Recordings screen vs Videos screen playback decoding

[vintdiesel]

Hello All,

I am trying to figure out why my client PC refuses to playback .mp4 files from the Recordings screen, but plays back fine from the Videos screen.

They also play OK using other players outside of NPVR including the Win10 Microsoft Films and TV app.
.ts files plays back OK in NPVR from either screen.

I have tried setting decoders to LAV, Microsoft and Cyberlink with no change.

FYI, I archive recordings to .mp4 using ffmpeg to save disk space and have done for many years with no issues. They all play back from the Recordings screen on my server PC with no problems.
I have a feeling that it got hosed after a Win10 major update and the PC was off for several months when we moved house so the updates came thick and fast.
All machines are running NPVR V3.9.2, so I am not sure if moving to V4.x.x will help me out.

Can anyone lead me in the right direction? Will post logs next if it helps.

[sub]

When you play from the client's Recording screen, it's streaming the video from the server (since there is no mapping to a recording drive in a standard install). This client/server streaming expects the files to be .ts format. (there is no generic way to do it for all formats - you'd need special code for each type of file you intend to support streaming playback)

When you play from Videos, you're just playing a file, so it doesn't need to do anything special.

[vintdiesel]

Thank you for the quick reply sub.

So reading that, despite what I thought, I never had .mp4's ever working from the Recordings screen from the client. You learn something new each time.

In that case when I am using the client, I will just go to the Videos screen, and play them from there.

[mvallevand]

Maybe you aren't learning something new

https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.ph...post494893

Martiin

[vintdiesel]

Maybe you aren't learning something new

https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.ph...post494893

Martiin

BUSTED! :o I am afraid too much red wine has clouded my memory from 3 years ago. A thought I was the OP on this issue and hadn't searched for my own post embedded in a reply, but all the same I can see it is still no change as it was back then. I will have to look for something else to blame on Windows Updates!

[pBS]

would it work if he made a mapping to a recording drive? or with <RecordingDirectoryTranslation>?

[sub]

would it work if he made a mapping to a recording drive? or with <RecordingDirectoryTranslation>?

I'd entirely forgotten about that. Yes, he can probably use that to make the Recording screen play files via a share instead of streaming.

[vintdiesel]

I'd entirely forgotten about that. Yes, he can probably use that to make the Recording screen play files via a share instead of streaming.

Now that's got my interest! Funny I was thinking the other day, maybe there could be an option for a PC-Client to stream or play from files directly off the server instead. I shall check further, thanks guys.

[vintdiesel]

Excellent, got it going. Took me a while to get it to work but my config.xml file line entry:

<RecordingDirectoryTranslation>d:\temp~\\someserver\someshare</RecordingDirectoryTranslation>
now reads
<RecordingDirectoryTranslation>V:\My Recordings~\\MEDIA-PC\My Recordings\</RecordingDirectoryTranslation>

and now I can play the mp4's from the Recording Screen on the client

[sub]

Great!