SageTV v.9 on Ubuntu 15.10 64bit video quality

[dranockcir]

I have a v.9 server running on Ubuntu 15.10 64bit with a HDHR Prime using OpenDCT for network tuning and I can't seem to get a nice sharp picture on playback, either live TV or recordings. The quality is "ok" but it is definitely not sharp and clear.

I loaded up a v.7 (I have a Linux license) server on Ubuntu 15.10 32bit using the 32bit OpenDCT and the video was MUCH better, sharp and clear like I see other people describing.

Is there something missing in the 64bit open source version that's causing the lower quality video? Or maybe a setting I have overlooked?

[Narflex]

Are you playing it back on Linux as well using the Placeshifter? Recording quality itself should be identical because you're recording from a digital tuner...but playback can be affected by lots of things relating to configuration.

[dranockcir]

Yep, I am. I am using the linux client locally on the server and on another computer on the network. I also have the Android client on an Nvidia Shield. You got me thinking I better try a Windows client before I go any further...

I have just been using Ubuntu for this setup because I want to move away from Windows entirely. I do have a v7 Sage server running on Windows 7 that we use for our main server.

Anyway I do have a Windows 10 computer and I loaded the v9 client that jusjoken put together on it and it didn't really look any better. I had read in the forums somewhere that if you install the version 7 Client then load version 9 over top of it you will get the Sage Decoder (or something like that ) and that worked, the video is nice and sharp on the Windows 10 machine so I guess my server isn't the problem.

When I tried the v7 linux server and client (both on the same Ubuntu 15.10 32bit computer) it was nice and sharp too.

It just isn't sharp when I use the v9 linux client.

[stuckless]

Do they look not sharp on the Shield as well?

If you run mediainfo on the files, what does it show? Just curious if these are mpeg2 files, and if they are using mpegps stream or mpegts.

The V9 miniclient uses the same mplayer as the 32bit v7 version. While I have worked on an mplayer upgrade, I don't actually use it in the builds, yet. So v7 and v9 in terms of the mplayer client should be the same, only one is 32bit and the other 64bit.

[dranockcir]

The Shield looks better than the v9 linux client but not as good as the Windows client I just installed. Here is mediainfo for one of the recordings.

General
ID : 1 (0x1)
Complete name : CrimeWatchDaily-370742-0.ts
Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 5.79 GiB
Duration : 59mn 58s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 13.8 Mbps
Movie name : Crime Watch Daily
Law rating : TV-PG

Video
ID : 256 (0x100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@High
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, Matrix : Custom
Format settings, GOP : Variable
Format settings, picture structure : Frame
Codec ID : 2
Duration : 59mn 58s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 12.6 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 20.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Active Format Description : Letterbox 16:9 image
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.203
Time code of first frame : 03:26:52:21
Time code source : Group of pictures header
GOP, Open/Closed : Open
Stream size : 5.29 GiB (91%)

[stuckless]

On the Shield are you using ExoPlayer or IJKPlayer? ExoPlayer will use hardware decoding for MPEG2 files, but IJKPlayer will not.

[dranockcir]

I'm using ijkplayer. When I select exoplayer it says failed to playback media or sometimes I get a black screen with no audio, the progress bar looks like it's playing.

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by dranockcir

I had read in the forums somewhere that if you install the version 7 Client then load version 9 over top of it you will get the Sage Decoder (or something like that ) and that worked, the video is nice and sharp on the Windows 10 machine so I guess my server isn't the problem.

This concerns me as it either means something is missing in the v9 Windows installer that needs to be added/fixed OR it means something is missing that has to be missing due to Open Source and the quality dropped which is not good news (and I have more to remove

k

[stuckless]

I'm not seeing an audio stream in you mediainfo... that will certainly affect ExoPlayer's ability to play the file as well, since it will need to have support for both the container, and the video an and audio hardware codecs. (ie, ExoPlayer is a great player, but it will only play formats for which there is a hardware decoder)

[dranockcir]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I'm not seeing an audio stream in you mediainfo... that will certainly affect ExoPlayer's ability to play the file as well, since it will need to have support for both the container, and the video an and audio hardware codecs. (ie, ExoPlayer is a great player, but it will only play formats for which there is a hardware decoder)

Sorry I only pasted the part about video, here is the whole thing from mediainfo

General
ID : 1 (0x1)
Complete name : CrimeWatchDaily-370742-0.ts
Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 5.79 GiB
Duration : 59mn 58s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 13.8 Mbps
Movie name : Crime Watch Daily
Law rating : TV-PG

Video
ID : 256 (0x100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@High
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, Matrix : Custom
Format settings, GOP : Variable
Format settings, picture structure : Frame
Codec ID : 2
Duration : 59mn 58s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 12.6 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 20.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Active Format Description : Letterbox 16:9 image
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.203
Time code of first frame : 03:26:52:21
Time code source : Group of pictures header
GOP, Open/Closed : Open
Stream size : 5.29 GiB (91%)

Audio #1
ID : 257 (0x101)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 59mn 59s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -436ms
Stream size : 165 MiB (3%)

Audio #2
ID : 258 (0x102)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : VI (visually impaired)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 59mn 59s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -394ms
Stream size : 54.9 MiB (1%)

Text #1
ID : 256 (0x100)-CC1
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : EIA-608
Muxing mode : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info : Muxed in Video #1
Duration : 59mn 58s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Stream size : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #2
ID : 256 (0x100)-CC3
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : EIA-608
Muxing mode : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info : Muxed in Video #1
Duration : 59mn 58s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Stream size : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #3
ID : 256 (0x100)-1
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : EIA-708
Muxing mode : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info : Muxed in Video #1
Duration : 59mn 58s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Stream size : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #4
ID : 256 (0x100)-2
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : EIA-708
Muxing mode : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info : Muxed in Video #1
Duration : 59mn 58s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Stream size : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #5
ID : 256 (0x100)-3
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : EIA-708
Muxing mode : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info : Muxed in Video #1
Duration : 59mn 58s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Stream size : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Text #6
ID : 256 (0x100)-5
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : EIA-708
Muxing mode : A/53 / DTVCC Transport
Muxing mode, more info : Muxed in Video #1
Duration : 59mn 58s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Stream size : 0.00 Byte (0%)

Menu
ID : 4096 (0x1000)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Duration : 59mn 58s
List : 256 (0x100) (MPEG Video) / 257 (0x101) (AC-3) / 258 (0x102) (AC-3)
Title : Crime Watch Daily
Service name : Service01
Service provider : FFmpeg
Service type : digital television
Law rating : TV-PG

[dranockcir]

Originally Posted by jusjoken

This concerns me as it either means something is missing in the v9 Windows installer that needs to be added/fixed OR it means something is missing that has to be missing due to Open Source and the quality dropped which is not good news (and I have more to remove

k

I'll uninstall everything related to Sage on the Windows 10 machine and reinstall just v9 and let you know what happens.

[dranockcir]

Originally Posted by dranockcir

I'll uninstall everything related to Sage on the Windows 10 machine and reinstall just v9 and let you know what happens.

@jusjoken

I uninstalled all Sage related stuff for the Windows 10 (64bit) machine. deleted the SageTV directory and rebooted. Then, I installed the v9 client beta 001 you are working on. Where I had stumbled was the testing of playback during installation wizard that first time around this time I chose Advanced instead of Standard and this produced a sharp clear picture. The v9 client is working great!

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by dranockcir

@jusjoken

I uninstalled all Sage related stuff for the Windows 10 (64bit) machine. deleted the SageTV directory and rebooted. Then, I installed the v9 client beta 001 you are working on. Where I had stumbled was the testing of playback during installation wizard that first time around this time I chose Advanced instead of Standard and this produced a sharp clear picture. The v9 client is working great!

Good to hear....thanks for checking it out.

[dranockcir]

I figured out why my video wasn't nice and clear. I had changed this setting in sage.properties a couple months ago when I first installed on Ubuntu and couldn't get sound. This setting caused SageTV Server to transcode all the time and I had video and sound. That was fine at the time because I was just messing around and mostly used this Linux server for placeshifting now I want to get to the point where I can replace the Windows 7 Sage server with this one.

miniplayer/min_bandwidth_for_no_transcode=20000000

now I have it like this miniplayer/min_bandwidth_for_no_transcode=2000000

and I have nice clear video on the LAN, looks as good as the Windows client.

but now I have no sound on my Linux clients. Windows client looks and sounds great. I have the Shield, with Sean's Android miniclient, hooked up to LAN and main TV in the house and it looks and sounds awesome. Tablets and phones all working great over WiFi as well.

Anyone know why I don't have sound? I use a HDHR Prime with OpenDCT for tuning. I must be missing some audio library or something right?

[stuckless]

On your linux client, make sure you have the sound libraries installed.


libfaac0 libaudio-dev libpulse-dev libasound-dev

you might want to install the non-dev versions of these if that doesn't work (these are libs that are installed when mplayer builds.

Mplayer (which is what the linux client uses) uses alsa sound, so do some googling on getting alsa working with ubuntu... I think it should just work, but maybe there are missing libraries. I get sound on my dev machine, but I've probably installed every library available

[dranockcir]

Well, I tried loading everything I could think of and still no luck. If I run mplayer in a terminal it says I don't have an audio device, but I do. I'm gonna reload Ubuntu this weekend, maybe try a different computer as well, I probably hosed it anyway trying to get things working. I load the OS in a separate partition from Home so it doesn't take long to get it all going again.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by dranockcir

Well, I tried loading everything I could think of and still no luck. If I run mplayer in a terminal it says I don't have an audio device, but I do. I'm gonna reload Ubuntu this weekend, maybe try a different computer as well, I probably hosed it anyway trying to get things working. I load the OS in a separate partition from Home so it doesn't take long to get it all going again.

Check out this post...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1628261

Also google "no audio in mplayer ubuntu"... I had this issue, and I fixed it... I just don't remember what I did... but, the above link was the only link that showed that I visisted, so maybe it helped me

[dranockcir]

If I open a terminal in the /opt/sagetv/client I can see mplayer is in there but when I try "mplayer -ao help" to list audio output options it says mplayer is not installed.

Should I be installing mplayer? I thought the one in the sagetv/client folder is what the client used? I also don't have the ~/.mplayer/config file I keep reading about.

It is only since I stopped forcing transcoding that I don't get audio. If I go back to transcoding I get sound so it must be that mplayer doesn't recognize the audio?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by dranockcir

If I open a terminal in the /opt/sagetv/client I can see mplayer is in there but when I try "mplayer -ao help" to list audio output options it says mplayer is not installed.

Should I be installing mplayer? I thought the one in the sagetv/client folder is what the client used? I also don't have the ~/.mplayer/config file I keep reading about.

It is only since I stopped forcing transcoding that I don't get audio. If I go back to transcoding I get sound so it must be that mplayer doesn't recognize the audio?

you need to use ./mplayer -ao help

the ./ means in this directory. In unix the currect directory is NEVER in the path, you need to always reference ./ to mean "in this directory".

[dranockcir]

Ahh, yes, I forgot about the ./

I can't find a config file to speciy the audio output. Also I think my problem is that my audio is ac-3 since my recordings are from the HDHR Prime.


rick@rick-OptiPlex-980:/opt/sagetv/client$ ./mplayer -ao help
MPlayer dev-SVN-rUNKNOWN-4.8 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz (Family: 6, Model: 30, Stepping: 5)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
Available audio output drivers:
oss OSS/ioctl audio output
alsa ALSA-0.9.x-1.x audio output
nas NAS audio output
mpegpes DVB audio output
null Null audio output
pcm RAW PCM/WAVE file writer audio output

rick@rick-OptiPlex-980:/opt/sagetv/client$