Streaming Quality with EWA

[blacks1093]

I am new to EWA but WOW this is an amazing tool. I am mainly interested in the streaming portion with ewa because I travel allot and I am not able to watch all of my local sports teams, so the streaming feature is a very attractive feature for me.

I have it all working... No problem with ports, able to log in, all of that. I am even able to stream...BUT only at very low qualities. Low res and low bit rate.

My provider speed is 17Mb/s down and a steady 3-4Mb/s up during the day and sometimes near 6 at night. I am however running a 10/100 Linksys wireless wrt54g router, running ddwrt firmware, wired for the htpc. I am running vlc 8.6 on both ends

My remote client location has a 16Mbs down speed...

I don’t think network bandwidth is problem considering I move about a gig of data from one machine to another on the same network in about 10-15 min. I host my own ftp off of the same network and I get consistent transfers in both directions of 100k-275k/sec on a regular basis.

I feel like it may be a setting issue with vlc or something. I have tried many variations of settings, read thru the forums and used the recommended settings etc.

I was wondering if anyone could share what quality they successfully and consistently stream with.

I can successfully stream at wmv2 512, 320x213, audio mp4 64k 1 ch, with an occasional break in the stream, I assume buffering.

If I go any higher in the resolution, or bitrates the video plays for a second or two....stops, acts as if it is buffering for 30 seconds, then vlc minimizes as if no file is open. WMP does the same thing. Kind of strange I thought.

I would like to be able to get the video up to the LAN bitrate and 480x320 without any problems. It is just hard to see the numbers/scores on such low resolution/bitrate.

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks!: D

[pBS]

best results would probably be to half the framerate [30fps is a bit overkill for online video]
but i'm not sure it can be done with current interfaces...
[i know vlc can do it]

but is there any way to customize the vlc cmds? i'm not sure..

as you've seen, you only have about 256k upload bandwidth...[3Mb/s =~ 300k]
but 15fps video looks pretty good at 256k...

[blacks1093]

Thanks for the pointer on the framerate, I cant believe that i didnt think of that! I will see how I far i cna run with that.

[UncleJohnsBand]

I am new to EWA but WOW this is an amazing tool. I am mainly interested in the streaming portion with ewa because I travel allot and I am not able to watch all of my local sports teams, so the streaming feature is a very attractive feature for me.

I have it all working... No problem with ports, able to log in, all of that. I am even able to stream...BUT only at very low qualities. Low res and low bit rate.

My provider speed is 17Mb/s down and a steady 3-4Mb/s up during the day and sometimes near 6 at night. I am however running a 10/100 Linksys wireless wrt54g router, running ddwrt firmware, wired for the htpc. I am running vlc 8.6 on both ends

My remote client location has a 16Mbs down speed...

I don’t think network bandwidth is problem considering I move about a gig of data from one machine to another on the same network in about 10-15 min. I host my own ftp off of the same network and I get consistent transfers in both directions of 100k-275k/sec on a regular basis.

I feel like it may be a setting issue with vlc or something. I have tried many variations of settings, read thru the forums and used the recommended settings etc.

I was wondering if anyone could share what quality they successfully and consistently stream with.

I can successfully stream at wmv2 512, 320x213, audio mp4 64k 1 ch, with an occasional break in the stream, I assume buffering.

If I go any higher in the resolution, or bitrates the video plays for a second or two....stops, acts as if it is buffering for 30 seconds, then vlc minimizes as if no file is open. WMP does the same thing. Kind of strange I thought.

I would like to be able to get the video up to the LAN bitrate and 480x320 without any problems. It is just hard to see the numbers/scores on such low resolution/bitrate.

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks!: D

I stay away from wmv.......I prefer setting the player options to use VLC exxternal player setting with the HD-2k bitrate with scale set to .20 and transcode options set to manual options with the H264/MPEG-4 AVC, MPEG-4 Audio, 32 bit audio 2-channel H264 video encoder with defalt settings except Quantizer Max set to 6.

I use VLC version 9.9 as the player on the client. I have the HTTP(s) Access Module - show all settings to get to this located under Access Modules - buffer set to 8000 which is 8 seconds.

You have to use VLC version 8.6i on the GBPVR server....the new 9.x versions have yet to fix a bug with H264 encoding.

My guess is is that the lower up-speed with a high quality video and the link from across your wireless to your WAN are probably the root cause of the problem.

I have a strong steady 5mb up speed via FIOS (fiber) and am wired from the GBPVR server to the WAN via Gigabit switch and CAT5e cabling.

With the HD-2k option I can get a steady picture with the scale set to max of 0.2.

If I back down the bitrate to LAN I can adjust scale to 0.3.

Going below LAN with HD recorded programmes (that is all I have) injects blocking into the playback.

With the HD-2k bitrate and 0.20 scale and using the settings above when using VLC as the client player I can scale to my laptops 17" widescreen and the picture looks great.

Hope this helps.

[blacks1093]

Thanks John,

I am going to give these new settings a shot. I am running a wired connection between the router and the HTPC, and wired to the wan. (a little lost in translation on my end in the description) I am going out of an hd box to the pvr150 via the composite input. Not a true HD capture, but at least the source is HD. For capturing via the composite input the quality is quite clear.

I am trying to avoid the pixelation over the stream so hopefully your settings will help. It is hard to see the scores and the baseball whe streaming! lol

On another note regarding the frame rate reduction mentioned in the earlier response to the post, I do think this is a very interesting and valid point, but i was not able to adjust the frame rate for mp4 in VLC. But, I was for other encoders like avi and mpeg (not that it matters because it is not supported for straming, nor is it an efficent format to stream)

Do you have any further knowledge on adjusting the frame rate?

I think it would be a good way to open up some bandwidth for increased bandwidth...even if the frame rate was dropped to 24fps from 29.97 (which is the frame rate movies on film are in...). if you dropped to 24 fps that would be about a 20% drop in data from frames that you could add to the bitrate of each frame, thus increasing the quality of each frame. which i would think would eliminate the posibility for pixelation or "boxiness" and result in a sharper image.

Maybe I am over thinking it all, but just a thought!

Thanks for the tips, I will post my results.

[HtV]

as you've seen, you only have about 256k upload bandwidth...[3Mb/s =~ 300k]
but 15fps video looks pretty good at 256k...

I think you are getting mixed up a bit here. 3Mb~0.3MB ~3000kb~300KB.
It's often very confusing.

Hans

[UncleJohnsBand]

Thanks John,

I am going to give these new settings a shot. I am running a wired connection between the router and the HTPC, and wired to the wan. (a little lost in translation on my end in the description) I am going out of an hd box to the pvr150 via the composite input. Not a true HD capture, but at least the source is HD. For capturing via the composite input the quality is quite clear.

I am trying to avoid the pixelation over the stream so hopefully your settings will help. It is hard to see the scores and the baseball whe streaming! lol

On another note regarding the frame rate reduction mentioned in the earlier response to the post, I do think this is a very interesting and valid point, but i was not able to adjust the frame rate for mp4 in VLC. But, I was for other encoders like avi and mpeg (not that it matters because it is not supported for straming, nor is it an efficent format to stream)

Do you have any further knowledge on adjusting the frame rate?

I think it would be a good way to open up some bandwidth for increased bandwidth...even if the frame rate was dropped to 24fps from 29.97 (which is the frame rate movies on film are in...). if you dropped to 24 fps that would be about a 20% drop in data from frames that you could add to the bitrate of each frame, thus increasing the quality of each frame. which i would think would eliminate the posibility for pixelation or "boxiness" and result in a sharper image.

Maybe I am over thinking it all, but just a thought!

Thanks for the tips, I will post my results.

I nver messed arround with framerate adjustments....I think the assumption is if you run in standard NTSC or PAL using their standard framerate settings you will get a smooth visual presentation......I would assume that if you drop the framerate that the overall flow/motion of the programme would decrease.

[stoncold]

question - why does my stream bitrate options only go from 128 - LAN. I do not have this HD -2000 bitrate....

[blacks1093]

that is an interesting question. Uncle johns band may have the answer to that one. I have some issues with bandwith when i run 2k. I get decent qulity with LAN with no hiccups

[UncleJohnsBand]

question - why does my stream bitrate options only go from 128 - LAN. I do not have this HD -2000 bitrate....

that is an interesting question. Uncle johns band may have the answer to that one. I have some issues with bandwith when i run 2k. I get decent qulity with LAN with no hiccups

You probably are using build 79 which is what the current release of GBPVR is shiping with.....the extended rates were added with build 80.

Make sure to follow the install instructions on the wiki.