DVBC bitrate on version 6.1.4.230626

[daneo]

Update - I am totally amazed. I did some testing looking a cable interference from my new TV, as well as with the transcoder settings for either "auto transcode" which somehow is now a default, or "leave recordings in native format" and the auto-transcoding is what has been killing my recordings for the last week.

Recording a SD program without 720p (that was the default I found) gave me around 5 mbit
Recording the same SD program with 720p auto-transcoding gave me around 1.1 mbit

I fear that something in the installer for 6.1.4.230626 is configuring auto-transcode and after that all hell breaks loose.  Can you please put some addition warnings on the auto-transcode setting?  Also, you have only the resolution, but not anything around profiles and bitrates for auto-transcoding.  Seeing that it takes the bitrate down massively, could you please make this more granular?

Logs attached for the last four test recordings:

Test with TV connected_20230715_09150920    - transcoding off, as expected 4.849mbit
test with tv disconnected_20230715_09250930  - transcoding off, as expected 5.023mbit
second try v1_20230715_09450950 - transcoding on, OMG 1.142mbit
second try v3_20230715_09551000 - transcoding back off, as expected 4.830mbit

[sub]

It’s not the default. You must have turned it on at some stage.

[daneo]

Hi Sub,

LOL you are right - I had the auto-transcode set to 720p for whatever reason back in May 23, and even from November 22, bc I kept some older config.xml files as backups.

The funny thing is that until the latest version, the auto-transcoding had never worked until the last 6.1.4.xxx update...maybe the thumbnail changes (also uses ffmpeg) kicked it into action?

In any event, I'm back to happiness, but suggest that - just maybe - you turn off auto-transcoding if enabled thru the installer going forward, as if my experience is indicative (did not function until last release) then a lot of users will get nasty surprises when upgrading.

[sub]

It’s definitely not enabled in the installer. It’s a feature users have to explicitly enable if they want it. If the user has enabled it previously, the installer will leave it enabled.

Yes, may have been a bug fixed that stopped this feature working for some users.

This is a feature for users primarily using the web interface.

[mvallevand]

I seem to remember discussions on whether or not to use auto transcode and when to call it when the user has a postprocessing script as daneo has.

Martin

[BrettB]

I seem to remember discussions on whether or not to use auto transcode and when to call it when the user has a postprocessing script as daneo has.

Martin

I was going to say that in the past the auto-transcode setting was ignored if there was a postprocessing script. Maybe that was (accidentally) changed with version 6.1.4?

[daneo]

Interesting - this could explain why it "suddenly" started doing things - also an idea to check for "postprocessing.bat" when you try to enable transcoding on the web UI. I still, however, am stuck on where to configure the target bit rates, MPEG profiles, etc - the only option of something like "720p" which drops the TS bitrate by 75% a problem for me.

[mvallevand]

In general the web player transcoding audio and video defaults are low, less than PVR quality, more for desktop web browsing. You click the gear to change the bitrate when it is not default and not avoiding transcoding.

Since you use Jellyfin it might not be in your best interest to use this option since it may transcode your file anyway. Jellyfin uses both source and target based transcoding not the one size fits all approach in NextPVR.

Martin

[daneo]

Exactly - this is why I am "fixing" some older recordings I had transcoded into h.264 or h.265 from their native DVBC TS and re-recording them if the bitrate and quality is okay. That way I can let Jellyfin make the decision on whether or not transcoding is needed. Finally having a native Jellyfin on the LG C2 is a real game-changer for the front-end. I was using Amazon FireTV sticks, but their codec support is just hit and miss.

This is why I have such a complicated scripting of "do I record this?" and "oh no, I recorded something, do I keep it?" around NextPVR to automate what I find on the disk drive every morning...

[sub]

Finally having a native Jellyfin on the LG C2 is a real game-changer for the front-end.

I know Jellyfin and Emby are much more focused on the UI, so probably a much better experience from a UI, but in case you're interested - at home we've recently been using an experimental NextPVR client on our LG TVs:



It's not a very interesting video, as I was just trying to demo one specific feature, but you at least get to see it working on an LG device.

It's not available in their content store at this stage, because I haven't gone through the submission process etc. (which sounds painful)