PrimeNetEncoder - HDHomeRun Prime Network Encoder

[jvl711]

Hi,

First I would like to thank all of the forum members that beta tested for me. Their feedback was very helpful in ensuring that my first release was as stable as possible. I need to give special thanks to nyplayer. He went above and beyond in his testing efforts and helped me work through many of the issues.

Overview

PrimeNetEncoder is a network encoder for HDHomeRunPrime. It is designed to run on both windows and linux and to have minimal requirements. The encoder uses the hdhomerun_config application and ffmpeg to capture the stream. Since ffmpeg is only capturing the stream and writing to a file PrimeNetEncoder has very low overhead.

PrimeNetEncoder can be configured to handle any number of HDHomeRunPrime tuners. If you are going to use more than one HDHomeRun Prime you will need to modify the tuners.count property, and create new entries for the tunners in the PrimeNetEncoder.properties file, and create new tuner entries in the sage.properties. Forum members have tested and confirmed that PrimeNetEncoder can also work with other HDHomeRun tuners. Please check the forums for notes on compatibility.

PrimeNetEncoder also offers the option to transcode to h.264 in realtime. This does requires a reasonable amount of CPU resources to accomplish. Transcoding is configurable at the tunner level. There are settings available for quality and performance.

Guides
Note: Installation instructions are included in the download.
There is a very good guide to setting up the PrimeNetEncoder on Linux by SageWizdom http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62737
Below this post is a guide on setting up Non Prime DLNA OTA tuners by nyplayer
Known Issues

1. Please read the install guide for specific issues.

Upgrading

See any specific upgrade notes for the version. To upgrade from a previous version you should replace the PrimeNetEncoder.jar with the new one. You should run the program once so that it can add the new properties to the PrimeNetEncoder.properties file.

Changelog

Version 2.0.0 - Download

• Added quit command. This will attempt to exit gracefully if the tuners are not currently recording.
• Added an local address override to the properties file. This is to workaround some issues with certain Linux distros, and possibly machines with multiple IP addresses
• Change property mediaserver.transfer default value from true to false. Some machines seem to be struggling with transferring to sage using this method.

Version 1.2.5 (RC1) - Download

1. Increased UDP receive buffer size to 262140
2. Added properties for ffmpeg.outputbuffersize, ffmpeg.inputbuffersize and mediaserver.outputbuffersize
3. Set default size for input/output buffers to 32768
4. Added signal quality output to the STATUS command
5. Set a short timeout on UDP read to try and reduce latency
6. Added a PrimeNetEncoder.bat file with recommended settings to pass to java

Version 1.2.4 (Beta) - Download

1. Fixed mediaserver.transfer = false.
2. Added the ability for the OutputWatcher to reset the tuner if data is not produced in a timely fashion
3. Enhanced the exception handling in the TunerOutput thread. This was causing issues with keeping the UDP port open
4. Set thread priority to TunerOutput to MAX. Set thread priority to Watcher to MIN
5. Cleaned up some of the code that was double buffering streams. This might have been causing performance issues
6. Added timeout to the UDP connections

Note: PrimeNetEncoder.properties was removed from the download. Users will need to run the application once to generate a default properties file. Documentation was updated to reflect this.

Version 1.2.2 (Beta) - Download

1. Added media server transfer
2. Using STDIN/STDOUT to transfer data between ffmpeg and PrimeNetEncoder
3. PrimeNetEncoder is handling Stream from HDHomeRun instead of ffmpeg
4. Added ffmpeg setting analyzeduration and probesize
5. Added tuner locking (Note: I do a force unlock when ever I start a new recording)
6. Modified discovery logic to only respond to discovery requests if there is not an active connection with SageTV server

Note: If you are upgrading from a previous version I recommend that you remove the current tuner entries from Sage.properties file and allow SageTV to use network encoder discovery to add the tuners. This ensures that the right properties are added to SageTV. If you are using Windows Firewall please review the install guide for addition ports that need to be opened.

Version 1.0.1 (Beta) - Download

1. Better error handling when binding port is already in use
2. Added setting for delay to wait for ffmpeg to fully start
3. Added scaling property to the transcoding to allow resizing video
4. Adding setting for changing codec used for transcoding

Version 1.0.0 - Download

1. Initial Release