music channel playback issue

[snagglewest]

In addition to regular TV channels my cable co provides an assortment of music channels. SWMBO asked if I could add one to NextPVR.  That was easy as they show up as a regular TV channel, but I'm having problems playing them reliably.  The Kodi clients on both a OSMC Vero 4K and several Pi3 all have problems.  I'm guessing this might be more related to Kodi, but I'm not positive as I never played with them in V4.

They all start playing sound but don't show any screen for 15-20 seconds, then they usually drop the sound for 15-20 seconds, start sound again, and then finally show the video screen.  After playing audio for 20-30 seconds they then drop completely on average 2 out of 3 times.  Sometimes they play fine but even then it takes 45-60 seconds before the video screen will come up.  interestingly if I pull a stream directly through VLC both audio and video come active almost instantly and play with no problems.  As best I can tell the audio/video format is not the normal for a TV channel so I'm guessing that most likely has something to do with it too.  

Attached are screenshots showing the video format for both a normal TV channel and one of the music channels along with clean Kodi and NextPVR logs.  Both NextPVR and kodi were restarted and then I tried to play the music channel.  First attempt played about 1 min then died, the second attempt did the same and the 3rd attempt played fine.  After several minutes of playing I pulled both logs so they should only show those events.  I can do a screen record if it would help.

Version: 5.0.0.191018
Ubuntu 18.04 VM
HDHR Prime

  npvr.zip (Size: 250.77 KB / Downloads: 5)

[mvallevand]

I would suggest editing the database to turn one channel into a radio channels as a test. If you want to try this with a sqlite editor let me know. The buffers are often too big for audio when much video isn't needed.

Personally if you are getting these via an HDHR prime, I'd use another feature I haven't documented to play them directly and avoid any buffering.

Martin

[snagglewest]

First choice would be if Sub might consider adding native support for the music channels, surely I'm not the only one who's cable co provides music channels I'm ok with the command prompt, but sqlite is a bit out of my comfort zone so that wold be my last choice.

Whats this "undocumented" feature you mentioned?

[sub]

We don't have an equivalent type of channel here.

Do recordings from these channels play?

[snagglewest]

Never tried a recording before, but here's a 30 sec recording.  It opens in VLC and the video and audio start immediately.  It plays in Kodi, but the first 15 sec or so has no video, just black screen.  The web interface won't play it at all, says "streaming failed - transcoding exited" which isn't surprising.


  npvr-rec.zip (Size: 969.84 KB / Downloads: 2)

[mvallevand]

The way live streaming works with NextPVR and Kodi is it substitutes a web stream for a NextPVR stream to save a tuner and play audio much more efficiently and with the HDHR you can even substitute the HDHR stream (there are other issues here to make sure you configure the last tuner etc).

Ideally you still should toggle the radio field in NextPVR so that they show up in the audio channel list. In your case I probably would make and extras file for music choice since extras do support audio but that is another way.

As an example for the station you showed you could probably substitute any of the 100's of Christian radio stations on the net but if your provider uses Music Choice the url might be http://edge.music-choice-ac-chaina1.top....klist.m3u8 If that is the one you like it can even be added as IPTV and you will get faster startup.

Code:

<streams>
    <stream id="7425">http://edge.music-choice-ac-chaina1.top.comcast.net/AudioChannels/Ch-016/chunklist.m3u8</stream>
</streams>

to use the HDHR and leave it as the stream you want

<streams>
    <stream id="7425">http://192.168.1.13:5004/tuner2/v1935 </stream>
</streams>

Then you need to make a public folder where you installed NextPVR\wwwroot\public

And store either sames choice as LiveStreams.xml in that folder.

Restart Kodi and the substitution takes place when you hit play. Recordings aren't impacted.

Martin

[snagglewest]

I tried the LiveStreams.xml option by creating a "public" directory in /opt/nextpvr/system/wwwroot/.  I then restarted kodi and NextPVR for good measure.  

Code:

<streams>
    <stream id="7425">http://192.168.1.13:5004/tuner2/v1935 </stream>
</streams>

It worked in that it played, the audio started almost immediately (from Kodi), but it still took about 20-30 seconds for the video to show but that's not a big deal.  It also had some unintended consequences.  When the stream was playing no other clients could tune a live TV channel.  When checking the "device status" it showed "No devices are currently active".  I'm guessing that means NextPVR was trying to access the tuner that was being used by the already playing stream but NextPVR couldn't see it in use.

I guess I'm back to hoping Sub can work some of his magic in the code.   Would some way to toggle the radio field from the GUI be an option so the user doesn't have to dig into sqlite?

[mvallevand]

Yes I probably picked the highest priority tuner and not the lowest, it was more proof of concept but those 20-30 seconds are going to be an issue for live tv and I am not sure setting radio with video is good unless it reduces the amount of buffering that sub does.

For fun try the m3u8 file and see how that goes, it won't impact NextPVR at all. No need to restart NextPVR it doesn' know about this file.

Martin

[snagglewest]

The alternate stream didn't work, it kept displaying/playing the stream from the HDHR.  Tried googling around but found very little on a LiveStreams.xml file.

Code:

<streams>
    <stream id="7425">http://edge.music-choice-ac-chaina1.top.comcast.net/AudioChannels/Ch-016/chunklist.m3u8</stream>
</streams>

[mvallevand]

As I posted earlier you need to restart Kodi to reload LiveStreams.xml

It is not documented, up to now I am the only one using it.

Martin