MKV & MP4 via NPVR & NMT

[UncleJohnsBand]

For the mkv and mp4 format files does NPVR need to pass control to the NMT or can they be played natively via NPVR and streamed to the NMT?

[whurlston]

AFAIK, only MPEG-TS will play natively because of NPVRTSReader. With the Youtube plugin, I use ffmpeg to remux MP4 into MPEG-TS (H264/AAC). It's almost instant since there is no transcoding. Depending on the streams in the MKV file, you might be able to do the same.

[mvallevand]

They are passed to the NMT player. I could in theory control mp4 in mpvmcx2 since it uses the same logic, but it isn't something sub supports directly either.

Martin

[UncleJohnsBand]

Thanks....just asking....there was another thread over in the Community Forum for the NextPVREncoder ....discussion went to Comskip and the impact to transcoding over to another format such as mkv or mp4. My thought was (and still is) that with the transcoding you lose the ability to use Comskip within the NPVR interface for those recordings unless you also use Comcut to actually remove the identified areas from the recording.

[mvallevand]

If you are simply transcoding to h264 to save space and not play on a smaller device, whurlston used a pretty good ffmpeg command line in the YouTube plugin to remux them to an NextPVR/NMT compatible ts container.

Martin

[whurlston]

Note that (unless sub has updated ffmpeg in the last couple of releases) the one included with NextPVR does not handle AAC properly.

[UncleJohnsBand]

If you are simply transcoding to h264 to save space and not play on a smaller device, whurlston used a pretty good ffmpeg command line in the YouTube plugin to remux them to an NextPVR/NMT compatible ts container.

Martin

Note that (unless sub has updated ffmpeg in the last couple of releases) the one included with NextPVR does not handle AAC properly.

Never thought of that....but it works nicely and only adds a few seconds on to the conversion process......now I just need to see how I can work it into the NextPVREncoder routine.....

[UncleJohnsBand]

I did work up a script to do the transcoding to h264 then remux over to .ts using ffmpeg......works well.....except that the timeline in NPVR does not seem to align correctly to the actual timeline and skipping is sporadic.....but space reduction is averaging about 60% less than the native ts.

[mvallevand]

I did work up a script to do the transcoding to h264 then remux over to .ts using ffmpeg......works well.....except that the timeline in NPVR does not seem to align correctly to the actual timeline and skipping is sporadic.....but space reduction is averaging about 60% less than the native ts.

ffmpeg doesn't write a ts timeline to spec. Perhaps try my writeTime utility to create a Timing.Info file which will help NextPVR create a timeline an help mvpmcx2 with skipping.

martin

[whurlston]

Never thought of that....but it works nicely and only adds a few seconds on to the conversion process......now I just need to see how I can work it into the NextPVREncoder routine.....

Here is the ffmpeg class I created for YouTube. It redirects a WebRequest.GetResponse() to ffmpeg's console input so you would have to modify it for your needs. If you do, make sure you change the Notify() messages too. It also does a pseudo progress by checking output filesize.