Buggy behavior arrowing through Now Playing menu, menu position jumps out of place

[mvallevand]

It isn't the same as the screen saver issue in that case the Roku was not sending the key down press.

Martin

[mmortal03]

Mmortal03: Are you using the 720 resolution and "regular" (not "high") quality for your client? If not, maybe try that and see if the lower quality screens get generated (and sent and displayed) more quickly.

I don't know what's available to be configured in the Roku client, but I'm using the following TranscodeHLS, previously suggested by Martin, because my server is a very low end machine. This is just doing a direct copy of the video, only transcoding the audio:

Code:

<TranscodeHLS>-y [ANALYZE_DURATION] [SEEK] -i [SOURCE] -map_metadata -1 -threads [THREADS] -ignore_unknown -map 0:v:0? [PREFERRED_LANGUAGE] -map 0:a:[AUDIO_STREAM] -map -0:s -vcodec copy -acodec mp3 -ac 2 -c:s copy -hls_time [SEGMENT_DURATION] -start_number 0 -hls_list_size [SEGMENT_COUNT] -y [TARGET]</TranscodeHLS>

It might be worth trying some sort of extremely fast transcode that would substantially lower the bitrate/resolution being transmitted over the network without substantially increasing the transcode time or CPU usage in ffmpeg -- but I don't know what those parameters would need to be. I don't know enough about the process chain -- at what point in the chain does the Now Playing menu get overlaid, and how does one lower the resolution there?

It'd definitely be an interesting finding if there were a way to take some of the load off of NextPVRServer.exe and it indirectly fixed the issue, even if it had lowered picture quality.

Edit: Just for comparison, in a browser window, if I set TranscodeHLS back to default, set the Preferred Streaming Profile to 144p, and set Video Encoder to CPU (none of the others work), I still get "Server is not fast enough for playback in a web browser. (0.756x)". So, there may not be any custom transcode parameters that would be practical (I don't know). If there aren't any good transcoding ideas, maybe the next step is to just have me temporarily set up an instance of NextPVR server on a faster machine and see what results I get.

[mvallevand]

It is only transcoding audio so you no point in playing around with video transcoding options since the string I gave you will ignore them. If you think it is bandwidth use a 480i channel for your test.

@BrettB there there is no lower quality graphic mode on the Roku.

Martin

[mmortal03]

It is only transcoding audio so you no point in playing around with video transcoding options since the string I gave you will ignore them.

Yeah, whenever I want to test the web player, I just set TranscodeHLS back to default each time and then restart the service. 

If you think it is bandwidth use a 480i channel for your test.

Good idea. I've just tested that, but no obvious change in frequency of the buggy menu behavior. The next step for me is to test on a faster machine. I'll let you know.

[mmortal03]

Following up, I just tested it with NextPVR server running on two additional machines -- one that still has a very slow CPU, but Intel-based, and one that's faster.

The slow machine has an Intel Atom D2700 CPU (PassMark 481) as compared to my netbook server's AMD E-350 APU (PassMark 401). The faster machine has an Intel Core i7-3615QM CPU (PassMark 5036)

The slow Intel machine still demonstrated the same "Now Playing" menu jumping problem, so this is good evidence that it wasn't just a quirk with my particular low-end AMD-based machine.

The faster Intel machine, on the other hand, did *not* demonstrate the "Now Playing" menu jumping problem, so this is good evidence that the issue is just caused by having a very slow CPU, rather than other factors. So, that's that!

[mvallevand]

This is why I suggested that you might need to wait longer between key presses so that your client and server stay in sync. You probably are responding faster then the client can deliver screens which messes with the long press timing. It is very hard for all UI clients if they send keystrokes to fast and it does take getting used to even with faster PC's. I will try this later this weak on my CoreElec setup to see if I can block extra keys if things get busy.

Have a look at other Roku channels screens during video playback and you will see their UI is much simpler then what the NextPVR client is trying to display from screen sent over the network. I still am surprised with how good a job sub has done with this API. There is a lot going on behind the scenes.

Martin