MVP with Frameserver to get streaming?

[paperchaser]

Is there a streaming client that can offer a filehandle (frameserve) of its output to a transcoding mechanism (like ffdshow or virtualdub)?

could this be a way to get realtime internet streaming video working for the MVP? Currently, one can use net-transport or other recording streaming client to grab a stream but have to wait for entire file to download to transcode...i.e. no on-the-fly transcoding of the download.

If tools offer commandline options, could not such a technique possibly piggyback off of transcoding.bat mechanism with clever filenames to point to web streams?

Just thinking out loud.

[bluesxman]

Try avisynth. There are a few threads discussing this, have a search of the forums.

[bluesxman]

Can't seem to edit my post... Avisynth probably won't be any good - didn't read the original post properly! Maybe VLC??

[Ton]

I think both VLC and Mencoder can do that. Furthermore, they can both directly save in mpeg format (peforming the transcode at the same time as well).

It's on my list of things to do, but it'll be a while before I get to it...

[paperchaser]

Thanks, I'm familiar with those tools... never knew they had ability to grab a file off the web...can they deal with those .asx files that just list mirrors offering the stream?

I too am busy but will try this over the next few weeks. What I'll probably do is use a file called placeholder.avi and have transcoding.bat call a perl (activestate) script that will transcode the appropriate stream. I'll just have simple table where different filenames will result in different streams being called. I'm somewhat skeptical that the MVP won't disconnect if the transcoding doesn't keep up because of a slow downloading stream, but we'll see how it goes.

Not really sure what the point of all this is; its probably less trouble to just script a download/transcoding and watch when its all ready...but this would be cooler ;-)

[bluesxman]

I haven't played with VLC for quite a while, but thought you could save direct to an MPG? GBPVR via the MVP would then be able to playback this file whilst it was still being written to.

[Ton]

I think that's exactly what's being described.....

The placeholder.avi needs to be transcoded for the MVP, so the "transcode.bat" gets called.

Instead of starting an "ffmpeg" command-line, a mencoder or VLC command-line will be run, resulting in a temporary MPG-file being written

MVP will start (after the wait-time-out) playing the temporary file.

[pootle]

if got an XP3200+ with 1gig of ram in it and i've tried to transcode divx to mpeg and watch it over the MVP and i've had little success with it. Usually the problem is that the MVP catches up with the transcode before its finished transcoding and there for cuts out. Its just not in front enough. My solution was to convert everything to Mpeg until i find a more appropriate solution (still looking though ! ).

[paperchaser]

pootle-
this is a common problem covered in many forum threads. What has worked for me is:
1. put the divx on a different drive than your default gbpvr drive (eleminates r/w contention)
2. set output resolution to 360x240
3. if your divx has an mpv-friendly audio format, tell your transcoder to simply copy the raw audio rather than re-encode into something else. use gspot or similar tool to determine. I find most .mp3 and .mp2 audio will work on the mpv.
4. ultimately your box needs firepower, maybe kill unnecessary processes. forget about trying to transcode while comskip running.

There are many other approaches that have worked for other folks.

[UncleJohnsBand]

Is this an option.....it is really taking off and is a nice streaming solution....