NextPVR disable transcoding

[Emmer]

Hi everyone,

i've been using nextpvr for a while now and it's very user friendly, but i've come to notice that it might actually be a little bit too user friendly by withholding some options.
So i'm here to gain some insight, perhaps the option is for good reason.

So in settings there's transcoding settings, which has a tickbox saying Avoid transcoding where possible (for better performance)
Which is nice, but it doesn't seem to be working the way i expected it to.

I'm running on a docker on ubuntu linux with an iptv m3u at the moment to test.
When i start a stream from kodi on another computer it fires up 8 ffmpeg processes (which is the transcoding i assume) (8 core machine) which immediately pegs all cores to 100%
This would indicate that nextpvr (or kodi, haven't ruled that out) deems it "necessary" to transcode.
However if i press stop, and just start the same channel again, it does not fire up the ffmpeg processes.

So in my mind that means it does not need to transcode this particular stream, which it could have tried in the first place.

So i have 1 question that perhaps someone might be able to help me with
is there a way to just outright disable transcoding? because it really isn't necessary

I thank you very much for your time and have a wonderful day

[mvallevand]

If Kodi is your client then it shouldn't be transcoding at all unless you have transcoding as your Kodi streaming option.

The first time you play an IPTV stream in NextPVR if it doesn't detect the that it is an mpeg-ts stream, ffmpeg may be used to download the stream if the source doesn't correctly support http HEAD commands. If it is mpeg-ts subsequent plays should be direct as well. If the file isn't mpeg-ts it may be transcoded.

Martin

[Emmer]

Thank you for your swift response, is there any debug option that i can look at to see why it behaves this way?
Because it litterally just is "press stop" and "press ok" in the kodi client, which changes the behavior.
I've added a bunch of cores so it doesn't effect the end user (me).

But it's much much faster changing channels and starting up when it's not using all cpu (and probably saves on the power bill in the long run )

Thanks again, really appreciated

[sub]

Thank you for your swift response, is there any debug option that i can look at to see why it behaves this way?

If you can try watching a channel, then post the logs, I'll check why it's using ffmpeg.

It is likely because there is something NextPVR doesn't like about your IPTV service, so it falls back to asking ffmpeg to convert the source to a stream type that NextPVR can handle.

[Emmer]

Thank you Sub, i've sent you a pm with the log files and some (perhaps) relevant information.

[Emmer]

In the mean time what i've done just to test things, is rename the ffmpeg binary just to see what would happen, which solves the issue actually, it's not really a proper solution.
But either nextpvr is robust enough to just supply another type of stream when it crashes when it can't find ffmpeg, or kodi just hammers till it gets what it wants? I can't really tell at this point.
But i found that quite interesting and perhaps something useful to share.

Thanks and have a great day

[mvallevand]

Kodi will make multiple open calls when starting a file, that's just the way it is. And sorry without the requested logs I can't help you with Kodi and I typically only support via public posts sub can be more accommodating, but I don't see making special cases.

Martin

[sub]

When NextPVR tries to directly connect to your IPTV service, it's basically rejecting it. I'm not sure why that would be. There is obviously something different about your IPTV service that doesn't like the way NextPVR normally connects to an IPTV service. (like it's only allowing certain 'user agent' strings or something)

Code:

2022-08-02 18:30:24.571    [DEBUG][43]    WebException: System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.
   at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
   at NShared.IPTVRecorder.ConnectToURL(String url, Int32 depth)

When this happens, NextPVR falls back asking ffmpeg act as an intermediary.

It'll take a closer look in a bit.

[sub]

Actually, I've realised this is a bug I've already fixed for the next release. (related to the multiple chained redirects your IPTV service is doing)

[Emmer]

Hi Martin, sorry i had sent the logs to sub instead of public because i couldnt really find a way to reliably and quickly anonymize them.
So i thank you, and sub as well of course for your input and help.

As far as i can see it seems to be a combo with the way my iptv provider responds and kodi, but at this time my (very) crude workaround works (renamed ffmpeg within the docker image) for my specific case for now.

And at some point the next release will be published in the docker and will get updated eventually.

So all is well.

Again, thank you very much for your help and have a great day