Support: Mobile Web Interface V2 iOS Streaming

[jreichen]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

... (maybe Safari on a Mac?)...

Yes it works on Safari on the Mac. QuickTime X is not available for Windows so the streaming won't work on Safari in Windows. (This is in the FAQ).

[jreichen]

Originally Posted by ukmgranger

Also, I have an appleTV 2, and love the fact that using eyeTV i can play live TV etc to it using airplay. I have tried to do this using the mobile web interface, but appleTV doesn't seem to like it. Any ideas?

Can you explain more about what you tried in the mobile web interface?

[peternm22]

jreichen,

I'm still noticing quite a significant quality difference between this and AirVideo. I found this thread on the AirVideo forums about their ffmpeg settings. Could you possibly compare them with the settings you use?

http://www.inmethod.com/forum/posts/list/3386.page

Also, since ffmpeg is open source there seems to be a lot of different versions floating around. Could it be possible that AirVideo has tweaked their version of ffmpeg to optimize it for tasks like this? Would it be possible to have an option for us to choose our own ffmpeg.exe (but it would default to the SageTV transcoder)? This could fix some of the quality issues.

[jreichen]

Could you take screenshots of each when the video is in fullscreen mode? Press the power and home buttons at the same time to take a screenshot - in case you didn't already know.

I've compared the video conversion parameters with AirVideo before and they're almost the same.

It's also possible that the iOS media player selected different bitrates when playing back from AirVideo vs. the SageTV Mobile Web Interface.

I've avoided requiring manual configuration and tweaks to make the plugin more intuitive to use. Hopefully it means an easier-to-use product and less time required to support and fix the product.

I'm skeptical that a different ffmpeg would produce different results. AirVideo didn't change any of the encoders or decoders, they basically added support for the segmenting required by HTTP Live Streaming. Last time I checked AirVideo uses a little older version of ffmpeg than Sage does.

That said, I'm working on other things right now but I'll add it to my enhancement list.

[peternm22]

I actually didn't know how to take screenshots, pretty cool, thanks!

I've attached screenshots from both Air Video and the Web Interface streaming. Both screenshots are taken from the same recording (a 1080i recording via the R5000) over my local wifi network. I let the video play for a couple minutes before taken the screenshots. I tried to take both screenshots as close to one another as possible.

If you open up both screenshots at the same time in different tabs and switch between them you can see the The Web Interface is noticeably softer (very apparent around the text). Audio on the web interface streaming sounds a little hollow and far away, it's hard to describe but I can definitely tell the difference.

[beda]

Sorry...I don't intend to hijack the tread...

I got this TiSageTV running today on wifie's iPad. Back end is SageTV 7 / HD300 running on a HP smartserver EX495 and I understand the streaming for the app is coming from here...

I noticed that the movie library structure seems to influence whether the TiSageTV will play the movie or not - all my movies are stored as VOB files but in 2 slightly different structures which doesn't upset the HD300's ability to play back the movies. Is seems to matter for TiSageTV, however.

This library structure will play back on TiSageTV - example

- .../Drama/Gran Torino/GranTorino.VOB

This structure will not play back on TiSageTV - example

- .../Drama/Jurrasic Park 1/TS Video/VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VOB ect

The HD300 plays either library structure, but the later library doesn't pass beyond the 'Loading' stage on the iPad.

Reformatting my library format would be a major pain to accomodate TiSageTV. Anyone knows of other tricks in the book?

[jreichen]

Originally Posted by peternm22

I actually didn't know how to take screenshots, pretty cool, thanks!

I've attached screenshots from both Air Video and the Web Interface streaming. Both screenshots are taken from the same recording (a 1080i recording via the R5000) over my local wifi network. I let the video play for a couple minutes before taken the screenshots. I tried to take both screenshots as close to one another as possible.

If you open up both screenshots at the same time in different tabs and switch between them you can see the The Web Interface is noticeably softer (very apparent around the text). Audio on the web interface streaming sounds a little hollow and far away, it's hard to describe but I can definitely tell the difference.

Sorry I haven't replied. I don't know why I didn't see your response. I do see the difference. I haven't seen that on my HDHR recordings but never looked that closely. I don't have an HDPVR either so it may be the digital to analog conversion.

Could you get the ffmpeg command used in each case using a tool like Process Explorer?

[jreichen]

Originally Posted by beda

Sorry...I don't intend to hijack the tread...

I got this TiSageTV running today on wifie's iPad. Back end is SageTV 7 / HD300 running on a HP smartserver EX495 and I understand the streaming for the app is coming from here...

I noticed that the movie library structure seems to influence whether the TiSageTV will play the movie or not - all my movies are stored as VOB files but in 2 slightly different structures which doesn't upset the HD300's ability to play back the movies. Is seems to matter for TiSageTV, however.

This library structure will play back on TiSageTV - example

- .../Drama/Gran Torino/GranTorino.VOB

This structure will not play back on TiSageTV - example

- .../Drama/Jurrasic Park 1/TS Video/VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VOB ect

The HD300 plays either library structure, but the later library doesn't pass beyond the 'Loading' stage on the iPad.

Reformatting my library format would be a major pain to accomodate TiSageTV. Anyone knows of other tricks in the book?

I've looked into this before and the VOB is basically an MPEG2 file so it's not much different than playing back TV recordings. However, when you start getting into the VIDEO_TS folder structure with VOBs and IFOs it's much more complex. I don't plan on doing anything for DVDs stored in this format. I wish it was easier to do because my DVD library is also in this format.

[peternm22]

Originally Posted by jreichen

Could you get the ffmpeg command used in each case using a tool like Process Explorer?

Here is the command line for Air Video:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\AirVideoServer\ffmpeg.exe" --conversion-id d60b2d64-e739-4021-b493-f50e857bce43 --port-number 46631 -threads 4 -flags +loop -g 30 -keyint_min 1 -bf 0 -b_strategy 0 -flags2 -wpred-dct8x8 -cmp +chroma -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -refs 1 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -subq 5 -partitions +parti4x4+parti8x8+partp8x8 -trellis 0 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -qcomp 0.6 -map 0.0:0.0 -map 0.1:0.1 -ss 0.0 -i D:\\Sage\\Recordings\\Mantracker-JustinandKyle-6044478-0.mpg -cropleft 0 -cropright 0 -croptop 0 -cropbottom 0 -s 480x360 -aspect 1.3333334 -y -f mpegts -vcodec libx264 -bufsize 512k -b 1200k -bt 1300k -qmax 48 -qmin 2 -r 25.0 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192k -ar 48000 -ac 2 -

When using your streaming plugin though, SageTranscoder.exe and ffmpeg.exe don't show any command line options in Process Explorer. Hopefully you'll be able to compare the above to your streaming options, since I don't have a way of finding them (unless you can suggest something).

Thanks.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by peternm22

Here is the command line for Air Video:

Any chance you could get it for a .VOB file or for some audio file?

[peternm22]

Ask, and you shall receive:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\AirVideoServer\ffmpeg.exe" --conversion-id 17ac3db3-bf76-46c6-923f-d34824ccfda7 --port-number 46631 -threads 4 -flags +loop -g 30 -keyint_min 1 -bf 0 -b_strategy 0 -flags2 -wpred-dct8x8 -cmp +chroma -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -refs 1 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -subq 5 -partitions +parti4x4+parti8x8+partp8x8 -trellis 0 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -qcomp 0.6 -map 0.0:0.0 -map 0.1:0.1 -ss 0.0 -i "D:\\Sage\\Imports\\Music\\DVD\\Visual Karma 1\\VIDEO_TS\\VTS_02_2.VOB" -cropleft 0 -cropright 0 -croptop 0 -cropbottom 0 -s 480x360 -aspect 1.3333334 -y -f mpegts -vcodec libx264 -bufsize 512k -b 1200k -bt 1300k -qmax 48 -qmin 2 -r 25.0 -acodec libmp3lame -ab 192k -ar 48000 -ac 2 -

That is for a .vob file that I ripped from a DVD. I don't have any audio files setup for Air Video so I can't really help there.

Hope that helps you.

[peternm22]

I just did a quick comparison, and it looks like the command line (apart from the file name, and conversion ID) is identical for the .mpg file and the .vob file.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by peternm22

I just did a quick comparison, and it looks like the command line (apart from the file name, and conversion ID) is identical for the .mpg file and the .vob file.

Thanks! Indeed, the parameters are the same, so I'm not sure why the iOS streaming plugin can't handle the .vob... Unless SageTV isn't actually returning the .VOB as the main file, but one of the support ones, and the plugin would have to sort through the segments or something...

[peternm22]

I think the easiest way to test all of this is to have an option in the iOS streaming plugin to choose another copy of ffmpeg. That way we can narrow down if the SageTV transcoder is the issue, or if there is another problem somewhere.

[jreichen]

Tell me if I'm way off base here. I just copied a VOB (1 of many) from a DVD to my import folder. SageTV displays it in the list of Videos. Why isn't it in the list of DVDs? Same thing for an mpg I ripped from a DVD? Does it need to be in a VIDEO_TS folder even though I'm not ripping the whole DVD?

At any rate, they both play in TiSageTV.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by jreichen

At any rate, they both play in TiSageTV.

So you are saying that TiSageTV will stream both if they are considered imported videos, but if they are officially recognized as DVD it won't work? Then I guess the filename might be just the folder structure or such, which you can probably tell from the ffmpeg command line...

[jreichen]

You can see the file path through the web UI. It looks like DVDs have a path that ends with a folder named VIDEO_TS. The media streaming plugin tries to transcode that folder as a media file because that's what's returned by MediaFileAPI.GetMediaFileForID().

If the contents of the folder are a full DVD with menus and multiple VOBs, then I can't stream that. However, if it's a single video file then I could stream that file. The problem is I haven't followed the forums when it comes to DVD ripping so I don't know all the possibilities for what goes in that folder. If we can define that then I can get it working.

[jreichen]

If you've had trouble with seeking or audio in your recordings, this fix in 7.1.8 beta might resolve your issue:

7. Fixed bug in SageTVTranscoder where it wouldn't always handle seeking properly in multi-program transport stream files or default audio stream selection (these are generated by some network encoders, specifically the CableCard one)

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by jreichen

The problem is I haven't followed the forums when it comes to DVD ripping so I don't know all the possibilities for what goes in that folder. If we can define that then I can get it working.

I'd say just make it work with your own DVD collection for now, and you can refine it later...

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by jreichen

If you've had trouble with seeking or audio in your recordings, this fix in 7.1.8 beta might resolve your issue:

would this help seeking issue on an hd300 extender?