Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Users

MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy`

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udovdh at xs4all

Feb 4, 2007, 5:31 AM

Post #1 of 13 (1059 views)
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MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy`

Hello,

As I wrote before asx streaming works, even on my freshly installed system.
Even though that this MythTV system is a bit faster (EN12000 versus
SP8000) the asx stream playback still is choppy on the windows system
that is displaying the stream.
When playing the stream from a windows share the playback is OK, so the
windows box is not a problem.

How can I make the stream play more 'stream-like', without the
choppyness? It looks like some buffer is just too small?
Who has advice?

Udo
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treythompson at gmail

Feb 5, 2007, 12:53 PM

Post #2 of 13 (1045 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

> Hello,
>
> As I wrote before asx streaming works, even on my freshly installed system.
> Even though that this MythTV system is a bit faster (EN12000 versus
> SP8000) the asx stream playback still is choppy on the windows system
> that is displaying the stream.
> When playing the stream from a windows share the playback is OK, so the
> windows box is not a problem.
>
> How can I make the stream play more 'stream-like', without the
> choppyness? It looks like some buffer is just too small?
> Who has advice?

And to add, does this do any transcoding on the fly? I I've searched
the Wiki and the only posts I see there related to this are about
other packages, Mythstream, or custom pre-done flash conversions.

I've traced the link for the current SVN release down to the
handler.pl script, and it seems that just opens the mpg file and sends
it to the webserver?
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Feb 5, 2007, 3:17 PM

Post #3 of 13 (1043 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

Trey Thompson wrote:
> And to add, does this do any transcoding on the fly? I I've searched
> the Wiki and the only posts I see there related to this are about
> other packages, Mythstream, or custom pre-done flash conversions.

Nope. The current asx is just a wrapper for the stream downloader,
since it seems that some players don't like playing files straight from
a download URL.

On-the-fly transcoding will happen as soon as support for file
maintenance is added to the backend. Hopefully by .21, but you never know.

-Chris

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treythompson at gmail

Feb 5, 2007, 7:01 PM

Post #4 of 13 (1018 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

> Trey Thompson wrote:
> > And to add, does this do any transcoding on the fly? I I've searched
> > the Wiki and the only posts I see there related to this are about
> > other packages, Mythstream, or custom pre-done flash conversions.
>
> Nope. The current asx is just a wrapper for the stream downloader,
> since it seems that some players don't like playing files straight from
> a download URL.
>
> On-the-fly transcoding will happen as soon as support for file
> maintenance is added to the backend. Hopefully by .21, but you never know.

Ahhh, thanks for the explanation Chris. Very interesting! Just out
of curiosity, what do you mean "file maintenance"?
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Feb 5, 2007, 9:00 PM

Post #5 of 13 (1032 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

Trey Thompson wrote:
> Ahhh, thanks for the explanation Chris. Very interesting! Just out
> of curiosity, what do you mean "file maintenance"?

The biggest problem with a *good* implementation of on-the-fly
transcoding is caching of the transcoded files. I'd rather not do this
in mythweb, since it would mean writing a cache-management routine,
along with having to update my personal backup scripts to ignore things
like flv, avi, etc.

Instead, having the backend be aware of transcoded files (or better yet,
transcode them itself) would mean that auto-expire, etc. could be made
aware of the other files and manage removing them, etc.

-Chris

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cpinkham at bc2va

Feb 5, 2007, 10:09 PM

Post #6 of 13 (1026 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

* On Mon Feb 05, 2007 at 09:00:07PM -0800, Chris Petersen wrote:
> The biggest problem with a *good* implementation of on-the-fly
> transcoding is caching of the transcoded files. I'd rather not do this
> in mythweb, since it would mean writing a cache-management routine,
> along with having to update my personal backup scripts to ignore things
> like flv, avi, etc.
>
> Instead, having the backend be aware of transcoded files (or better yet,
> transcode them itself) would mean that auto-expire, etc. could be made
> aware of the other files and manage removing them, etc.

This would fall under the plan with the recordedfile table idea that I've
been working on which would allow you to store multiple files per
recording. You could have a user job that automatically transcoded a
recording to .flv and then inserted a record into the recordedfile table.
MythWeb would notice that there was a .flv file (by looking at a type or
description field) and could allow the user to stream that file
via MythWeb. Files in this table would be accounted for in Myth the same
way that the original recording file is. The would be deleted with the
original file, their space would be taken into account by the Auto-Expirer,
you could play any one you wanted from the Watch Recordings screen, etc..

--
Chris Pinkham
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treythompson at gmail

Feb 6, 2007, 6:46 AM

Post #7 of 13 (1020 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

>
> * On Mon Feb 05, 2007 at 09:00:07PM -0800, Chris Petersen wrote:
> > The biggest problem with a *good* implementation of on-the-fly
> > transcoding is caching of the transcoded files. I'd rather not do this
> > in mythweb, since it would mean writing a cache-management routine,
> > along with having to update my personal backup scripts to ignore things
> > like flv, avi, etc.
> >
> > Instead, having the backend be aware of transcoded files (or better yet,
> > transcode them itself) would mean that auto-expire, etc. could be made
> > aware of the other files and manage removing them, etc.
>
> This would fall under the plan with the recordedfile table idea that I've
> been working on which would allow you to store multiple files per
> recording. You could have a user job that automatically transcoded a
> recording to .flv and then inserted a record into the recordedfile table.
> MythWeb would notice that there was a .flv file (by looking at a type or
> description field) and could allow the user to stream that file
> via MythWeb. Files in this table would be accounted for in Myth the same
> way that the original recording file is. The would be deleted with the
> original file, their space would be taken into account by the
> Auto-Expirer,
> you could play any one you wanted from the Watch Recordings screen, etc..

Thanks for the great explanations Chris and Chris. I appreciate it.

bobnvic at gmail

Feb 6, 2007, 8:57 AM

Post #8 of 13 (1031 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

On 2/6/07, Chris Pinkham <cpinkham [at] bc2va> wrote:
> * On Mon Feb 05, 2007 at 09:00:07PM -0800, Chris Petersen wrote:
> > The biggest problem with a *good* implementation of on-the-fly
> > transcoding is caching of the transcoded files. I'd rather not do this
> > in mythweb, since it would mean writing a cache-management routine,
> > along with having to update my personal backup scripts to ignore things
> > like flv, avi, etc.
> >
> > Instead, having the backend be aware of transcoded files (or better yet,
> > transcode them itself) would mean that auto-expire, etc. could be made
> > aware of the other files and manage removing them, etc.
>
> This would fall under the plan with the recordedfile table idea that I've
> been working on which would allow you to store multiple files per
> recording. You could have a user job that automatically transcoded a
> recording to .flv and then inserted a record into the recordedfile table.
> MythWeb would notice that there was a .flv file (by looking at a type or
> description field) and could allow the user to stream that file
> via MythWeb. Files in this table would be accounted for in Myth the same
> way that the original recording file is. The would be deleted with the
> original file, their space would be taken into account by the Auto-Expirer,
> you could play any one you wanted from the Watch Recordings screen, etc..
>
I don't see what on-the-fly transcoding necessarily has to do with
file management however. The transcode user jobs that are mentioned
above are not on-the-fly. I used user jobs for a while to produce
flash video for remote viewing until I changed to using vlc to
transcode files on-the-fly and this does not leave any additional
files behind to manage. Using on-the-fly transcoding resulted in less
wasted disk space and much less processor load since it only
transcoded those few files we actually wanted rather than every one.

I understand that the developers do not want to add another
dependency, especially one as large as vlc, however is there any hope
of providing an option in mythweb to support a mythstreamtv type of
functionality for those that do install vlc?

Thanks,
Bob C
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Feb 6, 2007, 9:19 AM

Post #9 of 13 (1039 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

> I don't see what on-the-fly transcoding necessarily has to do with
> file management however. The transcode user jobs that are mentioned
> above are not on-the-fly. I used user jobs for a while to produce
> flash video for remote viewing until I changed to using vlc to
> transcode files on-the-fly and this does not leave any additional
> files behind to manage. Using on-the-fly transcoding resulted in less
> wasted disk space and much less processor load since it only
> transcoded those few files we actually wanted rather than every one.

First off, VLC can't properly handle NUV files (it develops AV sync
issues). As far as I know, it's also incapable of interacting with
LiveTV or MythTV's cutlist/flaglist, either. A different solution is
needed in order to support the large number of MythTV users who still
use framegrabber cards and/or like to transcode their files to NUV.
Also, uncached on-the-fly transcoding is a HUGE waste of cpu resources
if more than one person is viewing files.

What Chris Pinkham said about user jobs is not directly in contradiction
to "on the fly" either -- it just means that when something is
transcoded on request via MythWeb, it's then cached so that the NEXT
time that someone wants to stream that file, it's already there and
waiting for you.

> I understand that the developers do not want to add another
> dependency, especially one as large as vlc, however is there any hope
> of providing an option in mythweb to support a mythstreamtv type of
> functionality for those that do install vlc?

I can tell you this right now: MythWeb will *never* officially add a
requirement for the beast that is VLC. Ffmpeg (which happens to be what
MythTV's own software encoding is based on) is more than enough for
transcoding to streamable formats.

However, the new more modular architecture in .21 should make it a LOT
easier for plugins like mythstreamtv to work.

-Chris

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udovdh at xs4all

Feb 7, 2007, 10:39 AM

Post #10 of 13 (1029 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

Trey Thompson wrote:
>> As I wrote before asx streaming works, even on my freshly installed system.
>> Even though that this MythTV system is a bit faster (EN12000 versus
>> SP8000) the asx stream playback still is choppy on the windows system
>> that is displaying the stream.
>> When playing the stream from a windows share the playback is OK, so the
>> windows box is not a problem.
>>
>> How can I make the stream play more 'stream-like', without the
>> choppyness? It looks like some buffer is just too small?
>> Who has advice?
>
> And to add, does this do any transcoding on the fly? I I've searched
> the Wiki and the only posts I see there related to this are about
> other packages, Mythstream, or custom pre-done flash conversions.
>
> I've traced the link for the current SVN release down to the
> handler.pl script, and it seems that just opens the mpg file and sends
> it to the webserver?

Playing the source mpeg from a samba share works just fine.
So it might be a buffering issue somewhere?
(Windows MP, some older version)
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Feb 7, 2007, 11:20 AM

Post #11 of 13 (1024 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

Udo van den Heuvel wrote:
> Playing the source mpeg from a samba share works just fine.
> So it might be a buffering issue somewhere?
> (Windows MP, some older version)

Possibly. I'll actually be modifying the streaming code before .21 so
that it pulls the file directly from the backend, rather than requiring
a locally-mounted version. But I have other things to get to before that.

-Chris

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udovdh at xs4all

Feb 24, 2007, 12:18 AM

Post #12 of 13 (928 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

Chris Petersen wrote:
> Udo van den Heuvel wrote:
>> Playing the source mpeg from a samba share works just fine.
>> So it might be a buffering issue somewhere?
>> (Windows MP, some older version)
>
> Possibly. I'll actually be modifying the streaming code before .21 so
> that it pulls the file directly from the backend, rather than requiring
> a locally-mounted version. But I have other things to get to before that.

Yesterday I installed 0.21-20070223.RS from Ramses Smeyers's repo
(http://ramses.smeyers.be/varia/mythtv-cvs/).
I noticed that asx playback stopped working and later I found an
instance of ffmpeg consuming a lot of my limited CPU resources (VIA Epia
EN12000).
Is there a relation between the recent svn update and ffmpeg being used?
How can I make the asx streaming work again an perhaps without choppiness?
Any ideas, tips, howto's?
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Feb 24, 2007, 2:01 PM

Post #13 of 13 (954 views)
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Re: MythWeb: asx stream is kinda `choppy` [In reply to]

Udo van den Heuvel wrote:
> Is there a relation between the recent svn update and ffmpeg being used?
> How can I make the asx streaming work again an perhaps without choppiness?
> Any ideas, tips, howto's?

It shouldn't be related.

MythWeb's asx streaming just sends a link to the .mpg download URL so
that media players can be told to play the file directly, rather than
having to wait for the whole file to finish downloading before playback
starts. It doesn't actually do any transcoding, etc.

-Chris

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