v0.99.5 - Some feedback

[Stevie77]

The main purpose for my gbpvr-installation is to use it as tv-server in the cellar to feed the mvp in the livingroom. Version 0.99.5 is the best ever. Most things worked right out of the box.
But there are still some minor issues in my kind of installation. Most of them are mvp-related.
- (MVP) high bitrate recordings get out of sync when doing ff/rew or skip. Playing them from the beginning is no problem. In live-tv mode it's the same. I have to skip to the beginning and just let it play. This is maybe an muxer issue.
- (MVP) aspect ratio of displayed photos is wrong. They're stretched a little bit. An issue of this plugin since sub integrated it.
- (MVP) the osd is not displayed full screen. It does not use the whole available space as hauppauge, mvpmc or vomp (linux/vdr) do.
- (MVP) letterboxing video from 16:9 to 4:3 doesn't work. This is hauppauge relatet, but mvpmc and vomp do this right.
- (pc/recording service) somehow windows is "blocked" by the recording service when I want to restart/standby/hibernate the system. It looks like windows cannot "kill" the service. Stopping or killing it manually does let it do it's work. While looking after the new mdapi-interface I noticed that the build filter-graph whilst doing a record (or timeshift live-tv) stayes connected. I don't know if this is really the problem but I think so.
All other standard functions are working good and stable now here.

stevie77

[sub]

- (MVP) the osd is not displayed full screen. It does not use the whole available space as hauppauge, mvpmc or vomp (linux/vdr) do.

You'll probably find this relates to your MVPWidth/MVPHeight/MVPOffsetX/MVPOffsetY settings in config.xml.

- (MVP) letterboxing video from 16:9 to 4:3 doesn't work. This is hauppauge relatet, but mvpmc and vomp do this right.

Unfortunately I dont get any say in this with the Hauppauge dongle.

[Stevie77]

You'll probably find this relates to your MVPWidth/MVPHeight/MVPOffsetX/MVPOffsetY settings in config.xml.

I know these settings. To me it looks like you use 640x480 content for this. Others seem to use full pal-res of 720x576 for the osd. Maybe another restriction of the hauppauge dongles?

[sub]

I know these settings. To me it looks like you use 640x480 content for this. Others seem to use full pal-res of 720x576 for the osd. Maybe another restriction of the hauppauge dongles?

The default settings I used are ones that happened to look good on my test TV on my desk - it'll vary from TV to TV so you'll probably need to adjust it to suit your TV.

The biggest settings for PAL would be:

<MVPWidth>720</MVPWidth>
<MVPHeight>576</MVPHeight>
<MVPOffsetX>0</MVPOffsetX>
<MVPOffsetY>0</MVPOffsetY>

... but this would most likely lose quite a bit of the OSD and menus off the side of the screen. When adjusting these vaules, make sure MVPOffsetX and MVPWidth are even, and dont add up to more than 720.

[Stevie77]

Very interresting! I played around with these settings a long time ago. I used "MVPScreenposition" and also entered different values manually. As far as I remember I never got the osd bigger than 640x480. So I never touched it again. But if you say so i'll try it again.

[sub]

Nah, there is definitely no limitation to 640x480 in there. Its based on the normal PAL/NTSC resolutions, but I found that too much was hidden in the overscan if it was set to fullscreen.

[Stevie77]

I played around with it at the very beginning of gbpvr usage. I remember now that I played around with it because i thought i could solve letterboxing issues with avi-files. I know it better now.

When speaking of mvps, have you ever thought of using a kind of ringbuffer (maybe in ram) for live-tv playback? As i use a dedicated pc as tv-server I have some spare ram left. Using a ramdisk for this would already be enough to me.
Second, have you ever thought of building an TS-PES converter or filter for the mvp. Your TS muxer is already working stable. It's annoying that this recordings cannot be played with it. This could maybe also solve my high-bitrate-sync-loss-problems....

[sub]

When speaking of mvps, have you ever thought of using a kind of ringbuffer (maybe in ram) for live-tv playback?

It used to do that a really long time ago (to disk though), but now it just records normal files and switches files at the end of the show. Most of the PVR software apps have switched to this sort of mechanism since it makes things much simpler and produces files that can be used in other apps.

Second, have you ever thought of building an TS-PES converter or filter for the mvp. Your TS muxer is already working stable.

Yes, I have tried this in the past, but it now gathers dust on the pile of cool mostly finished stuff from the past. I'd done a TS-PES converter and my own PES mux in the past, but these are PES stream files, which are different from Program Stream files (close but not the same). The PC will play .mpg PES stream files, but the MVP wont, and most thrid party apps wont process these files.

That project fell apart when I tried to take it that step further to a TS-PS mux (full program stream), which is basically the same as the PES stream but with the addition of System and Pack Headers. Unfortunately I had real problems with calculating the presentation and decoding timestamps in the Pack Headers.

After several days of not solving that particular problem I decided to can that project.

[Stevie77]

There's an opensource project called "vomp" = "vdr on mvp". I've tried it - it's works fine. Very stable and very responsive gui. But that's another story.
As far as I know vdr (linux based app) records in TS similar to your TS muxer. The vompserver does TS-PS conversation for MVP on the fly. This works really good.
Maybe you could lend you some ideas there....

[sub]

Sorry, I'm not going there. I have to avoid poluting my code with anything GPL related.

They've probably used a MVP side TS demuxer though, the same as the MVPMC project. Its relatively straight forward, but not possible for me since Hauppauge would have to be the ones to add this.