ZProcess - Old Support Thread...

[zehd]

Right. I tried that and when I load it into Media Player it tries to download a codec with error.

That's your problem then. It sounds like you don't have an MPEG decoder installed. Take care of that, and the rest will follow...

Try k-lite mega codec pack

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Li...c_Pack.htm

Select custom when instaling. When given a choice for componets, go through the list and leave everything default except where you see Intervideo (I like thse sets - others may have other suggestions)

Whe it's done, you shouldn't have to restart. Just contune in the troublsshooting. Does the mpg play in wmp now?

[Mach1na]

The 1 minute mpg now plays in WMP.

[zehd]

The 1 minute mpg now plays in WMP.

Great, and how about in GBPVR, and then with MVP?

[Mach1na]

I selected the file using gbpvr and all I got was a black screen. How do I play it in MVP?

[zehd]

I selected the file using gbpvr and all I got was a black screen. How do I play it in MVP?

If you've created an MPG, make sure it's in the same directory as your AVI. Start MVP and select not the avi but the mpg. If it plays, great, if it doesn't then it would appear that the MVP isn't playing MPEGs right, and that is not my category....

But... once it's configured, you don't do anything further. You simply start your mvp, find the AVI you want to watch ,and GBPVR/ffmpeg/ZProcess will do the rest. will convert the avi to a mpg on the fly, and your MVP will display the transcoded MPG...

[zehd]

I selected the file using gbpvr and all I got was a black screen. How do I play it in MVP?

Don't go further until GBPVR can play the MPG. If Windows Media Player can play it, it's a viable MPG. Now you have to get some help getting GB-PVR to play MPGs...

I think it's something to do with the decoders set on the Playback tab in Config. Sub says that GB-PVR plays vids the same way that WMP plays them...

[Mach1na]

Now when you say play it in gbpvr I thought of two things. If I have zprocess installed then I get a blank screen with the usually processes spawning on my PC.

If I remove the zprocess files from the third party directory then the mpg will play.

[zehd]

Using GB-PVR. MediaMVP, FFMpeg, and ZProcess

What I’d like to do is run down a brief primer on the operation of GB-PVR, using an MediaMVP, and how ZProcess and FFMpeg fit into the picture. You may already know some of this but maybe I can fill in some blanks if they exist.

First off, the original reason for GB-PVR is a Television Recording program. In its simplest configuration someone would have a TV Tuner card, the PVR would record a programme off air or cable into an MPG file and then you could playback the MPG.

Therefore one requires a codec (which is short for Coder-Decoder) so that the MPGs can be played correctly on the computer. A good way of knowing whether an MPG is playable is whether it will play in Windows Media Player.

Within GB-PVR, you play back the MPG through either the Recordings (if it was recorded off air) or the Videos plug-ins.

Some people do not use GB-PVR as a Personal Video Recorder, but rather a media server (allowing devices like the MediaMVP to display content), as more and more folks are downloading their video content off the air. Most commonly, these downloaded videos are in DivX or Xvid format, contained in an AVI file.

Most of the downloaded AVIs won’t play straight off. Again, codecs for these AVIs are required to be installed. Once installed, The AVI will play back in Windows Media Player, and from within GB-PVR in the Video Plug-in screen…

At this point you should be able to play MPGs and AVIs from within GB-PVR…

Using the MediaMVP.

Simply put, the MVP will not play anything other than an MPG. That means that if you wish to watch an AVI (or WMV or…) you downloaded, it must first be transcoded into proper MPG format. (In this case ‘transcoding’ is basically translating one file type into another file type. You’ll end up with two files, one AVI, one MPG…)

You could either transcode the file before viewing on the MVP, or during.

The confusion comes because this transcoding stuff should be transparent to the user - one should not have to worry about whether something is the right format. You want to click on the downloaded AVI on the MediaMVP, and you want to see your video...

So this is what happens in the background. First, MediaMVP is really displaying a directory listing on the PVR computer hosting the videos. You’ll see your AVI there. When you click on that AVI to watch, GB-PVR doesn’t even try to show that video, because it knows that MediaMVPs can’t view AVIs, so it asks for help. It calls out to a program called ffmpeg.exe that runs silently in the background, and converts the AVI into an MPG. That MPG is ‘served’ to the MediaMVP, and you watch the video. If the computer is strong enough, FFMpeg should be able to transcode fast enough to keep up with the MediaMVP. It’s important to get this transcoding to happen faster than real time because if it runs out of time, MVP will crash.

I think of it as feeding my 10 month old daughter. Man, you just can’t feed her fast enough, and when you have to take the time to fill up the spoon with more baby food, she ‘displays impatience’. So you definitely want to feed the MediaMVP the newly transcoded MPG fast enough or GB-PVR will ‘display impatience’… (impatience = reboot or crash)

FFMpeg is shipped as default with GB-PVR. In a default situation, you should be able to transcode and view you AVI content on the MediaMVP right off, without using something like ZProcess.

Preserving Aspect Ratio

But… A lot of the HD rips that are available on the net are not in the same aspect ratio as your TV, or what MediaMVP wants to play… Many times, You’ll have a 4x3 TV screen and you want to have the black bars on top and bottom , so that the 16x9 AVI will display in correct aspect ratios.

ZProcess helps with calculating and correcting aspect ratios so the MVP plays Wide Screen AVIs in ‘Letterbox’ format.

ZProcess allows for a lot of adjustment, and it can also make it easier while you are making the fine tuning.

How ZProcess does this is it masquerades as FFMpeg, and when GB-PVR asks for transcoding help, ZProcess steps up, calculates the aspect ratio, applies other settings and parameters, and then calls the real FFMpeg (renamed to fmpeg.exe) to do the actual transcoding.

This entire shuffle doesn’t take much power or time, and GB-PVR acts as if it’s none the wiser.

ZProcess has many, many more features, but they fall outside the scope of this paper.

Setup and Troubleshooting

Most of this information is already on the wiki page. But here’s a todo list to get things going and configured.

1. Setup GBPVR. Make sure that all of your content (AVIs, MPGs, WMVs, etc) will play properly in GB-PVR.
   
   
2. Make sure that your MediaMVP hooks into GB-PVR correctly, and you can play MPG recordings (NOT AVIs yet!)
   
   
3. Back on the PVR Server, fire up ZProcess, select Trans2MVP profile, and test-transcode an AVI into a MPG. You can select ‘Only 1 Min’ to help speed up this process. For these tests you only really need 1 minute.
   
   
4. At this time you could adjust the aspect ratio, as the test clip may not play correctly on the MVP. For every change, run off another clip and view that on the MVP. When you’re satisfied, save the settings…(Check out the wiki for more…)
   
   
5. One more thing to notice is the time it takes to transcode the one minute file. You’re hoping for better than one minute. (If it takes 30 secs to transcode a one minute clip, your computer will be able keep up, and should be good to go…
   
   
6. The final thing to try is on the MediaMVP, click on an AVI. It should trigger ZProcess on the server, which should start the transcode…While playing the video, click the Blue button on the remote. You’ll notice on the progress bar, the end time is increasing. That’s because ZProcess and FFMpeg are performing correctly and the MPG file is growing.
   

There are some steps that I have omitted. But hopefully this, along with the wiki page, will help you get further using ZProcess and the MediaMVP.

Hope this helps

[Skybolt]

Interesting. After I wrote my post, I had it happen a couple of times for me too.

I'm not sure how I got it working right, but I think I was having trouble because I also had a manual ZProcess transcode happening at the same time... (It's supposed to allow you to do that too...)

Anyway, after I closed all instances of ZProcess, Ffmpeg, fmpeg and hunter, it didn't give me any trouble...

I'd really like to to find out what is different about your system and mine.

Sorry zehd - was away for a bit. needed some time off

Basicly I have had this happen on 2 systems and this problem is preventing me from using GB-PVR

System 1: Win 2003 server latest SP's, Asus P4B w/512mb P4 2.8ghz(recently upgraded from 2.4) I can not find any more memory to through at it or I would. Anyway the there is alot of stuff loaded on htis box but not running all at once- Yes services are disabled when not running. What is running all of time is HomeSeer Ver1.7.44 and MainLobby ver 2.xx. various codecs have been loaded and unloaded so I am not sure what is actually left, but the nVidia MCE decoder is set as primary using there media check utility. I am also runnig SageTv as a service, but as stated it is disabled when trying to run GB-PVR. I als have a Nexus FTA Satalite card loaded but the software for that is not riunning either. The one thing that is really lame about this system is the video card -nVidia 420MX 64mb. But I do not display video on htis server only stream it. Here is the kicker, I have an application I wrote which plays or streams any video type which has a codec assigned to it. MPG, AVI, VOB ,WMV all play full screen with out an issue. this app is vb based using the quartz.dll and directx - filter pinning. - Ok maybe to much info here sorry.

System 2 - FIC512- mother board P4 2.8 w/1gig MCE box - FX5900 video card in dual video mode(Small component Tv and 2 19" lcds) . VS6 and VS2005 loaded - This is only a Dev system for testing this stuff out. Various decoders and transcoders are loaded as well. Not to get to widy here, that's about it.

I am reluctant to try this app or even sage on my other 2 Live MCE boxes at this point since they run absolutly perfect, actually foget that htere are PC's.

Anyway I will be back to testing some more over the next few days. Talk to you soon.

-Skybolt

[Mach1na]

Right I'm getting somewhere. I uninstalled everything and then reinstalled everything. I can manually transcode a 1 minute file which plays great on my MVP. When I select an avi, zprocess and hunter popup and then disappear.

My MVP then reboots itself.

Any ideas?

Edit:

The problem was that Zprocess was registering the fmpeg location as being the directory where I originally downloaded it. Everything works a charm now. Fantastic utility! All I need to do now if figure why the gbpver menu always stays the same size (top and bottom offscreen) even after entering new offset and size information into the config.xml.