Some feedback and suggestions

[mattyb]

I downloaded the app late last week and had a play over the weekend. Seems to work well with my Oneplus 5T phone, though perhaps there's something not quite right with the aspect ratio on an 18:9 screen, the pause and stop buttons and timeline go onto two lines at the bottom of the screen in landscape orientation.

Also, is there a way to skip/reverse in the app? This would be a very useful feature as it is used a lot in our house in NPVR, both short and long skips.

But overall great to see this come to fruition. Nice work @sub!

[Graham]

Also, is there a way to skip/reverse in the app? This would be a very useful feature as it is used a lot in our house in NPVR, both short and long skips.

Swipe right and left will skip 30 seconds.

[sub]

I downloaded the app late last week and had a play over the weekend. Seems to work well with my Oneplus 5T phone, though perhaps there's something not quite right with the aspect ratio on an 18:9 screen, the pause and stop buttons and timeline go onto two lines at the bottom of the screen in landscape orientation.

Can you post a screenshot, so I can see what happens?

Also, is there a way to skip/reverse in the app? This would be a very useful feature as it is used a lot in our house in NPVR, both short and long skips.

As Graham mentioned, there is some very minimal support for skipping in the app (during playback of a recording) - you can swipe left/right on the player to skip 30 seconds in that direction. You can of course drag the timeline as well.

[mattyb]

Can you post a screenshot, so I can see what happens?

As Graham mentioned, there is some very minimal support for skipping in the app (during playback of a recording) - you can swipe left/right on the player to skip 30 seconds in that direction. You can of course drag the timeline as well.

Here's a screenshot. For some reason my phone captured the image in portrait mode, but it plays in landscape. Hopefully you can see what I mean with the timeline.

One other thing, the CPU on the NPVR box goes way up when I'm streaming a recording using the app, up to 95-97%, and it's causing to hang at times as well. It seems that ffmpeg is heavy on CPU, is this the transcoding? Is there any other way to change settings to do this more efficiently?

Thanks for the headsup with the skip feature, though the buffering makes a 30 sec skip take 6-7 secs. Should this be faster? Or is it due to the transcoding?

[sub]

Here's a screenshot. For some reason my phone captured the image in portrait mode, but it plays in landscape. Hopefully you can see what I mean with the timeline.

I just tried to reproduce this in an emulator set to 1080 x 2160, but it's not doing it here. I have made these fields slightly bigger for the next build though, so hopefully it's been fixed.

One other thing, the CPU on the NPVR box goes way up when I'm streaming a recording using the app, up to 95-97%, and it's causing to hang at times as well. It seems that ffmpeg is heavy on CPU, is this the transcoding? Is there any other way to change settings to do this more efficiently?

Yeah, it has to transcode the stream to get it into a format that these android devices can play. This can be relatively hard on machines, but usually ok on modern CPUs. We can't avoid the transcoding, but I'll take a look if there is any ffmpeg settings that might reproduce the load.

How is your CPU in live TV vs playback of a recording? (it'll be higher playing a recording, where we only have limited control over throttling ffmpeg, and it'll want to go as fast as it can)

Thanks for the headsup with the skip feature, though the buffering makes a 30 sec skip take 6-7 secs. Should this be faster? Or is it due to the transcoding?

On my machine it takes about 2 seconds, but yes, it'll be related to the CPU and how quickly your machine can start producing transcoded content.

[mattyb]

CPU in live TV (through the app) sits around 50-60% once it's been running for a few seconds (starts off at 80-90%).

I guess my CPU is getting a bit older now (in signature), maybe 6yrs or so since I built the box.

That'd be great if you could reduce the cpu load. I assume changing the bitrate doesn't have any effect?

[sub]

With Playback of recordings, what typically happens is ffmpeg gets through the transcoding as quick as possible, and the CPU drops. So I'd find if I'm watching an hour long recording, I'll often get 5 minutes or so of high CPU, then the transcode is complete, and the CPU will drop away to pretty much nothing.

That'd be great if you could reduce the cpu load. I assume changing the bitrate doesn't have any effect?

It might help, particularly with live TV.

[Graham]

That'd be great if you could reduce the cpu load. I assume changing the bitrate doesn't have any effect?

I have no expertise and this may not be relevant ... it says 'ere ... https://www.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-all.html ... that there is a "threads" option to limit ffmpeg to, for example, a single core.