SageMC:MPEG-2 Playback Woes

[fyodor]

Hi,

Whenever I try to playback MPEG-2 content (HD transport streams) in SageMC, I get an error "Sagetv cannot render the video content for playback". It is the same with live tv, recorded TV, and imported files from other DVR programs. I am using a nvidia 7600gs with overlay. The problem only occurs when using SageMc.

It seems that SageMC is using directshow playback rather than the mplayer. I can tell because the Purevideo icon appears on the taskbar when I try playing files back(it doesn't do this when I'm using the default STV). Is there anyway to get it to default to mplayer playback or otherwise address this issue? I'd really like to be able to use SageMC.

Thanks much

F

[geogecko]

Welcome to Sage, and SageMC!

I do not think that SageMC changes the way TS files are played back in SageTV, unless of course, you have an external player enabled inside of SageMC?

Usually this playback error was fixed for me, when I just rebooted my machine. I remember like the first time I installed SageMC, I got the same problem, and a reboot fixed it all.

[fyodor]

Yeah, I've tried rebooting to no avail. The interesting thing is that the problem only happens if I start Sagetv with sagemc already as the STV. If I switch over to sagemc, it works ok until I load Sagetv again. Similarly, if Sagemc is in use, I can't just switch back to the default STV, I have to restart Sagetv again. This causes me to think that there may be something Sagemc puts in the sage properties.

I'm pretty sure that playback is different under sagemc since I can see the different filters on the system tray when I play movie files, whereas they don't show up when I'm using the default STV. It may be an indirect effect, but it seems to be using the dshow filters instead of mplayer.,

I'm not using an external player.

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by fyodor

It seems that SageMC is using directshow playback rather than the mplayer. I can tell because the Purevideo icon appears on the taskbar when I try playing files back(it doesn't do this when I'm using the default STV). Is there anyway to get it to default to mplayer playback or otherwise address this issue? I'd really like to be able to use SageMC.

Like Jason said, SageMC does not do anything 'special' for playing back videos (TS or not), it uses the 'MediaPlayer' API of the Sage core. So unless the default STV is handling playback of transport streams differently (Andy, would you know ?) I can't see any reason why it would behave differently ...

Dirk

[stanger89]

I don't think Sage has ever used mplayer for MPEG-2 files, only for mpeg-4 type files.

Sounds like you're probably changing decoders switching between STVs. Are you editing the properties file manually?

[fyodor]

I haven't been doing anything to the sage.properties file. I've also tried changing the decoders to different options through the detailed setup and I get the same playback error.