New to EWA..

[rwalker777]

Have a few issues...

If the source is an H264 video (didn't try a .mkv) in a .ts, I can't find any combination of settings with either vlc or wmp that will stream the video. I have vlc 0.86i (latest I think) on the server and WMP 11 or VLC 0.98a on the client. I can stream mpeg2 videos fine. Any ideas?

Roy

[UncleJohnsBand]

Have a few issues...

If the source is an H264 video (didn't try a .mkv) in a .ts, I can't find any combination of settings with either vlc or wmp that will stream the video. I have vlc 0.86i (latest I think) on the server and WMP 11 or VLC 0.98a on the client. I can stream mpeg2 videos fine. Any ideas?

Roy

What settings are you using to stream?

What are your machine specs? I will assume the .ts is an HD recording and that will take some horsepower to transcode.

Is your client wired or wireless?

[rwalker777]

What settings are you using to stream?

What are your machine specs? I will assume the .ts is an HD recording and that will take some horsepower to transcode.

Is your client wired or wireless?

I have tried about 30 different combination of settings. Tried just about every combination I could come up with and tried it with both VLC and WMP. I have tried changing the buffer size, I tried going to 0.10 scaled resolution. Most combination give me an error, like VLC will give me a unable to decode or something like that.

The server is an AMD X2 (2.5ghz I think). The recording is a 720p recording off my HD-PVR box.

I am streaming over the Internet. My home connection is a 20/5mb FiOS connection, so I have plenty of upstream.

I just finished streaming a 2 hour long mpeg2 .ts recording. It was recorded off a QAM tuner card in 720p HD (was the Lost season premier).

Have you successfully streamed a HD-PVR recording?

Thanks,
Roy

[UncleJohnsBand]

I have tried about 30 different combination of settings. Tried just about every combination I could come up with and tried it with both VLC and WMP. I have tried changing the buffer size, I tried going to 0.10 scaled resolution. Most combination give me an error, like VLC will give me a unable to decode or something like that.

The server is an AMD X2 (2.5ghz I think). The recording is a 720p recording off my HD-PVR box.

I am streaming over the Internet. My home connection is a 20/5mb FiOS connection, so I have plenty of upstream.

I just finished streaming a 2 hour long mpeg2 .ts recording. It was recorded off a QAM tuner card in 720p HD (was the Lost season premier).

Have you successfully streamed a HD-PVR recording?

Thanks,
Roy

I have FIOS as well with the 20/5 package....I haven't tried from outside with an HD recording but I know that even internally my HD .ts recordings scaled back to a .50 display with a .H264 stream with the LAN speed are a little choppy from my laptop using wireless. Reducing the video size .25 seams to run smoothly.

My GBPVR server is connected via wire.....if you server is wireless then there will be issues there as well depending on what your stream settings are at.

I noticed setting the priority to above normal helped since I have some other processes running on the GBPVR server....setting it to above normal will give the transcode process priority on the machine.

If you figure to transcode an HD hour long show into H264 via a batch process on my server takes 3 hours it is understandable that the real-time transcoding/streaming would struggle.

One option would be to record programmes you want to stream on the SD channels rather than the HD channels.

[rwalker777]

I have FIOS as well with the 20/5 package....I haven't tried from outside with an HD recording but I know that even internally my HD .ts recordings scaled back to a .50 display with a .H264 stream with the LAN speed are a little choppy from my laptop using wireless. Reducing the video size .25 seams to run smoothly.

My GBPVR server is connected via wire.....if you server is wireless then there will be issues there as well depending on what your stream settings are at.

I noticed setting the priority to above normal helped since I have some other processes running on the GBPVR server....setting it to above normal will give the transcode process priority on the machine.

If you figure to transcode an HD hour long show into H264 via a batch process on my server takes 3 hours it is understandable that the real-time transcoding/streaming would struggle.

One option would be to record programmes you want to stream on the SD channels rather than the HD channels.

I was able to stream a Mpeg2 720p HD show across the Internet, using 0.5 scale and it played pretty seamlessly. So are you thinking that the H264 .ts recordings are going to take so long to even start trans-coding that the clients are timing out? I am getting an unable to connect, it doesn't say anything about timing out.

Roy

[UncleJohnsBand]

I was able to stream a Mpeg2 720p HD show across the Internet, using 0.5 scale and it played pretty seamlessly. So are you thinking that the H264 .ts recordings are going to take so long to even start trans-coding that the clients are timing out? I am getting an unable to connect, it doesn't say anything about timing out.

Roy

When you say H264 .ts recording.....do you mean a .ts recording that you are transcoding to H264.....or do you mean a .ts file that is already transcoded to H264 and you are trying to stream the already transcoded file?

If you mean a .ts file (that has not already been transcoded) and it contains an HD program I am thinking that there is so much data to transcode that there may be continual jerkiness.....but I think this can be overcome by setting a play buffer.......if using VLC you can set the buffer in the settingings under http transfers.

[rwalker777]

When you say H264 .ts recording.....do you mean a .ts recording that you are transcoding to H264.....or do you mean a .ts file that is already transcoded to H264 and you are trying to stream the already transcoded file?

If you mean a .ts file (that has not already been transcoded) and it contains an HD program I am thinking that there is so much data to transcode that there may be continual jerkiness.....but I think this can be overcome by setting a play buffer.......if using VLC you can set the buffer in the settingings under http transfers.

I have a Hauppauge HD-PVR (aka 1212), so recordings from it are in a .ts container, encoded with H.264 video and AC3 audio. I am unable to stream any of these recordings, regardless of the trans-code options I select on the streaming page, to either VLC or WMP.

Has anyone successfully streamed a recording off a HD-PVR?

Roy

[rwalker777]

I have a Hauppauge HD-PVR (aka 1212), so recordings from it are in a .ts container, encoded with H.264 video and AC3 audio. I am unable to stream any of these recordings, regardless of the trans-code options I select on the streaming page, to either VLC or WMP.

Has anyone successfully streamed a recording off a HD-PVR?

Roy

So testing from the LAN, I can press "PLAY" which just serves up the native video and VLC plays it (it just about maxes out the CPU since there is no HA support in VLC). I can get it to give me a video stream selecting H264 video with transcode option H264, but is so choppy that is just not watchable. Without hardware encode support in VLC, you are going to need a quad core proc (assuming VLC is multi-threaded) to watch any HD recordings off a HD-PVR.

One final question...

Is it possible to change the protocol to HTTPS for the "PLAY" button? It always changes it to HTTP even though I am accessing it over HTTPS.

Thanks,
Roy

[UncleJohnsBand]

I have a Hauppauge HD-PVR (aka 1212), so recordings from it are in a .ts container, encoded with H.264 video and AC3 audio. I am unable to stream any of these recordings, regardless of the trans-code options I select on the streaming page, to either VLC or WMP.

Has anyone successfully streamed a recording off a HD-PVR?

Roy

Ok...so then it would appear that your source file is already compressed using .H264.

This means when you choose to stream your GBPVR host PC will first de-code the .H264 encoded video (requires CPU power to do that) and then re-encode it to stream it at your desired stream settings (requires more CPU power).

I would think you would be better off just using the play feature and let the Client PC decode the file being sent.

So testing from the LAN, I can press "PLAY" which just serves up the native video and VLC plays it (it just about maxes out the CPU since there is no HA support in VLC). Roy

This ties to what I mentioned above....I think this would be the prefered way to access these types of files.

I can get it to give me a video stream selecting H264 video with transcode option H264, but is so choppy that is just not watchable. Without hardware encode support in VLC, you are going to need a quad core proc (assuming VLC is multi-threaded) to watch any HD recordings off a HD-PVR.Roy

Yep....the decoding and the re-encoding for the stream will consume a bunch of power.

One final question...

Is it possible to change the protocol to HTTPS for the "PLAY" button? It always changes it to HTTP even though I am accessing it over HTTPS.

Thanks,
Roy

What are you using to Host EWA? The native EWA web server does not offer HTTPS.

Also...you are adding even more processing overhead accessing via HTTPS since the HTTPS stream itslef is encrypted and then needs decrypted and then you are de-coding the video....way overkill. Unless you have a real need for HTTPS I would stay away from it for video playing/streaming.

[rwalker777]

Ok...so then it would appear that your source file is already compressed using .H264.

This means when you choose to stream your GBPVR host PC will first de-code the .H264 encoded video (requires CPU power to do that) and then re-encode it to stream it at your desired stream settings (requires more CPU power).

I would think you would be better off just using the play feature and let the Client PC decode the file being sent.



This ties to what I mentioned above....I think this would be the prefered way to access these types of files.



Yep....the decoding and the re-encoding for the stream will consume a bunch of power.



What are you using to Host EWA? The native EWA web server does not offer HTTPS.

Also...you are adding even more processing overhead accessing via HTTPS since the HTTPS stream itslef is encrypted and then needs decrypted and then you are de-coding the video....way overkill. Unless you have a real need for HTTPS I would stay away from it for video playing/streaming.

Problem with just playing the native H264 stream is bandwidth. Everything I record is HD, so even with H264, I am looking at 7-8mb/s. I only have 5mb/s of upstream, so can't just stream the native video over the Internet (at the house it works great).

I have an Apache proxy server on my Linux box that I use to redirect me to all the web systems in my house (security, GB-PVR, robots, etc.). I have HTTPS setup on it, so I don't have to use a high port (80 is blocked). This does not add any additional load to the GB-PVR system. Any way to have it check the protocol and use that as well as the URL?

Roy