Differences using clients and servers

[kenfox]

Hi,

I'm running two installations of sage 9, both build from the current sources. One is running on intel/ubuntu64, one on arm/ubuntu32.

And I'm using different clients: On windows 10, on android and on firetv.

Any combination of client/server has different behavior, as shown below:



Unfortunatelly, my favorite combinations are arm/firetv and arm/android6.

The server on intel is only a test installation, which will be removed later.

Where do this differences come from? Are there any client log files, where I could find reasons for this?

Ken

[Fuzzy]

The server has not really been tested on an arm platform. There are quite a lot of native code bits (like the call to ffmpeg to generate thumbnails, for instance, which explains the lack of preview images) that would need to be updated/modified to get working on a different platform. Not impossible, by any means, but hasn't really hit much on the devs radar, since most of us run much larger servers than ARM would really be appropriate for.

The miniclient doesn't work in firetv anymore (it did, but amazon, in their infinitely manipulative ways, have changed some decoder things that broke many non-amazon friendly apps).

Android 6 'should' be working with the miniclient, but there are a lot of variables between android devices, and what might work on one android 6 device, may not on another (Many of us are using NVidia Shield TVs or Mi Boxes, which run Andriod TV on Android 6 just fine). You'd need to submit more information on what you are using to Stuckless, either in a thread here, or in the miniclient's github issues page, to track down your Android 6 issues.

[stuckless]

I think if you have compiled sagetv for Arm (all the native parts), then I think that you are likely the first person to do so. It would be a good idea to share the "howto" on that alone, since, I think it would be of interest to others.

I'd be interested in knowing what are the actual Android devices being used... and what are their capabilities, and what is the video being tested, and how. ie, if you are using a Tablet, and it doesn't have mpeg decoders, and you a mpeg2 video and you are using ExoPlayer in the Android client, then it likely won't work... IJKPlayer might work, if it has enough horsepower to software decode the video, etc.

All of my video is h264 and I run Android 5 and 6, and I don't really have any issues.

For the Android MiniClient... is the build from the playstore, or did you build it yourself.

Generating thumbnails (preview image) is a server operation... the server creates a jpg and sends it to the client (might be different for a full client). It might be that your build of ffmpeg is not quite 100% (ie, missing libraries??)... Have you tried with the version that I uploaded to BinTray?

I can assure you that Android 5/6 both will play videos and show thumbanils... so the variances is likely more to with the actual hardware you are using rahter than the version of Android.... And Fire/FireTV is something that I'm not interested in supporting... You can get it all to work, but as Fuzzy said... Amazon is playing a game of cat and mouse at the moment... and I'm not interested in playing.

[kenfox]

Thanks for your detailed reply.

As for the thumbs: It all works in the windows mini client, therefore I doubt, it's a ffmpeg problem.

As for arm: Yes, I'm planing a blog, with detailed step by step information. I'm still in the process of choosing the appropriate hardware, before publishing the blog. Btw., hereby I kindly ask for permission to use the SageTV logo inside the blog.

I'll specify some more information about the android devices, later.

Ken

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by kenfox

Thanks for your detailed reply.

As for the thumbs: It all works in the windows mini client, therefore I doubt, it's a ffmpeg problem.

As for arm: Yes, I'm planing a blog, with detailed step by step information. I'm still in the process of choosing the appropriate hardware, before publishing the blog. Btw., hereby I kindly ask for permission to use the SageTV logo inside the blog.

I'll specify some more information about the android devices, later.

Ken

What is a "windows mini client"... Is this the placeshifter or the full windows client? Without knowing the android hardware and files being used... not sure anyone is going to be able to help. ie, for each test, is it the same mediafile being used on a clean install of sagetv? Also, (again)... did you are rebuild the miniclient or are you using the version posted in the playstore (or on bintray)... and for the intel 64 bit... have you tested the version posted on Bintray.... ie, we should rule out any "build" related issues...and what the Java version being used on the server ... openjdk or sun. We need a full picture of what is being tested, other than just an android version and a platform

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by kenfox

Thanks for your detailed reply.

As for the thumbs: It all works in the windows mini client, therefore I doubt, it's a ffmpeg problem.

Ken

If you mean SageTVClient.exe, then that actually generates the thumbnails locally...the server is not generating them in that case. If you mean the SageTVPlaceshifter, then that uses thumbnails generated by the server.

[kenfox]

These are my current server installations of SageTV9:

Testserver with Ubuntu 16.04 on Intel64.
Java retrieved with "sudo apt-get install -y oracle-java8-installer", according to sage wiki.
Build and installed according to sage wiki.

ARMv7 server with Ubuntu 16.04 server for arm.
Java jdk-8u111-linux-arm32-vfp-hflt.tar.gz downloaded from Oracle.
Server build according to sage wiki with the following exceptions:
- configured X.264 with --disable-asm
- installed mplayer with apt-get instead of building (build failed).


These are my clients:

- Samsung Galaxy Nexus with Cyanogen Mod 11. Works fine.
- Motorola Moto G2 with Android 4.4. Works fine.
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 with Android 5. Works fine.
- Huawei P8 Light with Android 6. No video playback.

All android devices run mini clients installed from Google PlayStore.

- Windows 10 with SageTV9 Client from bintray (9.0.11.483_R1.006.exe). Works fine.

- Amazon fireTV Stick. Needles to say, that it does not work.

The media files where the same on both servers.

[evilpenguin]

FWIW, I posted a modded version of the Sean's miniclient this morning that works on FireTV:

https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...5&postcount=26

That should clear up your playback issues for the most part across both server platforms.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by kenfox

These are my current server installations of SageTV9:

Testserver with Ubuntu 16.04 on Intel64.
Java retrieved with "sudo apt-get install -y oracle-java8-installer", according to sage wiki.
Build and installed according to sage wiki.

I do think the Sage wiki may not be up to date... so since you are on ubuntu I would install the .deb that I post on BinTray... just to rule out any build inconsistencies... (since the version posted on bintray is what I use, and many others, that'll be a better test candidate)

Originally Posted by kenfox

ARMv7 server with Ubuntu 16.04 server for arm.
Java jdk-8u111-linux-arm32-vfp-hflt.tar.gz downloaded from Oracle.
Server build according to sage wiki with the following exceptions:
- configured X.264 with --disable-asm
- installed mplayer with apt-get instead of building (build failed).

You can probably disregard mplayer, it's only used by the miniclient when running on linux (which it's not here). ffmpeg and the multitude of other native libs are key.

Originally Posted by kenfox

- Windows 10 with SageTV9 Client from bintray (9.0.11.483_R1.006.exe). Works fine.

I think that might be the full client which is why thumbs and video work ok.

What is video file being tested... (what is the mediainfo).

[kenfox]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

FWIW, I posted a modded version of the Sean's miniclient this morning that works on FireTV:

https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/sho...5&postcount=26

That should clear up your playback issues for the most part across both server platforms.

Thanx, Dude! Until now, I didn't sideload any apps on my fireTV stick. Which way would you recommend? "Amazon Fire TV Utility App"?

[kenfox]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I do think the Sage wiki may not be up to date... so since you are on ubuntu I would install the .deb that I post on BinTray...

Hmm... may be. But actually, the description in the wiki does only explain the prerequisites and then the buildscript is called.
Besides, I cannot use your .deb on arm - can I?

Btw.: Is it still correct, that a GCC < 5.0 has to bee used?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by kenfox

Hmm... may be. But actually, the description in the wiki does only explain the prerequisites and then the buildscript is called.
Besides, I cannot use your .deb on arm - can I?

Btw.: Is it still correct, that a GCC < 5.0 has to bee used?

Yeah, I was suggesting installing the debs more for the Intel tests... Likely, the Android 6 issues are all related to your device and not the server (especially since the Android 5 appears to work).

And for the FireTV... you'll want to sideload the apk @evilpenguin posted.

If you want to compare... this is the script that I use for building sagetv (I use a docker container)

https://github.com/stuckless/sagetv-...ild/Dockerfile

So, when things need to be added, etc, I update it there.

I am very interested though in getting the arm part working... Are you cross compiling... or are you compiling on the Arm device directly? (Ideally I'd love to get cross compiling to work and then build the tgz/.deb for arm and intel at the same time).

[Fuzzy]

Trimming out a lot of the native bits that may not be necessary (like capture and such) would not only simplify things, it would also potentially lead to a full client build for ARM/android, which could be a great improvement over the miniclient approach.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Trimming out a lot of the native bits that may not be necessary (like capture and such) would not only simplify things, it would also potentially lead to a full client build for ARM/android, which could be a great improvement over the miniclient approach.

I think getting a server running would be much easier. I think that the fact that Jeff never created a Full Client on linux... speaks volumes (to me) that getting a full client running on linux is a huge amount of effort. Jeff would have to weigh in on that one.

[Fuzzy]

The rendering/playback system appears to be modular, and as I recall from looking at it a long time ago, sage.jar handles if very similar to how miniclient.jar does, so what you've built in the miniclient may be a decent start.

Jeff has mentioned before that they did build a linux rendering system, but never really polished it. Keep in mind, that at the time most of that development was going on, linux was not anywhere near the mainstream, and it's video capabilities, especially in the realm of hardware accelerated playback, was extremely limited compared to what directshow had to offer.

See here for the linux implementation of the MediaPlayer.
See here for the OpenGL implementation of the SageRenderer.

[kenfox]

One more thing about the thumbnails on arm: When displaying the list of recordings, I see this entry in the sagetv_0.txt:

Error creating thumbnail from video file:MediaFile[id=262482 A[122405,122404, ...(removed some text here)...] res=/media/iomega/filesystem/opt/sagetv/server/ffmpeg: error while loading shared libraries: libfaad.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I tried digging into it, however, I couldn't find libfaad.so under /opt/sagetv/server, neither on intel, nor on arm, nor in server.deb.

Since it works on intel, it must be somewhere. So, where is this libfaad.so supposed to be?

[Fuzzy]

I think that is compiled into ffmpeg (sagetvtranscoder)

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by kenfox

One more thing about the thumbnails on arm: When displaying the list of recordings, I see this entry in the sagetv_0.txt:

Error creating thumbnail from video file:MediaFile[id=262482 A[122405,122404, ...(removed some text here)...] res=/media/iomega/filesystem/opt/sagetv/server/ffmpeg: error while loading shared libraries: libfaad.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I tried digging into it, however, I couldn't find libfaad.so under /opt/sagetv/server, neither on intel, nor on arm, nor in server.deb.

Since it works on intel, it must be somewhere. So, where is this libfaad.so supposed to be?

libfaad should be installed as dependency system dependency.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by kenfox

Thanx, Dude! Until now, I didn't sideload any apps on my fireTV stick. Which way would you recommend? "Amazon Fire TV Utility App"?

The FTV platform is pretty open these days and you seem pretty savy so I wouldn't even bother with any fancy tools. Just go into FireTV Settings->System->Developer Options and enable everything (ADB on, Debugging over USB, Allow Apps from unknown sources, etc.), install the Android Developer Kit to get adb working, connect to the FTV via wifi ('adb connect 192.168.1.1'), and then just do ('adb install sagetv_miniclient.apk') and it should just magically appear in your Apps section.

[kenfox]

Great thanx!