Problems with Channel 7 stream in Australia

[ballfam]

I have been having issues with Matt Huisman's Australian channel 7 IPTV stream for a few weeks, and I wondered if anyone has found a solution. The stream will record for about 30 secs, and then the video freezes and the audio keeps going for a few seconds; after that, everything is back in sync, and then it happens again around 30 secs later. I have had similar issues before with these streams, and sometimes creating an extra with ffmepeg resolves it, but not this time. I have even tried to transcode to an mp4 container after the fact, but it doesn't fix the issue. 

I suspect the Channel 7 stream has been changed to do something weird, and it re-sets the time-line every 30 secs causing some kind of re-sync.

@sbiddle I know you are using the Australian streams with NextPVR, have you seen this issue? Do you know how to solve it? As I remember, you are not using Matt's links, do you have a link for a channel 7 stream that works OK with NextPVR?

Thanks

[mvallevand]

This is probably the most asked question recently I am surprised a forum search didn't lead you to this thread and possible solution https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.ph...#pid586451

Martin

[ballfam]

Thanks Martin, not sure why I didn't find that thread, probably just using the wrong search keywords.

The problem seems to be slightly different, but maybe this will fix it. I started back on 6.1.1, and on that version it would record about 30 secs, and then just stop; then I updated to 6.1.5 and I thought it solved the issue, but now it records the whole show and the video freezes every 30 secs or so, but the audio continues to play, then a second or two later, the video skips a whole bunch of frames and suddenly catches up with the audio, then it's all good for about 30 secs, and it all happens again. Using an extra through ffmpeg with the following does not fix the issue:

Code:

<extras>
    <channel id="mjh-seven-syd" tvg-id="mjh-seven-syd" tvg-logo="https://i.mjh.nz/.images/seven-syd.png" tvg-chno="7" group-title="Sydney" name="Seven" x-tvg-url="https://i.mjh.nz/au/Sydney/epg.xml.gz">
      <command>ffmpeg</command>
      <args>-re -v panic -i https://i.mjh.nz/seven-syd.m3u8 -codec copy -c:s copy -f mpegts -</args>
    </channel>
</extras>

I'll try the updated Nshared.ddl from the other thread to see if it fixes the problem.

[mvallevand]

The root of the problem is the same. The URL's that Matt Huisaman kindly scrapes and proxies for you are are designed for playback using the custom HTML5 player for each of the channels in a browser. Since NextPVR expects standard m3u8 files if they aren't then issues will arrive.

Good luck, however if ffmpeg as an Extra doesn't work you might still have issues and might need to see if a program like streamlink instead of ffmpeg will help.

Martin

[ballfam]

Updated NShared.dll didn't help. I'm going to install streamlink and play with that to see if it helps.

[ballfam]

OK, I fixed it with streamlink, but it took a little bit of work. Streamlink shows that there are several streams, and it chooses 720 as "best", the problem is that the default 720 stream seems to have that freezing issue, but I noticed another stream called 720p_alt; seems like Matt has kindly added and alternative 720 stream, but the problem is both NextPVR and streamlink (and ffmepeg), by default, will choose the one that causes an issue. This would probably also work with ffmepg with the right parameters, but the right thing to do is choose the alt stream. This extra fixes the issue:

Code:

<extras>
    <channel id="mjh-seven-syd" tvg-id="mjh-seven-syd" tvg-logo="https://i.mjh.nz/.images/seven-syd.png" tvg-chno="7" group-title="Sydney" name="Seven" x-tvg-url="https://i.mjh.nz/au/Sydney/epg.xml.gz">
      <command>streamlink</command>
      <args>-o "-" https://i.mjh.nz/sevenml-FAST.m3u8 720p_alt</args>
    </channel>
</extras>

Note that it asks streamlink to use 720p_alt instead.

Martin, thanks for the streamlink hint, I actually like it better than ffmpeg, it seems easier to use.

[mvallevand]

That's an odd one, I would suspect it is not Matt that builds the HLS link with the sublinks though so watch for changes. It is pretty easy to change the

Streamlink is the way to go for extras for sure, it still is based on ffmpeg but they are more proactive to the odd m3u8 streams we see and even look int specific troublesome URL's. Installing python and dependencies is the only issue some will have.

Martin

[ballfam]

On ubuntu server, it just installs all the dependencies and works right out of the box using "apt install streamlink". I did have some issues with dependencies on my Debian stretch box, but I'm retiring that in favor of Ubuntu anyway.

[Spaldo]

I just wanted to jump on and say in the last 3 days I have started getting pretty much the same issue with Matt's channel 9 (sydney alt) stream. I will have a look and see if I can work out if I can plug this fix into my system

[Spaldo]

Updating the DLL didn't fix the issue. So I will try the streamlink method but with channel 9. Where does the 'extra' go?

Edit; found this https://github.com/sub3/NextPVR/wiki/Extras

Now I just have to work out @ballfam's method for channel 9