomeRun devices have a locking mechanism per tuner so that all of the tuners can be shared between multiple computers. SageTV locks the HDHomeRun tuners that it directly supports on startup if you have them configured and never releases them which is a problem for anyone that wants to be able to use them with other software when SageTV doesn't need them.

Using pooling in OpenDCT will not coordinate between two instances of SageTV. What OpenDCT can do is force a tuner to be unlocked from another computer so that OpenDCT can use it after all other tuners in the pool have been considered. Forcing the unlock is an optional per tuner setting in OpenDCT. You could have separate instances of OpenDCT running on different servers, one with forced unlocking enabled and another with it disabled. In this configuration, the one with forced unlocking would always take precedence over the one without forced locking enabled.

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

If you're using the BM3000, you don't need to use FFmpeg at all. In fact, I don't us FFmpeg for that device and I wouldn't recommend it. You just need to change to use the raw consumer. Change sagetv.device.parent.<unique_id>.consumer=opendct.consumer.FFmpegTransSageTVConsumerImpl to opendct.consumer.RawSageTVConsumerImpl.

Thanks, I believe it was enabled by default and I was wondering why it was necessary to use it.

[reggie14]

Any idea why a show would be marked copy-never in from within OpenDCT, but the channel works fine through VLC? It happened on AMC with Walking Dead last night.

I'm pretty sure it's happened before, too. I assumed Verizon had moved a bunch of odd channels to copy-once or copy-never (beyond the Fox channels, which happened a while ago), but now I'm noticing that they don't appear as DRM channels within the HDHR webGUI.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by Zogg

Thanks, I believe it was enabled by default and I was wondering why it was necessary to use it.

You are correct, it is the default because OpenDCT was originally written for CableCARD tuners and these other abilities are just nice extras. It is necessary for cable TV in many cases since the streams have all kinds of continuity issues that can make SageTV choke. For devices that encode their own streams, there's almost no reason to re-process the streams through FFmpeg.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Any idea why a show would be marked copy-never in from within OpenDCT, but the channel works fine through VLC? It happened on AMC with Walking Dead last night.

I'm pretty sure it's happened before, too. I assumed Verizon had moved a bunch of odd channels to copy-once or copy-never (beyond the Fox channels, which happened a while ago), but now I'm noticing that they don't appear as DRM channels within the HDHR webGUI.

I couldn't tell you without a log, but my guess would be they have analog copy protection and the HDHomeRun is reporting it. You can disable the copy protection reporting if you want. Some users have done this because they have a few channels that indicate they are protected, but they stream anyway. If the device reports copy protection, OpenDCT will stop trying to stream and stream the copy protection video instead.

[bisongde]

Hey EnterNoEscape,

We talked last year about support for QSV in OpenDCT last year. Have you managed to work that in yet? Getting ready to buy another encoder with QSV built in and wondering if this is a viable option.

Thanks!

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I couldn't tell you without a log, but my guess would be they have analog copy protection and the HDHomeRun is reporting it. You can disable the copy protection reporting if you want. Some users have done this because they have a few channels that indicate they are protected, but they stream anyway. If the device reports copy protection, OpenDCT will stop trying to stream and stream the copy protection video instead.

How do you disable copy protection reporting?

I've attached a ZIP of the log file when I had the error. The problem came up during an attempted recording of TheWalkingDead.

This snippet might have the relevant details:

20:00:16.895 [SageTVRequestHandler-117327:DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-2] INFO  HDHRNativeCaptureDevice - Re-tune: Target: none, Lockkey: none, HDHomeRunVStatus: HDHomeRunVStatus{VCHANNEL='0', NAME='', AUTH='', CCI='', COPY_PROTECTION=COPY_NEVER, CGMS='', NOT_SUBSCRIBED=false, NOT_AVAILABLE=false, COPY_PROTECTED=false}, HDHomeRunStreamInfo: HDHomeRunStreamInfo{programs=[], TSID=''}, HDHomeRunStatus: HDHomeRunStatus{CHANNEL='none', LOCK_STR='none', SIGNAL_PRESENT=false, LOCK_SUPPORTED=true, SIGNAL_STRENGTH=0, SIGNAL_TO_NOISE_QUALITY=0, SYMBOL_ERROR_QUALITY=0, RAW_BITS_PER_SECOND=0, PACKETS_PER_SECOND=0}
20:00:16.895 [SageTVRequestHandler-117327:DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-2] INFO  HDHRNativeCaptureDevice - Re-tune came back too fast. Skipping.
20:00:16.895 [SageTVRequestHandler-117327:DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-2] DEBUG SageTVRequestHandler - Replied: 'OK'
20:00:17.522 [SageTVTuningMonitor-49] DEBUG HDHomeRunControl - key: '/tuner2/vstatus' value: 'null' lockKey: '0' sendLength: 26 address: 192.168.1.190
20:00:17.522 [SageTVTuningMonitor-49] INFO  SageTVTuningMonitor - The capture device has reported that the tuned channel is COPY_NEVER, stopping monitoring immediately.
20:

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by bisongde

Hey EnterNoEscape,

We talked last year about support for QSV in OpenDCT last year. Have you managed to work that in yet? Getting ready to buy another encoder with QSV built in and wondering if this is a viable option.

Thanks!

It's not likely to happen.

Originally Posted by reggie14

How do you disable copy protection reporting?

I've attached a ZIP of the log file when I had the error. The problem came up during an attempted recording of TheWalkingDead.

This snippet might have the relevant details:

20:00:16.895 [SageTVRequestHandler-117327:DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-2] INFO  HDHRNativeCaptureDevice - Re-tune: Target: none, Lockkey: none, HDHomeRunVStatus: HDHomeRunVStatus{VCHANNEL='0', NAME='', AUTH='', CCI='', COPY_PROTECTION=COPY_NEVER, CGMS='', NOT_SUBSCRIBED=false, NOT_AVAILABLE=false, COPY_PROTECTED=false}, HDHomeRunStreamInfo: HDHomeRunStreamInfo{programs=[], TSID=''}, HDHomeRunStatus: HDHomeRunStatus{CHANNEL='none', LOCK_STR='none', SIGNAL_PRESENT=false, LOCK_SUPPORTED=true, SIGNAL_STRENGTH=0, SIGNAL_TO_NOISE_QUALITY=0, SYMBOL_ERROR_QUALITY=0, RAW_BITS_PER_SECOND=0, PACKETS_PER_SECOND=0}
20:00:16.895 [SageTVRequestHandler-117327:DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-2] INFO  HDHRNativeCaptureDevice - Re-tune came back too fast. Skipping.
20:00:16.895 [SageTVRequestHandler-117327:DCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 13141710-2] DEBUG SageTVRequestHandler - Replied: 'OK'
20:00:17.522 [SageTVTuningMonitor-49] DEBUG HDHomeRunControl - key: '/tuner2/vstatus' value: 'null' lockKey: '0' sendLength: 26 address: 192.168.1.190
20:00:17.522 [SageTVTuningMonitor-49] INFO  SageTVTuningMonitor - The capture device has reported that the tuned channel is COPY_NEVER, stopping monitoring immediately.
20:

That's bazaar. It reports copy never, but then also says the stream is not copy protected. That's a little inconsistent. Set error_videos_enabled=true to false.

[rxnelson]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

It does support zones. You need to define them in the code file you're using. You just prefix the code with Z1, Z2 or Z3. I'm not sure it's well documented, but I have done it before and it does work.

So it took a while but I read through the whole thread. First of all allow me to suck up and say kudos to you and Fuzzy for keeping this thread alive, opendct, and the docker version. I will say since it appears the windows version and docker version are supported on the same thread sometimes it got muddy.

For instance, your quote above. I can’t tell if this is executable from the Unraid server. In the context of the discussion (multizone in unraid) it seems possible but following another thread on the docker sub forum it seems that it isn’t possible? Maybe it doesn’t “just work” and the script is a workaround so both things are true?

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide. I’m working on building a VM in Unraid with the sole purpose of tuning the HDPVRs. If I can avoid that and have a single point of failure I’d be happier.

On a side note, what’s the deal with the BMI devices? Like an external Colossus? It was insinuated it could tune all channels but only stereo audio, is that correct? My biggest worry is I get this all set up and they start setting the copy flags.