Time to make Touch web Service less experimental

[sub]

Are you talking about the progress bar on the new progress popup? I'll double check my NeedsRendering()

It's not a bug in your plugin. It's just a limitation in the way the touch stuff currently works. It pretty much only returns a screen to a web client each time it receives stimulus like button press. ie, it's not updating the screen automatically when stuff just happens by itself.

[whurlston]

Good to know. Thanks.

[fred250]

Inaccurate seeking when streaming due to crappy ts-timelines seem to be a problem in most client players that can't benefit from using timing.info.
I've made some tests using my own streamer and I think I may have a solution.
It's quite straight forward.

From the client just before firing the seek request to the player.
Using a web service, prime NextPVR with the desired seek position in time and a GUID identifying the client. Store the values in a list for later use.

When the streamer gets the request look up in the list using GUID and just start streaming from the corresponding byte found in timing.info.

In my tests I left the response headers untouched and let the client think it got the requested range - only changed the position from where to start reading the file. I wouldn’t say the player ever noticed.
This way we can get ~1 sec seek precision in most players.

/Fred

[mvallevand]

IMO, a smart server combined with a smart or semi-smart client would be disaster.

Martin

[fred250]

IMO, a smart server combined with a smart or semi-smart client would be disaster.

Martin

Please elaborate...

/Fred

[mvallevand]

Short answer,

the smart client seeks by bytes,
smart server says you must want this time and streams bytes from time
smart server assumes location is correct and makes subsequent skips base of the same offset.
if the demux reads the file and the time line is off it might do an incremental seeks trying to find a good time
repeat until demux is happy

It's better to have a timing.info aware player or a totally dumb player that responds to a smart streamer but not both.

Martin

[reven]

very interested in this, if you manage to fix some seeking issues, hopefully that problem on samsung tvs

[fred250]

Short answer,
the smart client seeks by bytes,
smart server says you must want this time and streams bytes from time

OK so far...

smart server assumes location is correct and makes subsequent skips base of the same offset.

I don't se why why there will be subsequent skips on the same offset.
Every skip triggered by user or the player itself is a new request as far as I know and the primed value is used once and discarded.

if the demux reads the file and the time line is off it might do an incremental seeks trying to find a good time
repeat until demux is happy

I see no problem with that, it's pretty much what happens today anyway with crappy time lines.
IMO it can only get better.

It's better to have a timing.info aware player or a totally dumb player that responds to a smart streamer but not both.

I totally agree. But I don’t think I'll ever be successful in persuading LG, Samsung and every other manufacturer to implement support for timing.info or even a seek by byte function.
I'd love to see a smart streamer capable of snappy and accurate seeking, preferably taking a .ts file transcoding it on the fly to some html5 playable format without lag or CPU-loading. For now that it's just a dream, and I'll stick with things I have some small clue about.

Using my suggested solution the bytes received is normally only seconds off from what the player expected and the playback position if time line is somewhat accurate will be spot on whereas without timeing.info correction the bytes are exactly the requested ones but the playback position may be way off from the requested time, and possibly cause the player to seek again in it's hunt for the playback position the user requested.

My suggested solution is not optimal but it's doable and dead accurate during the tests on my LG TV anyway.

/Fred

[reven]

Fred any chance I can get a hold of your server app to try out on my samsung client? I have two sample recordings from users that just dont seek at all well on samsung tvs, so could test out your solution on those.

[fred250]

Fred any chance I can get a hold of your server app to try out on my samsung client? I have two sample recordings from users that just dont seek at all well on samsung tvs, so could test out your solution on those.

Hi reven,

The streaming server isn't really in that state at the moment. I just today started to experiment with timing.info. The tests I made was by faking how timing.info is read from the .ts -file and more.
I will let you know when there is something you can try.

I do have a Samsung 2012 bluray. (E is it?) Any suggesting of simlpe tests I can make?
I don't have any developing tools up an running, and really no intenstion to install right now.

/fred