Fork of SageTV MiniClient for Android TV

[sacrament055]

I went ahead and installed OpenDCT and can now confirm what you guys have already seen. New miniclient works perfectly with live TV OTA using EXO.

Now my new issue is that my older MPEG2 recordings still play stuttery. I then attempted to use the Sage built in conversion tool to conver them to MPEG4 in order to make them work with EXOPlayer but I got immediate failures when attempting to convert. Is anyone else having trouble with the conversion tool after the sage updates.

Note that I also installed the updated sage format detector

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by sacrament055

I went ahead and installed OpenDCT and can now confirm what you guys have already seen. New miniclient works perfectly with live TV OTA using EXO.

Now my new issue is that my older MPEG2 recordings still play stuttery. I then attempted to use the Sage built in conversion tool to conver them to MPEG4 in order to make them work with EXOPlayer but I got immediate failures when attempting to convert. Is anyone else having trouble with the conversion tool after the sage updates.

Note that I also installed the updated sage format detector

maybe you can try ffmpeg and remux to mkv

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by jvl711

I think you may have been the one I got the idea from for the one I made. I needed something to work with Windows, and the other solution at the time was limited in which OSes it supported, and required the windows firewall... So I wrote something that had less requirements.

I moved to OpenDCT because it has tighter integration with FFmpeg. I was forking the process and grabbing the stdout to process files. I have been using OpenDCT for ~1-2 years. Works really well. I did use my solution for a long time before ditching though.

I'm basically in that same boat - I haven't switched yet because for my setup the existing program was just working and it was stable. But I'm working on rebuilding my Sage server soon and might put in the effort to reconfigure everything if it means keeping my future options more open!

--John

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Could the ones with Amazon devices, could you please let me know how important having a store listing is to you. I just want to make sure this headache is worth it.

I sideloaded it using Downloader but I know not everyone is comfortable doing that.

--John

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

I sideloaded it using Downloader but I know not everyone is comfortable doing that.

--John

I agree with you about most users prefer the store.
I found using adb much easier ... I created a drag and drop on my laptop just have to know the ip's of my clients.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by sacrament055

I went ahead and installed OpenDCT and can now confirm what you guys have already seen. New miniclient works perfectly with live TV OTA using EXO.

Now my new issue is that my older MPEG2 recordings still play stuttery. I then attempted to use the Sage built in conversion tool to conver them to MPEG4 in order to make them work with EXOPlayer but I got immediate failures when attempting to convert. Is anyone else having trouble with the conversion tool after the sage updates.

Note that I also installed the updated sage format detector

Glad to hear it's working!

I am in the same situation with the old recordings - I think we can just use ffmpeg's copy with the correct container format to fix all the old files, but I still need to test that.

Previously when I tried changing the existing video files and replacing them with different containers or encodings the playback on my HD300s was all wonky - it would be stuck in the first 5s or skip to the end immediately. Not sure if I need to do something special to prevent that or not. Has anyone done anything like that before? Maybe I just need to rescan all media when I'm done?

The built in Sage converter never works well for me. I'm going to test outside Sage and just remux to an mpegts or mkv container.

--John

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I agree with you about most users prefer the store.
I found using adb much easier ... I created a drag and drop on my laptop just have to know the ip's of my clients.

Thanks, will check that out.

--John

[cncb]

Originally Posted by sacrament055

I went ahead and installed OpenDCT and can now confirm what you guys have already seen. New miniclient works perfectly with live TV OTA using EXO.

I guess OpenDCT does some extra processing to the signal? Anyone know if this has a noticeable impact on the resources used by the server when recording?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by cncb

I guess OpenDCT does some extra processing to the signal? Anyone know if this has a noticeable impact on the resources used by the server when recording?

No it does no extra processing it just writes the file the correct way.

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

No it does no extra processing it just writes the file the correct way.

I would agree with nyplayer. I do not think it does any "extra" processing. I think it just writes it to the container correctly. If there are any issues, it will fix it.

I have not noticed any real performance impact.

Josh

[wayner]

Not sure if this applies in this instance but in the past I have used VideoRedo to fix wonky files. That is generally more of a manual process but I am pretty sure they have a batch mode as well that you could run old files through.

https://www.videoredo.com/en/index.htm

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by cncb

I guess OpenDCT does some extra processing to the signal? Anyone know if this has a noticeable impact on the resources used by the server when recording?

When it's just "fixing" the container the audio and video codecs used in the container are not changed and it's really fast. On my idle Sage server ffmpeg can do this at the minimum rate of about 5000 frames/sec against an HD recording, so doing it during live recordings (30 or 60 frames/sec each) isn't really noticeable load on the system.

--John

[cncb]

I was able to set up OpenDCT and now can play back new OTA MPEG2 recordings using ExoPlayer but only when I set Sage to record in "ts". If I use the default "ps" format then I get the slo-mo playback as before. Is this the case for anyone else?

Also, would it be possible to allow skipping forward while paused? If I pause playback before I skip the timeline jumps forward but then right back again to the previous location. When I stop playback after this behavior, I sometimes get an "illegal state" exception thrown from ExoPlayer.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by cncb

I was able to set up OpenDCT and now can play back new OTA MPEG2 recordings using ExoPlayer but only when I set Sage to record in "ts". If I use the default "ps" format then I get the slo-mo playback as before. Is this the case for anyone else?

Also, would it be possible to allow skipping forward while paused? If I pause playback before I skip the timeline jumps forward but then right back again to the previous location. When I stop playback after this behavior, I sometimes get an "illegal state" exception thrown from ExoPlayer.

did you try the settings to set the ffmpeg audio extensions to preferred always use if possible ?

[cncb]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

did you try the settings to set the ffmpeg audio extensions to preferred always use if possible ?

I did and it didn't make a difference. I want DD to my receiver anyways.

[jvl711]

Hi all,

Looking for some insight from you guys on transcoding.

Started playing with the transcoding with SageTV server and miniclinet, and I was able to make changes to modify the behavior. I told SageTV that the client was not able to process MPEG-2 files, and it did transcode them and send them back to the client. The unfortunate thing though, is I believe it sent back MPEG2 file .

It looks like it can support other formats, but I was not sure if there is a way to force if to use a different format. Does anyone have any ideas? I think the below manages the formats. It would be nice if we had an h.264 profile. Especially if the client is reporting it does not support mpeg2. Any know how I may be able to get that to happen... There are a lot of android devices that do not support mpeg2 it would be nice to transcode to mpeg4.

media_server/transcode_quality/DVD=-f dvd -b 4000 -s 720x480 -acodec mp2 -r 29.97 -ab 128 -ar 48000 -ac 2
media_server/transcode_quality/DVD6Ch=-f dvd -b 4000 -s 720x480 -acodec ac3 -r 29.97 -ab 384 -ar 48000 -ac 6
media_server/transcode_quality/DVDAudioOnly=-f dvd -vcodec copy -acodec mp2 -ab 384 -ar 48000 -ac 2
media_server/transcode_quality/SVCD=-f dvd -b 2000 -g 3 -bf 0 -acodec mp2 -ab 128 -ar 48000 -ac 2 -s 352x240 -r 29.97
media_server/transcode_quality/SVCD6Ch=-f dvd -b 2000 -g 3 -bf 0 -acodec ac3 -ab 384 -ar 48000 -ac 6 -s 352x240 -r 29.97
media_server/transcode_quality/mp3=-f dvd -vn -acodec copy
media_server/transcode_quality/mpeg2psremux=-f dvd -vcodec copy -acodec copy -copyts
media_server/transcode_quality/music=-f dvd -vn -acodec mp2 -ab 64 -ar 48000 -ac 2
media_server/transcode_quality/music128=-f dvd -vn -acodec mp2 -ab 128 -ar 48000 -ac 2
media_server/transcode_quality/music256=-f dvd -vn -acodec mp2 -ab 256 -ar 48000 -ac 2

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Hi all,

Looking for some insight from you guys on transcoding.

Started playing with the transcoding with SageTV server and miniclinet, and I was able to make changes to modify the behavior. I told SageTV that the client was not able to process MPEG-2 files, and it did transcode them and send them back to the client. The unfortunate thing though, is I believe it sent back MPEG2 file .

It looks like it can support other formats, but I was not sure if there is a way to force if to use a different format. Does anyone have any ideas? I think the below manages the formats. It would be nice if we had an h.264 profile. Especially if the client is reporting it does not support mpeg2. Any know how I may be able to get that to happen... There are a lot of android devices that do not support mpeg2 it would be nice to transcode to mpeg4.

media_server/transcode_quality/DVD=-f dvd -b 4000 -s 720x480 -acodec mp2 -r 29.97 -ab 128 -ar 48000 -ac 2
media_server/transcode_quality/DVD6Ch=-f dvd -b 4000 -s 720x480 -acodec ac3 -r 29.97 -ab 384 -ar 48000 -ac 6
media_server/transcode_quality/DVDAudioOnly=-f dvd -vcodec copy -acodec mp2 -ab 384 -ar 48000 -ac 2
media_server/transcode_quality/SVCD=-f dvd -b 2000 -g 3 -bf 0 -acodec mp2 -ab 128 -ar 48000 -ac 2 -s 352x240 -r 29.97
media_server/transcode_quality/SVCD6Ch=-f dvd -b 2000 -g 3 -bf 0 -acodec ac3 -ab 384 -ar 48000 -ac 6 -s 352x240 -r 29.97
media_server/transcode_quality/mp3=-f dvd -vn -acodec copy
media_server/transcode_quality/mpeg2psremux=-f dvd -vcodec copy -acodec copy -copyts
media_server/transcode_quality/music=-f dvd -vn -acodec mp2 -ab 64 -ar 48000 -ac 2
media_server/transcode_quality/music128=-f dvd -vn -acodec mp2 -ab 128 -ar 48000 -ac 2
media_server/transcode_quality/music256=-f dvd -vn -acodec mp2 -ab 256 -ar 48000 -ac 2

If you look through the Sage.properties file there are 2 groups of transcoding profiles. The ones you listed above all start with media_server/transcode_quality. But further down in the file is another group that all start with transcoded/formats. There are some mp4 and h.264 formats in that list.

I think the first list is what sage uses when it is trying to automatically transcode to a mini-client; the second list is for when you manually transcode a recording file. I’m guessing you could use one of the profiles in that second list as an example to create a new profile in the first list.

I don’t know how Sage decides which profile to use when it has to do an automatic conversion on the fly for a mini-client. I see there is a setting in detailed setup->server called Media Center Conversion Quality, but the only choices are Standard or Hogh quality. So not sure how those relate to the various profiles.

[wnjj]

What I see in the code is FFMPEGTranscoder.java and it seems all transcoding is hardwired around that. Ultimately it creates command line parameters for SageTVTranscoder.exe (which is a customized FFMPEG) that are hardcoded for mpegts. https://github.com/google/sagetv/blo...oder.java#L782

I suspect you would have to make options within there and possibly within the code that invokes the transcoder to allow other formats like h.264.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by cncb

I was able to set up OpenDCT and now can play back new OTA MPEG2 recordings using ExoPlayer but only when I set Sage to record in "ts". If I use the default "ps" format then I get the slo-mo playback as before. Is this the case for anyone else?

I had the same experience. Almost all my MPEG recordings are MPEG-PS but those play with pauses and bizarre audio on the Android minclient (they play fine on my HD300s and Placeshifter).

Changing it to record using MPEG-TS containers cleared up all the issues with the miniclient and things still play fine on the HD300s.

--John

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

I had the same experience. Almost all my MPEG recordings are MPEG-PS but those play with pauses and bizarre audio on the Android minclient (they play fine on my HD300s and Placeshifter).

Changing it to record using MPEG-TS containers cleared up all the issues with the miniclient and things still play fine on the HD300s.

--John

That makes sense because changing it to record MPEG-PS produces the same results as recording directly without OPENDCT.

This should be fasle in SageTV.Properties ... in all instances found... if using opendct.
encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=false