Upgraded to Mediax version of UIDROID on S21 Ultra, now "unsupported video"

[BrettB]

If you think that pushing the "view logs" button on ADBLINK2 on the PC is supposed to show the log from the phone, you're mistaken. There is NOTHING in what ADBLink2 shows as the supposed log you say is produced by the UIDroid app running on the phone.

When you have ADBLink2 connected to the phone, go to the Utility menu and select the Logcat option. Then right click on the tab at the top of the window which opened with the scrolling logfile from the phone. And select the Export Text menu option to save the contents of that logfile to a text file on your pc. Then you can zip and upload that logfile from the phone.

[mvallevand]

Thanks Brett.

Because this is a phone I wouldn't recommend uploading logcat. Maye open the file in notepad and search for the EventlLogger lines and you will find out if it is supported or not.

Martin

[DSperber]

When you have ADBLink2 connected to the phone, go to the Utility menu and select the Logcat option. Then right click on the tab at the top of the window which opened with the scrolling logfile from the phone. And select the Export Text menu option to save the contents of that logfile to a text file on your pc. Then you can zip and upload that logfile from the phone.

You don't say whether or not I'm supposed to have UIDroid still running and active when I do this "Utility menu -> Logcat"? Or, am I supposed to have run UIDroid on the phone briefly (long enough to get the "unsupported video" message, and generate some finite log file) and then closed it? Will the generated EventLogger log file still exist? Is it finite and now done when I close UIDroid? Or does it generate indefinitely and infinitely, as something seems to be doing?

But as it turns out, it doesn't matter at all whether or not UIDroid is active or not! When I select Logcat this launches what looks like a DOS command prompt window, with a high-speed scrolling logfile from the phone. It never stops. And it also doesn't appear to have anything to do with UIDroid or its EventLogger file, wherever and whenever that might exist.

How am I supposed to stop the infinite scrolling?

Furthermore, there is no "tab at the top of the window which opened with the scrolling logfile from the phone", which then somehow might present an "Export Text" menu option. It's just a DOS command prompt window, with something scrolling infinitely inside of it.



Can you please post screenshots showing what you're suggesting I should be seeing when I do Utility menu -> Logcat?

(Why is this so difficult? If UIDroid is supposed to create a file on the phone named "EventLogger.log" or something, where is it?  Why can't I just then grab that file from the phone (e.g. using Total Commander, or any similar function) and get it sent to the PC via text message or email or just accessed directly from that phone "Internal Storage" folder location using Windows Explorer? Surely this is possible and simple, no? It's a file, and presumably UIDroid is now creating it because I've enabled "EventLogger". So why is this so impossibly challenging to just get the file from phone to PC???)

[mvallevand]

Brett told you to "right click on the tab at the top of the window" with a little experimentation you could have found that Export Text is on the left tab.

I then told you to open the file that Brett asked you to save with Notepad. I never told you that there was an EventLogger file, I told you to search the file in notepad for EventLogger.

I don't know why we need to keep tell you to link your device. What do you think this means "When you have ADBLink2 connected to the phone"

The process was never designed to be easy, in fact the only reason we are doing this is so you can confirm for yourself that Android itself is telling the system that direct play of mpeg2video isn't support. There is plenty of information on the Internet on using adb if you want to spend some time.

Martin

[BrettB]

You don't say whether or not I'm supposed to have UIDroid still running and active when I do this "Utility menu -> Logcat"? Or, am I supposed to have run UIDroid on the phone briefly (long enough to get the "unsupported video" message, and generate some finite log file) and then closed it? Will the generated EventLogger log file still exist? Is it finite and now done when I close UIDroid? Or does it generate indefinitely and infinitely, as something seems to be doing?

But as it turns out, it doesn't matter at all whether or not UIDroid is active or not! When I select Logcat this launches what looks like a DOS command prompt window, with a high-speed scrolling logfile from the phone. It never stops. And it also doesn't appear to have anything to do with UIDroid or its EventLogger file, wherever and whenever that might exist.

How am I supposed to stop the infinite scrolling?

Furthermore, there is no "tab at the top of the window which opened with the scrolling logfile from the phone", which then somehow might present an "Export Text" menu option. It's just a DOS command prompt window, with something scrolling infinitely inside of it.

Can you please post screenshots showing what you're suggesting I should be seeing when I do Utility menu -> Logcat?

(Why is this so difficult? If UIDroid is supposed to create a file on the phone named "EventLogger.log" or something, where is it?  Why can't I just then grab that file from the phone (e.g. using Total Commander, or any similar function) and get it sent to the PC via text message or email or just accessed directly from that phone "Internal Storage" folder location using Window s Explorer? Surely this is possible and simple, no? It's a file, and presumably UIDroid is now creating it because I've enabled "EventLogger". So why is this so impossibly challenging to just get the file from phone to PC???)

uidroid doesn't write out log message to any separate file. It send log messages to the Android logging mechanism. When you use adblink to capture the that Android logging (logcat), you get all of the logging from the device (which includes uidroid logging). And when you first connect, it will pull in a "buffer" of recent log messages and then keep going forward. So, if you did it soon enough after you had run uidroid, the messages would probably still be there. But the safest method would be to start capturing the logcat messages, then run uidroid, then Export Text the logcat messages.

And, as I stated and Martin confirmed, while that logcat log is being displayed (the "DOS Command Prompt infinite scrolling"), you right click on the tab for that window (which, in my case at least, says "C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe") and then select "Export Text".

[DSperber]

uidroid doesn't write out log message to any separate file. It send log messages to the Android logging mechanism. When you use adblink to capture the that Android logging (logcat), you get all of the logging from the device (which includes uidroid logging). And when you first connect, it will pull in a "buffer" of recent log messages and then keep going forward. So, if you did it soon enough after you had run uidroid, the messages would probably still be there. But the safest method would be to start capturing the logcat messages, then run uidroid, then Export Text the logcat messages.

And, as I stated and Martin confirmed, while that logcat log is being displayed (the "DOS Command Prompt infinite scrolling"), you right click on the tab for that window (which, in my case at least, says "C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe") and then select "Export Text".

I do not have a "C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe" title on my DOS Command Prompt window.

And while you say there is something you describe as a "tab for that window" that appears, I have no idea what you're talking about. Can you please just post a screenshot of this thing you are seeing, and that will answer my questions.

I see no such thing when I push that Utility -> Logcat item. No tab appears on any new window that appears. Nothing appears other than an unnamed DOS command prompt window. Absolutely nothing named "Export text". Just the usual items (e.g. "edit", etc.) if I left-click on the title bar icon on the upper-left corner.



Interestingly, this time when I initiated Logcat the contents of the DOS command prompt window was not "infinite scrolling" generating milions of lines continuously. I guess it must finally have played out all of the queued up lines, and it was now just generating output in a "normal" ongoing way. There might be a spurt of records, then a pause, then some additional lines, then a pause, etc.

Presumably if you would post a picture of whatever you are seeing, I could make some progress here. And then I could "capture/export" the log, and extract the "EventLogger" lines from whatever gets exported.

Please post a screenshot of what Logcat produces for you.

[mvallevand]

I guess you don't run Windows Terminal or a tabbed command prompt. Do you get anything when you right click the little command prompt icon top left.

Martin

[DSperber]

I guess you don't run Windows Terminal or a tabbed command prompt.  Do you get anything when you right click the little command prompt icon  top left.

Correct. Never heard of Windows Terminal until now.

I've just installed it on my Win10 machine which is running NextPVR server/DVR/Guide 7.0.1. Didn't change anything from the default settings options.

Makes absolutely no difference. Utility -> Logcat simply opens the identical basic original DOS command prompt window. It does not open a "new format tabbed command prompt window" as I might have expected.

No matter. I've wasted enough time on this, and no matter how many times I request and plead for you to post a simple screenshot of this so-called tabbed command prompt window you guys see that I don't, there still is no "screenshot" from you or Brett posted. I don't understand why you can't just post one picture that would be worth 1000 words in moving forward on this issue.

Anyway, yes I see that simple basic plain DOS command prompt window. And of course I can then left-click on the little icon in the upper-left corner, and get the standard normal old-fashioned command-prompt window options. So after letting all of the queued-up logfile entries play out, so that the window now at least slows down instead of spewing out thousands of lines, and with the command-prompt window still open and this Logcat function still active, I then started UIDroid on the phone.

Selected TV Guide, selected ATSC 1.0 channel 2.1 (MPEG-2), selected WATCH, and let it run long enough to get audio and "unsupported video".

While it was still playing (i.e. audio but no video) on the phone I went to the DOS command prompt window on the PC, left-clicked on the window icon, selected Edit -> SELECT ALL, which lit up all of the existing many thousands of lines accumulated so far. Then Edit -> COPY, to get all of the 5000+ selected lines into the clipboard.

Then I opened Notepad++ and PASTE'd in all of the 5000+ clipboard lines. Then I located the EventLogger lines within the data. I assume the following lines are what you have been asking me to generate for you since yesterday when you discovered that the log file produced out of NextPVR (web app) itself gave you no information.

Code:

03-21 12:57:02.989 26573 26573 D EventLogger: audioEnabled [eventTime=6.16, mediaPos=0.00, window=0, period=0]
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26746 I DMCodecAdapterFactory: Creating an asynchronous MediaCodec adapter for track type audio
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger: tracks [eventTime=6.16, mediaPos=0.00, window=0, period=0
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:   group [
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:     [ ] Track:0, id=1/49, mimeType=video/mpeg2, res=1920x1080, supported=NO_UNSUPPORTED_TYPE
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:   ]
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:   group [
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:     [X] Track:0, id=1/52, mimeType=audio/ac3, bitrate=384000, channels=6, sample_rate=48000, language=en, supported=YES
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:   ]
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:   group [
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:     [ ] Track:0, id=1/53, mimeType=audio/ac3, bitrate=192000, channels=2, sample_rate=48000, language=es, supported=YES
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:   ]
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:   group [
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:     [ ] Track:0, id=1/8241, mimeType=application/cea-608, language=en, supported=YES
03-21 12:57:02.990 26573 26573 D EventLogger:   ]
03-21 12:57:02.992 26573 26573 D EventLogger:   group [
03-21 12:57:02.993 26573 26573 D EventLogger:     [ ] Track:0, id=1/16433, mimeType=application/cea-608, language=sp, supported=YES
03-21 12:57:02.993 26573 26573 D EventLogger:   ]
03-21 12:57:02.993 26573 26573 D EventLogger: ]

And of course, as you probably suspected you'd see, that video/MPEG2 video line shows NO_UNSUPPORTED_TYPE.

Note that my earlier NextPVR log I provided to you which didn't seem to show any evidence of UIDroid may have been because I had unwittingly rebooted Windows assuming my previous testing results would still be present in an ever-accumulating log. I'm guessing it is restarted on each boot/session. I suspect if I re-ran the test now and then once again immediately gave you the LOG file produced by the NextPVR web app that you perhaps would see something similar to what EventLogger enabled on the phone is providing to you here. Or maybe not. Maybe this EventLogger output is really what is most useful to you anyway.


From Google:

" No, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra does not natively support the MPEG-2 video codec. While it supports various video formats, MPEG-2 is not among them. 

Here's a more detailed explanation:

• Supported Video Formats:
  The S21 Ultra, like other Samsung Galaxy devices, natively supports a range of video formats including AVI, FLV, MKV, MP4, 3GP, WEBM, and TS. 
  

[*]MPEG-2 Exclusion:
MPEG-2 is not listed as a supported format in the official Samsung support documentation. 
[*]Alternative Solutions:
If you need to play MPEG-2 videos, you'll likely need to use a third-party app that supports the codec or convert the video to a compatible format"



Bottom line: UIDroid is unusable on my phone for ATSC 1.0 (no video).

Interestingly I actually can get both audio (AC4) and video (HEVC) from UIDroid for the non-DRM ATSC 3.0 channels. I suppose I could re-run that Logcat effort to see what is presented when tuning to an ATSC 3.0 channel, but obviously whatever and however you do it there is absolutely now audio and video for non-DRM ATSC 3.0. Perhaps this is the result of going with MediaX in the current version.

As far as apps with built-in "do it yourself MPEG-2"...

(a) I can use VLC Player for audio+video for ATSC 1.0, but it presents ATSC 3.0 only with video. So no AC4 audio support.

(b) Sub's NextPVR client app plays ATSC 1.0 with both audio and video, but seems to have no support for ATSC 3.0 (neither audio nor video).

© HDHR plays ATSC 1.0 with both audio and video, and also plays ATSC 3.0 with video but no audio (don't know why AC4 audio isn't decoded via cloud-assist -> stereo)


[*]Obviously the phone is not usable for ATSC 3.0.

[mvallevand]

I could have added a library to software decode mpeg2video to uidroid since I knew phones like the Samsung would not be able to play them. It just is not the intended playback device for uidroid. If you really need that add Kodi as I also said.

For AC-4 I did add software decoding via ffmpeg since many Android boxes including the Shield don't support it. That was before they started to DRM ATSC 3.0 when I kind of lost interest.

Martin

[DSperber]

I could have added a library to software decode mpeg2video to uidroid since I knew phones like the Samsung would not be able to play them.  It just is not the intended playback device for uidroid.  If you really need that add Kodi as I also said.

For AC-4 I did add software decoding via ffmpeg since many Android boxes including the Shield don't support it.  That was before they started to DRM ATSC 3.0 when I kind of lost interest.

Martin

Is the FFMPEG you use similar to the Windows one which was available on the PC a while back, which was "crippled for AC4" so that it only supported audio frequencies <12KHz? That produced very bass-heavy sound, to my ears. Also, it had a built-in 5.1 channel handling mistake, where channels 3/4 were being treated as 5/6, and channels 5/6 were being treated as 3/4. The only way to get correct sound (albeit bass-heavy anyway) was to use FFMPEG command-line transcoding on the .TS recording file, to swap the audio channel pairs 3/4 and 5/6. I thought I read that the FFMPEG "author" didn't want to fix these problems unless he was paid for the work, kind of anti-open-source. I don't know if that was true.

So are these problems now corrected in the Windows version? Is it also present (or not) in the Android version? Is it now full-frequency and with correct 5.1 audio channel handling?


But honestly, none of this SD-related functionality is "seriously important" to me. I do not watch TV on my phone while in my home. I watch TV on my four TVs around my home, but not through any SD Flex-4K or NextPVR facilities. It's all just playing in the sandbox, starting back in 2023 when I bought the Flex-4K and expected to immediately begin enjoying the promised wonders of ATSC 3.0. It's certainly been a disappointment.

So, I continue to use Windows Media Center (running on my Win7 HTPC) to support both (a) OTA roof antenna ATSC 1.0 local broadcast channels via Hauppauge Quad-HD 4-tuner PCIe card, and (b) DRM Spectrum cable TV channels via cablecard-enabled Ceton InfiniTV 6-tuner PCIe card. No support for ATSC 3.0, but otherwise complete availability at each of the four TVs around my home.

And I also enjoy full live/DVR support for ATSC 3.0 channels (both DRM as well as non-DRM, for both live TV as well as DVR recordings) through my Zapperbox dual-tuner M1 (located in my bedroom, and playing via HDMI connection to my AVR -> LG OLED TV in the bedroom). 

I also have a new Zapperbox no-tuner M3 (located in my kitchen, and playing via HDMI connection to my kitchen Samsung 1080p TV). Current firmware supports playback through the M3 only of non-DRM DVR recordings located on the bedroom M1. Coming soon (in the next month) is playback through the M3 on the kitchen TV of non-DRM live TV (i.e. "using shared tuner from the bedroom M1"). And "almost promised" coming (a month or so later) is the long sought-after holy grail of live and DVR playback of DRM content on the kitchen M3, using the tuners and DVR recordings of the bedroom M1. I'm not actually sure A3SA has blessed this Zapperbox hardware client HDMi-based "gateway" implementation, but to my thinking there's likely more potential for that hardware-client HDMI-based approach to be approved by A3SA than anything gateway/DRM-related that SD has so far been unable to bring to life with their software client approach in over two years.

Realistically, however, until and unless the broadcasters actually upgrade the national network delivery infastructure to provide genuine native camera-native 1080p, ATSC 3.0 truly has no real interest to me. It's all just playing in the sandbox, since ATSC 3.0 1080p is "faux" local affiliate upconvert from the very 720p and 1080i that is going out as ATSC 1.0. Even the HDR video and Dolby Atmos audio now being made available on NBC in select cities (including here in LA) is once again "faux", simply local affiliate artificially computer-produced. It is not true camera-native HDR nor is it true Dolby Atmos from actual microphones.

And that's why none of this ATSC 3.0 stuff is genuinely important to me, although I now own both SD Flex-4K and Zapperbox M1/M3 equipment. My Windows Media Center 720p/1080i content is beautifully deinterlaced and upconverted to 4K by my Oppo 203 player feeding my LG OLED C9. Looks fabulous, and that is my primary "production" TV viewing mechanism.