Recording IPTV

[lemmy999]

I have 7.0.1.241229 running on a Win 10 machine.  I have an HD HomeRun for over the air content and IPTV service where I have about 20 channels added.  I know that a .ts file is created when I am recording form the HD HomeRun. I usually play it back using Kodi on an Nvidia Shield.  I often watch while the recording is still in progress and rarely have issues.  The .ts files generally play well in Kodi but somtimes do not play well in other players like VLC. Mainly the issue is when trying to skip or jump to a different time.  

But when I record from one of the IPTV channels the .ts file seems to have problems even in Kodi and the NPVR browser client.  When I watch the IPTV channel live it is fine.  But when I record the channel, the video will play back in the NPVR browser client, but I can't skip through it. I will also have issues playing it back in Kodi on the Shield and also VLC.  When I look at the .ts file in MediaInfo it doesn't really look any different than the .ts files recorded from the HD Homerun.  Is recording IPTV channels just a bad idea, or am I doing something wrong?  

On one recording I started watching it on Kodi about 20 minutes into a 30 minute recording.  The first 20 minutes of the video played fine and I could jump forward and backward.  But at about 20 minutes in, it started jumping around and freezing and having all kinds of issues.  I also noticed the computer where NPVR stores the .ts files, the .ts.map file had not been deleted like it usually is.   

One other thing that I should mention is that I do have a really old version of Kodi on the Shield which therefore has an old version of the NextPVR add-on

[mvallevand]

There have been in-progress improvements in pvr.netxtpvr and there should be no reason to use an old version of Kodi on a shield.

Without Kodi debug and NextPVR logs there are no Kodi problems.

Martin

[lemmy999]

Thanks. I update Kodi and see if that helps. But it is odd that the recordings even seem to have issues when playing back in the NPVR browser client and VLC (well VLC has more problems than when playing the over the air recording).

[mvallevand]

It depends on the source, some IPTV is crap ie PlutoTV.

Martin

[lemmy999]

I said I didn't see much difference in the videos created from over the air recordings and the IPTV recordings in mediainfo, but that isn't correct. The over the air ones are MPEG2 and AC-3 whereas the IPTV recordings are AVC video and AAC audio.

[mvallevand]

That is typical, in fact AVC/AAC should be easier to play from a good source.

Martin

[lemmy999]

I was also thinking that AVC/AAC would be easier to play. That is why I am a bit surprised. I don't know exactly how NPVR worked, but I assumed that it is just saving the data to a file that is coming from the HDHR or IPTV source with no real modification. The part that confuses me is why Kodi and the NPVR browser client can play the live stream from IPTV perfectly, but so often has issues with the .ts file that NPR is saving to disc.

If I select "720p (.mp4)" under Settings -> Transcoder -> Recording Auto Transcode, and my source is 720p, will NPVR be able to quickly convert the .ts file to an mp4 without re-encoding? My computer is a few years old and if re-encoding occurs it will take quite a while.

[mvallevand]

Auto transcode is pretty brute force encoding, for mp4 it is actually two pass to web format mp4.

You need your own post process to simply remux or set custom properties.

Martin

[lemmy999]

Thanks. I will check out the Advanced section of the Wiki and try to figure out how to setup post processing scripts.