Playback of Transport Stream MPEG2 Recordings

[reggie14]

I've been having problems playing back the transport stream mpeg2 files generated by my firewire stb. The files play back nearly perfectly on my HD100, the server can transcode them to an MVP, and I can play then back from Windows Media Player. But they won't play back on my software SageTV Clients about 80% of the time. I have the Haali splitter installed, and it's suppose to be invoked for transport stream files, and I'm using the PowerDVD7 decoder. Does anyone have any ideas?

[reggie14]

This is just a bump. Does anyone out there have a set up that works well with transport stream files?

[reggie14]

Here's one last bump/update. I tried a few more files and realized that I had been testing Sage with a different recording file than the one I was playing back in WMP. It looks like the same files that work in WMP work in Sage.

But, most of my firewire recordings don't play back in either application. Sometimes the file plays back fine, sometimes the audio plays back but not the video, and sometimes neither audio nor video play back. But, the HD100 plays back everything without difficulty.

I tried putting the files through graphedit. Sometimes a normal graph appears, sometimes one basically appears without the video part of the graph, and sometimes I just get an error message when I try to select a video file. As you'd expect, these match up with how well they play back in WMP.

I imagine there's problems with the mpeg2 stream, but the fact that the HD100 plays the files back implies it's not too severe. Is there a different splitter I could use besides the Haali splitter?

[SWKerr]

You might try posting your setting.

Overlay? EVR, OS version.

Do you get any different results playing with the different codecs you have installed? I know with Vista the only thing that looks good for me on my HDHR files is nVidia. The ArcSoft ones bring up the Blue screen when I try to play one and the Sage and Avio ones just don't look good. EVR on Vista with the sage built in one gives me a black screen with sound. XP seems fine with most things although with some tearing.

I am also running the Beta Demuxer.

[reggie14]

This is a Vista 32-bit box using the VMR renderer (I've tried EVR too), the haali splitter, and PowerDVD 7 and 8 codecs.

I need to do some more testing with different codecs. I was trying to do that last night, but it looked like Sage ignored any settings for the mpeg2 decoder set in the detailed setup. I tried changing it to the Microsoft decoder, but when I checked the logs they still indicated it was using the PowerDVD7 decoder. WMP was first using PowerDVD7 settings, but after installing PowerDVD8 it started using that decoder.

But, based on my experiences with graphedit, it seems like it's not a decoder issue but rather the splitter. Of course, that's just a guess. I would expect graphedit to come up with proper graphs for files if it was just the decoder having problems.

This weekend I'm going to try to get WMP and Sage using a different splitter. I tried to do that a little this week, but I don't think I was having any luck. When I uninstalled Haali and reinstalled it without MPEG-ts support, none of the firewire recorded files would play. But, I do have other mpeg splitters installed. I might have set the merits on them such that they'd never be used. I'll have to check that out. I'm not sure if any of them support ts files. I did some google searches for Haali alternatives for mpeg ts files, but I didn't come up with anything.

[SWKerr]

I am running Vista 32 on one client as well and I think I have it working pretty good at this point. I have used a lot of those tools in the past and figuring out what is really working and changing it is a pain in the butt.

I developed a easier system for the last build, Simplicity. I only installed the stuff I intended to use. DirectX, Java, TME full edition. Avivo came with the video driver install and I eventually removed it. Nothing else so I knew what was really being used. I eventually installed nVidia codes when I could not get good playback with mpeg2 HD files. I did not hack the properties file this time and used only the GUI in Sage. Sometimes I think we mess up more than we fix by over tweaking the setup. Of course when it is not working you need to do something.

I also settled on Overlay because I still get some tearing in VMR and EVR although it is better in EVR. The picture looks better than I have ever had it. The picture looks good on my new Windows 7 setup and Sage client with just TME installed. (Although the TME viewer will not launch it is using EVR and the TME codec with great result so far.)