Transcoding for miniclient users

[ojones]

So this thread has been pretty quiet last year or so but... with the prevent push flag set in the properties file, OpenDCT set to convert output to a compatible codec at a reasonable bit-rate, a very fast server and a router than can handle my site-to-site vpn I can get full-quality streaming to work MOST of the time using the miniclient loaded on a Sony/Android TV (hard wired lan to the router/vpn endpoint).

You need:
miniplayer/forced_max_push_size=0
miniplayer/min_bandwidth_for_no_transcode=1500000
miniplayer/wan_prevent_push=false

I've noticed that (depending on WAN network latency) the bandwidth detection can be off substantially. I don't mean its wrong but latency during testing can throw a wrench into the math. The magic here (I think) is the "=1500000". If I have my units right that's way lower than the bandwidth that should stream well but does a good job tricking sage into giving full quality streaming a try.

This is with a gigabit fiber uplink and 100-300mb/s cable downlink and latency +/- 60ms.

[ojones]

Follow-up - in OpenDCT I am using the ultrafast1080p setting.

While on the same bare metal VM host as my win2016 sagetv VM I keep OpenDCT in a separate UBUNTU VM (not using docker).

The ultrafast settings then are set to force transcoding on all streams (several places - read the comments).

I have this set to 12 threads at an average bit-rate of 6,400,000
And... out comes h264...

I probably should play with this more but it works (mostly).

[phantomii]

Thanks so much. I think this should do what i am looking for. Will give it a try and let you know how it works!

[phantomii]

So I made these settings and I have found most of the time I get high quality video at the remote location:

miniplayer/forced_max_push_size=0
miniplayer/min_bandwidth_for_no_transcode=1500000
miniplayer/wan_prevent_push=false

However, occasionally I get the much lower quality video and I am not sure why?

Also I am not sure how to adjust the ultrafast1080p settings and I have not found any references in a quick search. Limited time now but will look again tomorrow.

Thanks again!

[trk2]

I've been playing around with this and everything works great (HD stream with 5.1 audio) using a remote connection and a HD300. However, these settings don't seem to work with a traditional placeshifter client which still transcodes regardless of the internet speed connection? I travel often and would prefer to use the placeshifter client on my work laptop to be able to watch local sports.

[KryptoNyte]

I'm also interested in seeing how to maximize the quality of remote viewing, primarily via the SageTV miniclient. Any input would be much appreciated.

Additionally, I am not clear on how to control the streaming quality for DYNAMIC, PULL, or the other one that I can't remember at the moment.

I'm happy to put some real horsepower behind the SageTV server, but I need to understand how.

[ojones]

So far as I have been able to test this the best / only way to achieve "full quality" remote viewing is to set the trigger for full quality streaming vs transcoding at an artificially low value. Without transcoding the miniclient does a fairly good job at this - especially when its run on andriod TV inside a sony set. I've had better luck with that than with the shield or other versions.

This depends on having very fast wan links especially on the upload side but the overall link is still pretty susceptible to lag and packet loss as well. If there is any optimization to achieve better "streaming" it is on the hardware used to record / encode. I'm not doing much there right now but playing with ENE's compression settings looks like its the way to go for now.

@ phantomii (I know stale response...) the bandwidth test that triggers transcoding can be buggy (well not buggy but sensitive). Small amounts of packet loss or network issues can result in the test at the beginning of the file to be off and force transcoding even if the link firms up a few seconds later. This is why I had to force the bandwidth test to a much lower rate than would actually stream well - to make sure false positives (or is it negatives?) didn't trip transcoding accidentally.

[trk2]

It seems that placeshifter always defaults to push mode regardless of the bandwidth. Placeshifter:

Fri 2/21 11:19:53.498 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1f17f3a] MiniPlayer got an estimate from the UI on bandwidth of 131168Kbps
Fri 2/21 11:19:53.498 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1f17f3a] MiniPlayer is using Push mode playback
Fri 2/21 11:19:53.498 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1f17f3a] MiniPlayer is using the MPEG4 transcoder
Fri 2/21 11:19:53.499 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1f17f3a] MiniPlayer is using the transcoder

While extenders and the Android miniclient will properly change to pull mode. HD300:

Fri 2/21 11:21:56.525 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1457c3e] Bandwidth test base=0 base*2=1 BW=131168000
Fri 2/21 11:21:56.526 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1457c3e] MiniPlayer got an estimate from the UI on bandwidth of 131168Kbps
Fri 2/21 11:21:56.526 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1457c3e] MiniPlayer is using Pull mode playback

Notice in both cases the detected bandwidth was identical.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by trk2

It seems that placeshifter always defaults to push mode regardless of the bandwidth. Placeshifter:

Fri 2/21 11:19:53.498 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1f17f3a] MiniPlayer got an estimate from the UI on bandwidth of 131168Kbps
Fri 2/21 11:19:53.498 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1f17f3a] MiniPlayer is using Push mode playback
Fri 2/21 11:19:53.498 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1f17f3a] MiniPlayer is using the MPEG4 transcoder
Fri 2/21 11:19:53.499 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1f17f3a] MiniPlayer is using the transcoder

While extenders and the Android miniclient will properly change to pull mode. HD300:

Fri 2/21 11:21:56.525 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1457c3e] Bandwidth test base=0 base*2=1 BW=131168000
Fri 2/21 11:21:56.526 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1457c3e] MiniPlayer got an estimate from the UI on bandwidth of 131168Kbps
Fri 2/21 11:21:56.526 [VideoFrame-e0d55e4d355e@1457c3e] MiniPlayer is using Pull mode playback

Notice in both cases the detected bandwidth was identical.

I’m not sure, but this might depend on the file type you are trying to playback. The Windows Placeshfter Client is based on a very old version of mplayer. If it can’t handle the video or audio format, Sage may have to transcode, regardless of bandwidth.

[KryptoNyte]

I have the miniclient running remotely while traveling on a Firetv stick (the non-4k model). Getting the username and password entered was quit a trick. It uses almost no resources on my SageTV server at home, and very little of my upload bandwidth. Is there a way to ramp it up a bit, to increase the quality?

[trk2]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I’m not sure, but this might depend on the file type you are trying to playback. The Windows Placeshfter Client is based on a very old version of mplayer. If it can’t handle the video or audio format, Sage may have to transcode, regardless of bandwidth.

Good thought. My previous test was playback with live tv using a channel that is encoded with h.264. I just tried again using an mpeg2 station and had the same results. HD300 will play it back using pull, placeshifter using push.

[trk2]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I have the miniclient running remotely while traveling on a Firetv stick (the non-4k model). Getting the username and password entered was quit a trick. It uses almost no resources on my SageTV server at home, and very little of my upload bandwidth. Is there a way to ramp it up a bit, to increase the quality?

Puts that old-school texting skills to use. What's your upload cap rate? You can try playing back the source in full quality by following the instructions in this thread; namely adding the following to your server's property file:

miniplayer/forced_max_push_size=0
miniplayer/min_bandwidth_for_no_transcode=1500000
miniplayer/wan_prevent_push=false

[KryptoNyte]

I don't think I can do full quality, trk. Upload speed is about 12 mbits/sec. I still need some transcode, just something better than 1 mbit/s.

[NetworkGuy]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I have the miniclient running remotely while traveling on a Firetv stick (the non-4k model). Getting the username and password entered was quit a trick. It uses almost no resources on my SageTV server at home, and very little of my upload bandwidth. Is there a way to ramp it up a bit, to increase the quality?

How did you get the username and pswd into the mini-client on the Firestick? I tried and could not get it to work.

[trk2]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I don't think I can do full quality, trk. Upload speed is about 12 mbits/sec. I still need some transcode, just something better than 1 mbit/s.

On my system, with cablecard, I need about 8mbps upload for a channel that broadcasts in h.264. An mpeg2 channel needs about 13mbps. How are you capturing? If you are using opendct than the easiest method is to have opendct compress the stream.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by NetworkGuy

How did you get the username and pswd into the mini-client on the Firestick? I tried and could not get it to work.

After entering the username, somewhat blind, I would hit the home button on the remote, taking me back to Firestick main menu. Then I would re-enter the miniclient which is still running the background and select the password field. I think the keyboard doesn't always come up, so I had to long press the Select button (middle of circle) on the remote and select keyboard in Stuckless' overlay menu. I think I had to exit one more time to get rid of the keyboard and move fields at that point.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by trk2

On my system, with cablecard, I need about 8mbps upload for a channel that broadcasts in h.264. An mpeg2 channel needs about 13mbps. How are you capturing? If you are using opendct than the easiest method is to have opendct compress the stream.

I'm capturing both of the ways that you mention, but even my h.264 content is upwards of 14mbps. mpeg2 can be as high as 15mbps. The reason I don't encode everything with OpenDCT is because I can record 6 programs at the same time, and I don't think my server can handle encoding 6 programs simultaneously. So I'm trying to determine a better way to view remotely while I'm traveling. I would typically just watch one channel, so that would seem to have a much smaller hit on the server during encoding.

[KryptoNyte]

You do have me wondering if maybe I should be recording with all 6 tuners using an h.264 tuner at a lower bitrate. Hmmmm.

[trk2]

I only have three tuners, but I played around with using opendct to transcode my mpeg2 channels to h.264. I was able do it using 1 core for each tuner (i7-3770) as a reference. This is all configurable in opendct.

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I'm capturing both of the ways that you mention, but even my h.264 content is upwards of 14mbps. mpeg2 can be as high as 15mbps.

Great, now I'm suspicious that my cable company is screwing me on bitrate.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by trk2

I only have three tuners, but I played around with using opendct to transcode my mpeg2 channels to h.264. I was able do it using 1 core for each tuner (i7-3770) as a reference. This is all configurable in opendct.



Great, now I'm suspicious that my cable company is screwing me on bitrate.

Just to be clear, my h.264 is coming via HDPVR2. I did just check the local ABC affiliate via Spectrum copy-freely at 15.8 Mbps overall (raw mpeg2 coming via cablecard).

Interesting how you did the one core per transcode channel. With some of the processors having so many cores these days, that's an option I hadn't considered. My old Corei5-2500k at 4.2ghz is still working for now.