H.264 via R5000...working in Beta?

[DualQuad]

I installed the beta on my desktop machine and imported some H.264 captures that I acquired from my main SageTV box using an R5000.

When imported as video, I get an Error that indicates there was a problem rendering video for playback.

I was wondering, is anyone with an R5000 box having any luck with the 6.0 Beta playing back h.264 content natively? If so, what's your secret?

Thanks in advance,
DQ

[camTexas]

I haven't yet. I think Kirby was trying and having some initial problems. I don't know if Kirby has had any luck since then. I'm out of the country until the end of the month so am Sageless (didn't get a Placeshifter liscense before I left ). Stuck lurking and wishing I could test v6 myself.

Oh well hopefully someone will have a "how-to" by the time I get back.

[Mark SS]

Qian mentioned that he was making some changes to accomodate h.264 via DVB-S. I think this was fixing the demuxer so the changes would probably fix your issues though I couldn't be certain.

[Kirby]

It should work in the next beta release build. The problem is that the H264 from the R5000 is encapsulated into an MPEG-2 Transport Stream, and in 6.0.11 build, those MPEG-2 TS files are still played with the built in media player in sage, and not the SageTVPlayer (mplayer). That has been changed from what I was told by support, and it should work for live and recorded material. Just waiting on that next build now!

[jdonovan]

Originally Posted by Kirby

It should work in the next beta release build.

Do you know which release .11 .12 ?

I've got .12 now, and still am having trouble with .264 playback.

[Kirby]

Last I was told last night was that it was working with test files I sent them in the next release build they are testing. Just hold tight

[NEOSG]

Thanks for your efforts Kirby & SageTV crew.

My wife is getting tired of losing channels as they switch to MPEG4 with no way to view them in sage from the various clients.

last week it was Home & Garden, wonder what's next

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by NEOSG

Thanks for your efforts Kirby & SageTV crew.

My wife is getting tired of losing channels as they switch to MPEG4 with no way to view them in sage from the various clients.

last week it was Home & Garden, wonder what's next

Likely to see FOOD go over to H264 this week. And you might also see some new HD in the next few days too

Also there should be a new version of the R5000 app coming along, I'll be testing it tonight onwards.

[NEOSG]

Yeah, I saw Scott's comments in the uplink thread on Food. hope it waits until Sage has H264 support built in.

Good luck on R5000 app stuff:-)

[Kirby]

In case anyone is wondering, H.264 from the R5000 is still not working 100% in 6.0.13 beta. Unless I have something configured wrong. I am waiting to hear back from support on this still, but testing last night showed no improvement.

[NEOSG]

Thanks for the update

[lobosrul]

I now have h.264 (from a file) playing back ok, but the sound is still low on 6 channel AAC. I dont know if that really applies to r5000 playback though.

[Rob]

Originally Posted by Kirby

In case anyone is wondering...

Oh yes, I'm definitely wondering and I appreciate you following up on it and letting us know.

I'll upgrade to V6 just as soon as this is confirmed to work.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

I now have h.264 (from a file) playing back ok, but the sound is still low on 6 channel AAC. I dont know if that really applies to r5000 playback though.

What filters/codecs are you using?

[DualQuad]

x.14 version has been released but I don't see any H.264/R5000 mention in the notes.
Has anyone tried the newest release with the R5000 setup?

Thanks,
DQ

[Kirby]

Not tested it. I can make the H264 files play very well in WMP, but when I force Sage to use a decoder like the Cyberlink H264 decoder, or Nvidia (from 93.71) playback fails. I've been busy testing other things so I havent had time to work more on getting Sage to support H264 TS files, but if I understand everything correctly, if I am able to build a filter graph in graphedit and play the files, sage should be able to do the same. Dropping an H264 TS into graphedit produces a graph using the Cyberlink H.264 decoder on my system, so I know that decoder has the highest merit. Just dont know what else to do to make Sage work.

[jdonovan]

Originally Posted by DualQuad

x.14 version has been released but I don't see any H.264/R5000 mention in the notes.
Has anyone tried the newest release with the R5000 setup?

Thanks,
DQ

I've tried it on x.14 and my R5000 recordings are not working well. I can play them back, but often have choppy video, audio-unsynched, or can't FF/RW within the clip.

I am having decent luck with coreavc, and media player. However, the deinterlacing is not working well, and the WAF is quite low. The recordings are all NBC primetime, sage shows them as being 1080p, but elecard shows them as interlaced.

I've got no good way to figure out which one is right. I'd find it interesting if dish was broadcasting 1080p, as none of thier STB's can display above 720p/1080i.

[Kirby]

Your NBC would be 1440x1080i. Sage doesnt seem to identify all material correctly, I have seen this as well.

I have tried forcing Sage to use the Cyberlink H264/AVC decoder from PowerDVD7, and it wont play H264 files. Nvidia decoder wont play them (from 93.71 drivers). And going the ffdshow route didnt work either. Yet I can watch the same shows in WMP very nicely. I might try the Elecard filters again, been a while since I tried those.

Disappointing really...

[jdonovan]

Originally Posted by Kirby

Your NBC would be 1440x1080i. Sage doesn’t seem to identify all material correctly, I have seen this as well.

I might try the Elecard filters again, been a while since I tried those.

When I tried the elecard filters, only the mpeg-2 filter showed in setup as an available option. How do you use the elecard avc filter from within sage?

Right now I'm using core avc + media player classic, but it is a lot less featured than the sage playback tool... but at least I can watch my locals.

When food goes to mpeg-4 the WAF on the use an external player will go to zero... and I'll have to come up with another more workable solution.

Originally Posted by Kirby

Disappointing really...

Terribly disappointing. I suspect there really aren't a lot of R5000 users out there compared to the rest of the user base, so I can't fault sage for not putting a lot of time/effort to a smaller segment of their market.

[Kirby]

You can force the addition of extra decoders with a line like this:

videoframe/additional_video_filters=CyberLink H.264/AVC Decoder (PDVD7)

Of course you would need to substitute in the Elecard filter. I havent had luck with anything in Sage though, Cyberlink, Nvidia or Elecard.

As for a small user base, I think you need to add in the folks in Europe, because I believe they are getting H.264 in MPEG-2 TS files from some sources there too (DVB stuff).