NPVR Config

[mvallevand]

sub, a quick question about MVP's: if one is using analog or SD digital, and one re-muxes the .ts recordings to .mpg in postprocessing.bat, would that be sufficient to make an MVP work with NPVR?

SD Digital in the US and Canada means QAM so simply remuxing to mpg won't be enough.

Martin

[johnsonx42]

I thought QAM was just the modulation? I'm confused now.

[sub]

Martin is correct.

Digital in the US/Canada is often using either AC3 audio or HD video, which the MVP isnt capable of. Analog in the US/Canada would be fine. The digital channels would most likely require transcoding to SD MPEG2 video with MPEG1 Layer II audio to work on an MVP.

Outside of the North America many of the digital systems are based on SD MPEG2 video with MPEG1 Layer II audio, which will work fine with just a remux. Analog outside US/Canada would be fine.

H.264 channels wouldnt work on the MVP without transcoding to MPEG2 video with MPEG1 Layer II audio.

[mvallevand]

I thought QAM was just the modulation? I'm confused now.

Sorry for the confusion I did mean AC-3

Martin

[johnsonx42]

Ah, that makes more sense. Yes, I hadn't thought of the audio stream; it is almost always AC3 now even on the SD channels. It seems like at first on OTA digital here a lot of the channels had MP2 audio, but now it's almost all AC3. So in practice at least an audio transcode would be required for an MVP to watch digital SD recordings in the US, and obviously a full transcode for HD recordings.
A simple remux will be enough then for analog anywhere, and should suffice for SD digital outside of north america. I think ffmpeg could transcode the audio and just copy the video pretty quick though, so SD digital in north america shouldn't be too much more work.

[mvallevand]

You make it sound simple but it's not. Post processing has to be channel based if you want to have both remux/transcode, and just transcoding AC3 audio with remuxed SD video can have lip sync problems so it's better to transcode everything.

There are also lots of countries that use AAC or HE-AAC with their SD transmissions so it's not just a problem here.

Martin

[johnsonx42]

Yes, the devil's always in the details; obviously much of this will be up to the user to figure out what works and what doesn't. It seems safe though to say that analog users can just remux and use the MVP; digital users should seek another solution, but MAY be able to work something out by transcoding.

I'm wondering about one other thing that sub said in the 1.5.19 release announement (emphasis added):

MVPs are no longer as useful as they were in the past. Unfortunately these dont natively play .ts files, which is what NPVR produces. It does try an on-the-fly conversion. At the end of the day, I could(n't) let the limitations of the MVP dictate how NPVR worked.

So back then sub said it would try to convert for the MVP, but more recent comments (including this discussion) seem to imply it doesn't?

[mvallevand]

Yes, the devil's always in the details; obviously much of this will be up to the user to figure out what works and what doesn't. It seems safe though to say that analog users can just remux and use the MVP; digital users should seek another solution, but MAY be able to work something out by transcoding.

The just is the lose of live tv, which causes most of the complaints.

So back then sub said it would try to convert for the MVP, but more recent comments (including this discussion) seem to imply it doesn't?

This is one of the MVP codes area that is still currently work-n-progress. Using mvpmc (which supports .ts files on the MVP), if I rename an SD .ts to .mpg, it will play ok from NPVR because mvpmc detects it as a ts file. As a ts file I just get a blank screen

Martin

[johnsonx42]

Ah, so at some future point the MVP *may* be able to play .ts files that meet the other criteria without any conversion required. Do I understand correctly then that today an MVP user could simply rename a .ts file containing MPEG-2 video and MP2 audio to .mpg, and it will play on the MVP? That seems a pretty simple interim solution, something easily coded into a postprocessing.bat.