.mp4 looks awful

[VikingCrown]

Hello all, i am currently up to date on the latest RC and I can now get my .mp4 files to play (yay for that) however they look like crap over my MVP. They look great when I play them on my pc with other video programs. Is this just a drawback of playing them through the MVP? Or am I missing something?

[basset]

Originally Posted by VikingCrown

Hello all, i am currently up to date on the latest RC and I can now get my .mp4 files to play (yay for that) however they look like crap over my MVP. They look great when I play them on my pc with other video programs. Is this just a drawback of playing them through the MVP? Or am I missing something?

It sounds like it is transcoding the .mp4 before it sends it to you ... maybe you're suffering from the same problem as a couple of us in that sometimes, even when you're on a LAN, the server (or who ever decides) decides it is better to transcode with a crappy bit rate .. and thus the bad picure.

As an example ... on my system with XP 3000+ 512MB ram connected over a 100Mbit LAN connection, my setup decides (even though I have the encoding set to LAN - full quality) to transcode at < 400 kbits/s and my pre-recorded programs look like watercolor pictures and at this stage there is no way I can tell it not to do that.

I've seen one other person running 6.1.7 that has the same issue with is MVP.

Thanks
Basset

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by basset

It sounds like it is transcoding the .mp4 before it sends it to you ... maybe you're suffering from the same problem as a couple of us in that sometimes, even when you're on a LAN, the server (or who ever decides) decides it is better to transcode with a crappy bit rate .. and thus the bad picure.

As an example ... on my system with XP 3000+ 512MB ram connected over a 100Mbit LAN connection, my setup decides (even though I have the encoding set to LAN - full quality) to transcode at < 400 kbits/s and my pre-recorded programs look like watercolor pictures and at this stage there is no way I can tell it not to do that.

I've seen one other person running 6.1.7 that has the same issue with is MVP.

Thanks
Basset

We'd love to hear a bug report on this and see some logs files. http://sagetv.com/bugs.html

[basset]

Originally Posted by Narflex

We'd love to hear a bug report on this and see some logs files. http://sagetv.com/bugs.html

Will no as soon as I get home

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by VikingCrown

Hello all, i am currently up to date on the latest RC and I can now get my .mp4 files to play (yay for that) however they look like crap over my MVP. They look great when I play them on my pc with other video programs. Is this just a drawback of playing them through the MVP? Or am I missing something?

The MVP only plays Mpeg2 files natively. Everything else is transcoded and that is most likely the difference you are seeing. The HD extender should solve that problem but it isn't available yet AFAIK.

[dvd_maniac]

I am interested in setting up a couple of the MVPs but this and other issues are holding me back.
Can somebody tell me what bitrates and profiles your .mp4 files are that are either having playback issues or look good transcoded to the MVP.

I have some older ASP versioned .mp4 files, but most of my movie collection and all of my TV series are encoded using AVC version.

[Opus4]

When playing files that must be transcoded to be played on the MVP, you could also check this setting: Detailed Setup -> Server -> Media Extender Conversion Quality. It defaults to Standard Quality, so you could try setting it to High Quality. The High setting will use more network and server resources, but if your system can handle it, maybe it will look better.

- Andy

[tmiranda]

FWIW - My MVPs work great playing DivX .AVIs produced by the Sage "Convert" function as well as files produced by Nero Recode. I am actually completely amazed by the quality of the files produced by Nero, I can compress a 4GB DVD down to 700MB and the quality degrdation is negligible.

[dvd_maniac]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

FWIW - My MVPs work great playing DivX .AVIs produced by the Sage "Convert" function as well as files produced by Nero Recode. I am actually completely amazed by the quality of the files produced by Nero, I can compress a 4GB DVD down to 700MB and the quality degrdation is negligible.

Can you confirm that you are recoding to AVC version of mpeg-4 or just ASP?

[tmiranda]

Just checked, it's ASP.

[VikingCrown]

Originally Posted by Opus4

When playing files that must be transcoded to be played on the MVP, you could also check this setting: Detailed Setup -> Server -> Media Extender Conversion Quality. It defaults to Standard Quality, so you could try setting it to High Quality. The High setting will use more network and server resources, but if your system can handle it, maybe it will look better.

- Andy

Thanks for this Andy, I'll give this a try when i get home from work.

[tmiranda]

I just encoded a test file using Nero recode AVC using all of the default settings. It played on my MVPs just fine. Quality is really good. I don't think I can see any difference between the .mp4 and the original .VOB.

I'm using "Standard Quality" for the MVP conversion. My server specs are in the signature.

This certainly is not an exhaustive test but it seems to work for me.

dvd_maniac - What AVC settings are you using? I'll try using the same ones to see what results I get.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by VikingCrown

Hello all, i am currently up to date on the latest RC and I can now get my .mp4 files to play (yay for that) however they look like crap over my MVP. They look great when I play them on my pc with other video programs. Is this just a drawback of playing them through the MVP? Or am I missing something?

You might consider using the Roxy99 1200-bit two-pass Mpeg2 to high quality Xvid AVI files. The process can be offloaded to secondary computers, looks great on an MVP, and reduces the file size to 20% of the original size.

Dave

[VikingCrown]

Andy,
I changes that setting and there was a noticible increase in the quality of the playback. I think the only thing making the playback look bad now is from the MVP itself only having an output of S-Video which doesn't translate well to my HDTV. I guess i'll just have to wait like everyone else for the HD extender. Until then, everything working great! Keep up the good work Sage Team!!!