Placeshifting H.264 1080i files over your LAN

[wayner]

I have never had much success at Placeshifting 1080i H.264 files from an HD-PVR to other PCs on my LAN. I believe that ffmpeg in V6 had issues with this format and my V7 server didn't appear tohave enough horsepower.

I know have a new i5 CPU based server so I should have more than enough CPU, but I am not getting smooth playback to a PC. Do you need a fast PC to play back such a file? This CPU is about a 3.0 GHz single core Pentium that is about 4-5 years old - should this CPU be able to handle the playback?

[Spectrum]

I bugged this during beta and the response was that it is due to the way the back end handles the h264 video. It has nothing to do with it being 1080i or 720p; I actually can't get solid playback of 480p content recorded by my HDPVR via placeshifter over a Gb connection if transcoding is not enabled. The fix is to either force transcoding and watch at reduced quality or to use sage client which is designed for lan playback.

In regards to your CPU, it all depends on the quality of the transcode. I have Sage running on a 3.0Ghz Core 2 Duo and it can handle the transcodes fine.

[wayner]

I can't get 1080i content to play back over my LAN from one fast PC to another, with or without transcoding.

[Spectrum]

What's the CPU usage like on the server with transcoding enabled? Playback will be choppy and ugly if the CPU can't keep up. Also keep in mind that 4-5 year old 3GHz chip is != to a 1-2 year old 3.0 GHz chip. Clock speed doesn't mean everything; the instruction set, especially the SIMD instructions, can make a huge difference in performance.

[wayner]

My server is an i5-660 so it is a quad 3.33 GHz which is plenty fast. CPU usage is around 30% whne tring to transcode. Client PC is a C2D E8400 which should also be fine.

[Spectrum]

Apparently my reading comprehension is off, you stated the i5 in the OP which should be enough to handle the transcode. If you're seeing seeing 30% CPU usage on a single core it's not pegging out, but if you are seeing 30% usage total, it may be maxing out a core and struggling. The ffmpeg version used is single threaded so it is bound by the limit of a single core.

Either way I am out of ideas though

[rdww60]

Wayner, are you only placeshifting TV shows, or are you placeshifting backed up movies too? Do the titles show up in PlaceShifter as HD? Did you have to play with the codecs to get this to work, and if so was it on the SageTV server?

Thanks.

[wayner]

I believe the problem is both TV shows and movies. I didn't install any codecs on my server - I am using Sage's default for everything. My server OS is Win7 Pro.