Channels with AC3 give laggy video and doesn't work when streaming

[jeppetinghoej]

Hi

I had a weird problem with two channels that could not be streamed in Kodi and web browser. It gave no errors (Kodi just hangs and web browser got stuck on "Requesting stream for channel. Standby..."). The channels plays fine in both WinTV and NextPVR. When troubleshooting, I found out that the channels contain two audio tracks - MPEG1 and AC3. When I change to AC3, the video gets very laggy with no sound in NextPVR. I believe this is causing the streaming problem. Still, it plays fine in WinTV.

I've tried all the available decoders for AC3:
https://pasteboard.co/H9surPb.png

(bear in mind that all the other decoders are not set up correctly for testing purpose).

It somehow looks like NextPVR is trying to use the wrong decoder, because when I disable AC3 decoding, it doesn't give me an error, and the same problem persists.

Recording the channels work perfectly fine. Here is the codec info from VLC:
https://pasteboard.co/H9svHdo.png

Here is a recording of the problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX8evsku5zI
First, it plays normally with MPEG-1 track, and then I change to AC3.

Log files from NextPVR taken 5min. after video recording.
https://www.jottacloud.com/p/jeppe-honor...87acae603e

Hope some one can help me out here. Let me know if you need any info - I tried my best to collect the most essential stuff.

[sub]

Is it the same if you're playing back a recording, or just live TV?

Honestly though, this will just be a NextPVR playback issue. Kodi will be receiving the full stream, and any problem it's having will be strictly a Kodi-side problem. When it's going to Kodi, NextPVR just sends it a copy of the broadcast stream, and doesn't even look at it. It doesn't know what audio tracks it has.

[jeppetinghoej]

Hi, thanks for your reply.
I just checked - the recording is playing fine in NextPVR, VLC etc with both sound tracks.
It is just funny that the exact same channels that cause playback issues in NextPVR are also causing issues in both Kodi and NextPVR browser client.

[sub]

It is just funny that the exact same channels that cause playback issues in NextPVR are also causing issues in both Kodi and NextPVR browser client.

Yep, I'm pretty sure it's just a coincidence though. They're probably both having issues for similar reasons (like something quirky about this broadcasters AC3 encoding or something), but when it comes to playback in Kodi, it's just getting the raw unfiltered stream.

If you play a NextPVR recording in Kodi (which plays ok in NextPVR), does is play ok?

[jeppetinghoej]

When I try to watch the "broken" channels in Kodi, Kodi hangs like this:
https://pasteboard.co/H9sYt15.png and I'm forced to alt + f4 where a crash often occurs. Like it is expected to receive the stream, but gets none.

The NextPVR recording plays perfectly in Kodi.
You might be right. I still want to point out that the channel plays fine in WinTV with both audio tracks. However, WinTV is not an option with regards to Kodi.

Can it has something to do with the fact that the AC3 track is 5.1?

[jeppetinghoej]

I can provide a Kodi log if necessary.

[mvallevand]

There does seem to be a problem on the NextPVR side

2018-02-26 18:34:32.802 [DEBUG][68] target file does not exist (nothing to stream): D:\Temp\live-TV2|DanmarkHD(Østjylland)-4124-1.ts

This is two seconds after the stream start so maybe a longer wait is required.

Playing from NextPVR shows about two seconds but much longer to start playing properly

2018-02-26 18:55:34.598 [DEBUG][1] StartLiveTV@1 (TV 2 | Danmark HD (Østjylland))
2018-02-26 18:55:36.440 [DEBUG][1] StartLiveTV@done
..
2018-02-26 18:55:40.520 [DEBUG][1] Hiding OSD.

Martin

[jeppetinghoej]

Hi Martin

Do you mean that I switched the audio too fast? Or what kind of wait are you referring to? I've tried to let the stream run for a couple of minutes before switching with no luck.

[sub]

2018-02-26 18:34:32.802 [DEBUG][68] target file does not exist (nothing to stream): D:\Temp\live-TV2|DanmarkHD(Østjylland)-4124-1.ts

You might need to rename that channel. I suspect that vertical bar is causing an issue with the live tv buffer filenames.

[mvallevand]

Hi Martin

Do you mean that I switched the audio too fast? Or what kind of wait are you referring to? I've tried to let the stream run for a couple of minutes before switching with no luck.

No not you, but it doesn't look like there is any streaming after those 2 seconds the Kodi.log would help. Does it work if you turn off timeshifting?

Also sub's post on the filename came to my mind (except that file worked in NextPVR)

Martin