Play MP4s (H.264) on Hauppauge MVP

[pwrmac7100]

I have my Hauppauge MVP set up and working. All aspects have no problems, except for playing movies via the MovieWiz pluggin.

The MovieWiz works fine on the main machine (P4, 3GHZ, 1GB RAM). However, it doesn't playback any of the movies when I use the MVP in another room. The movies are encoded as MP4s with H.264 (using Handbrake). From what I've read, the MVP cannot handle the H.264 nor does it have the CPU power to do so.

Is there some way to have the GB-PVR server transcode the H.264 files on the fly instead of acting as a file server? I have been reading through several posts and some elude to this issue, but no concrete answers.

I know there are other applications, Tversity for one, that can act as a server and accomplish what I need, but I would like to keep everything in one package and continue using the MovieWiz plugin. I just wish there was some sort of On-The-Fly-Transcoding option in the MVP config.

Thank you in advance...Josh

[sub]

Sorry, there is only limited on the fly transcoding of .avi files. Even if it was capable of trying to do it, is likely you would havent the CPU required to do this, since it needs to be able both decoder the H264 and encode to MPEG2 (at the same time) in faster than real time. A lot of people struggling to doing this with standard def XVID files on 2.4GHz P4 CPU, so H.264 would probably be too hard on your 3GHz P4.

[leaded1]

The latest version of gbpvr (1.3.11) will pass .m4v files to the ffmpeg on-the-fly transcoder. If your files are standard definition (i.e. dvd rips), you can probably watch as the file transcodes but you might need need to crank down the resolution (I use 360x252 on my 1.7gHz Pentium 4) in the <MVPFFmpegTranscodeCmdLineNTSC> commandline in config.xml. I have also had good luck with Zehd's Zprocess utility (check it out on the wiki or in the plugins forum). If your files are HD, like sub said, you're pretty much out of luck with on the fly transcoding.
hope this helps,
leaded1

p.s. the .m4v and .mp4 extensions are pretty much interchangeable from what i have seen, you can rename one of your files with the .m4v exension and see if it works with the default ffmpeg command line.

[pwrmac7100]

Thank you sub and leaded1 for your quick replies.

Sub - I don't want to disagree with you (I assume you are better versed than I am in this subject), but I am confused because the TVersity minimum system requirements for standard def video (720x480; 1.5Mbs) are P4 2.8, 512MB RAM. All my files are DVD rips, and thus standard def. Am I missing something?

leaded1 - Thank you, I have been reading about ZTools and will give it a try. I will also try renaming the file extensions.

[sub]

Sub - I don't want to disagree with you (I assume you are better versed than I am in this subject), but I am confused because the TVersity minimum system requirements for standard def video (720x480; 1.5Mbs) are P4 2.8, 512MB RAM. All my files are DVD rips, and thus standard def. Am I missing something?

"H264" is a bit of vague description. You might be ok with standard def, low bitrate encodes. When most people talk about H.264 around here recently, they're talking about highdef H.264 channels. Highdef H.264 channels with encoding options like PAFF and MBAFF couldnt even play smoothly on my old dual core AMD X2 4400+ processor, so you'd have had no chance on your 3GHz P4 especially considering you need to decode and encode in faster than real time.

[mvallevand]

pwrmac7100, since you have an MVP and not a UPnP device you really need to compare the two processes to see what sub is talking about.

TVersity reads a file and decodes, encodes and streams the file on the fly to the client via http.

With GBPVR, ffmpeg reads the file and it also writes the encoded file to disk. GBPVR then reads the mpeg2 file, parses it and then streams the file to the MVP. There are two extra disk operations going on which are quite expensive in processing time.

If you want the read/stream approach on the MVP, mvpmc does offers a connection to the vlc, but it is difficult to configure. I actually wrote a UPnP in mvpmc too, but it is just too constrained to use. For SD you might be okay with GBPVR on your machine anyway.

Martin

[pwrmac7100]

UPDATE...

Firstly, thank you all for responding. I recently installed ZTools. I then installed the latest version of GV-PVR (1.3.11). I'm not sure which is responsible, but everything works as I hoped. I have no issues at all steaming a H.264 encoded MP4s. This goes to what leaded1 posted (except I did not have to rename the .mp4 to .mkv). Keep in mind, these are DVD rips around 1300Kbs.