Transcoding and audio synch...

[zehd]

OMG.... It was something I stared at forever, and never really used.

MEncoder has a switch: Harddup

With this one switch added, I'm able to transcode anything (almost anything) to MPG, on the fly, and view, ff/rw skip pause, etc and I can't break it... And this is on a slower machine...

Currently I have it in ZProcess. I haven't released the latest version just yet.

I'm currently making sure that I can Transcode VOBs with AC3 to 2 channel

Here's the commandline I'm using, but I'm sure there's lot's in it to make it confusing...

"C:\Program Files\mplayer\mencoder.exe" -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf -vf lavcdeint,scale=572:312,expand=-68:-168:22:74,eq2=1.0:1.10:0.10:0.90:0.95:1.0:1.0:1.00,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000,volume=0.0,volnorm -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=6000:vbitrate=6000:keyint=18:acodec=mp2:abitrate=224:aspect=4/3 -ofps 29.97002997003 -sub "C:\TV\Recorded\Movies\SHREK_2.status.srt" -subpos 95 -font "C:\WINDOWS\fonts\trebuc.TTF" -subfont-text-scale 2.5 -o "C:\TV\Override\SHREK_2.mpg" "C:\TV\Recorded\Movies\SHREK_2.avi"

I have tried to get it with VLC. I'm sure it's possible now...

[lajams]

OMG.... It was something I stared at forever, and never really used.

MEncoder has a switch: Harddup

With this one switch added, I'm able to transcode anything (almost anything) to MPG, on the fly, and view, ff/rw skip pause, etc and I can't break it... And this is on a slower machine...

Currently I have it in ZProcess. I haven't released the latest version just yet.

I'm currently making sure that I can Transcode VOBs with AC3 to 2 channel

Here's the commandline I'm using, but I'm sure there's lot's in it to make it confusing...



I have tried to get it with VLC. I'm sure it's possible now...

Holy crap, that has to be the command-line from hell. Lol! Ok, let me know how your testing goes. Isn't mencoder AVI only?

[roy]

MEncoder has a switch: Harddup

With this one switch added, I'm able to transcode anything (almost anything) to MPG, on the fly, and view, ff/rw skip pause, etc and I can't break it... And this is on a slower machine...

Sounds like you found the magic switch. Hopefully there is a similar magic (and simple) switch for FFMPEG.

[zehd]

I've released a new version of ZProcess which uses VLC, FFmpeg, and MEncoder to do the on the fly transcoding.

I have included the 'harddup' feature in the MEncoder profiles, and I have been able to skip all over, ff/rw etc... very stable...

[zehd]

Well, well. It seems that it was certainly a good day for me and the MVP. Yet it was only a day. Today. I have the same sync problems...

I'm now starting to think that it is hardware, and yet, why do recorded MPGs play fine and Transcoded MPGs not play fine...

And why does it work sometimes...

I've cold booted the MVP. We'll see..

[lajams]

Well, well. It seems that it was certainly a good day for me and the MVP. Yet it was only a day. Today. I have the same sync problems...

I'm now starting to think that it is hardware, and yet, why do recorded MPGs play fine and Transcoded MPGs not play fine...

And why does it work sometimes...

I've cold booted the MVP. We'll see..

I went ahead and ran all my current movies through the VideoRedo QuickFix process, and so far all is well. There was one movie that I had a lot of trouble with in the past...."Cars"....it had over 300 frames with issues! :eek:

Been watching movies pretty much non-stop (my kids are loving this stage of the testing), and all seems well so far.

Zhed, are you working primarily from on-the-fly transcoding, or working with existing MPEG files?

[zehd]

I went ahead and ran all my current movies through the VideoRedo QuickFix process, and so far all is well. There was one movie that I had a lot of trouble with in the past...."Cars"....it had over 300 frames with issues! :eek:

Been watching movies pretty much non-stop (my kids are loving this stage of the testing), and all seems well so far.

Zhed, are you working primarily from on-the-fly transcoding, or working with existing MPEG files?

I am concentrating on only on the fly transcoding. I know that VideoRedo does a good job, just not what I'm fighting for...

[zaphod7501]

I'll just pop in here briefly. The MediaMVP will go out of sync when it encounters any anomalies in an mpeg file when searching. It's been like that from day one. They promised that driver updates would fix it but that fix never came.

Almost all mpegs have tiny timing errors. VideoReDo corrects these by rewriting all of the timing marks sequentially as it rewrites the file (I think that was basically the explanation).

Some players can minimize the problem. I argued publically for a long time that there was no problem in the recordings because I was using a Hollywood Plus decoder card for playback and it never went out of sync. Only when I started burning DVDs and using a MVP or stand alone DVD player did I discover my error.

Hopefully, you will discover a method that works for you, but the MVP will always lose sync when searching through a file that has any timing errors. I think that only a driver/firmware upgrade (on the MVP) will solve it completely. Mpeg encoded recordings apparently always have some timing errors; some minor, some major, but always present to some degree.

I hope you can find a solution but the MVP sync problem has been going on for years with very little improvement. The newer MVP drivers are slightly better than the early editions, but nothing has ever made a difference in the origin of the errors during recording. (too many sources for the errors, internal and external)

[lajams]

I'll just pop in here briefly. The MediaMVP will go out of sync when it encounters any anomalies in an mpeg file when searching. It's been like that from day one. They promised that driver updates would fix it but that fix never came.

Almost all mpegs have tiny timing errors. VideoReDo corrects these by rewriting all of the timing marks sequentially as it rewrites the file (I think that was basically the explanation).

Some players can minimize the problem. I argued publically for a long time that there was no problem in the recordings because I was using a Hollywood Plus decoder card for playback and it never went out of sync. Only when I started burning DVDs and using a MVP or stand alone DVD player did I discover my error.

Hopefully, you will discover a method that works for you, but the MVP will always lose sync when searching through a file that has any timing errors. I think that only a driver/firmware upgrade (on the MVP) will solve it completely. Mpeg encoded recordings apparently always have some timing errors; some minor, some major, but always present to some degree.

I hope you can find a solution but the MVP sync problem has been going on for years with very little improvement. The newer MVP drivers are slightly better than the early editions, but nothing has ever made a difference in the origin of the errors during recording. (too many sources for the errors, internal and external)

Yea, what I'm finding so far with various transcoders is that they all screw up the timings and need to be demuxed and remuxed afterwards to fix that. But, all things being equal, an extender should have enough cpu and memory to deal with that. To fix this issue within the MVP, would probably require a complete re-write of the firmware, and thus the software loaded on server/pc, and then maybe things would work *better*. I say better only because I don't know if the hardware would limit the ability of Hauppage to actually fix the problem for good in the current MVP. For example, the NIC interface on the MVP using half-duplex all the time...this is not something that can be fixed with software/firmware.

I still think presenting streams natively in hardware would be the best way to go, but I understand that can be expensive (to say nothing of the licensing involved). I think the cheapest extender I've found so far that could possibly do everything I need to do natively (no transcoding) was 179.00. I see some of the newer ones being released by NetGear et al are horribly expensive...in the 300.00 range.

Now, there have been whispers about a new Hauppage MediaMVP this year, but I don't know what that means, or what the price would be.

[mvallevand]

I say better only because I don't know if the hardware would limit the ability of Hauppage to actually fix the problem for good in the current MVP. For example, the NIC interface on the MVP using half-duplex all the time...this is not something that can be fixed with software/firmware.

Correction it can be fixed in fact mvpmc runs the MVP full duplex by default. The real limitation is getting more than 13Mbs on the card in ideal networking conditions is almost impossible and I think MP@ML is supposed to be up to 15Mbs. Since DVD is only 9.8Mbs that probably isn't too big a problem. Optimizing the network for the required throughput generally is.

Martin