4K recording and playback SageTV

[guho]

Using my R5000HD controlled by SageTV x64, I was able record Verizon Fios channel 1498, which was recently added & is going to have 4K soccer & shows a static 4K picture now. I got a transport stream, but SageTV 64 bit was not able to recognize and play it. VLC media player could play it, and confirmed 3840x2160 resolution. What would it take to enable SageTV x64 to be able to recognize this 4k .ts stream? Probably uses H.265. Would it help if I were to post a short sample of the 4K stream?

[Tiki]

I think the first question is how do you want to play back? The answers will be different depending on if you are talking about Sage Client on PC, Sage Placeshifter on ???, Android Mini-Client, HDx00 Extender, etc.

[guho]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I think the first question is how do you want to play back? The answers will be different depending on if you are talking about Sage Client on PC, Sage Placeshifter on ???, Android Mini-Client, HDx00 Extender, etc.

I would like to play back 4k HEVC the same way as any other SageTV recording. My main ways are SageTV on the server itself (Service mode if it matters) and SageTV Client on various client PCs in the house. But at the moment only the SageTV recording HTPC and one of my client PCs has a 4k display.

I have a HD300 extender but it does not have the HDMI 2.x out & hardware for 4k playback so disregard that one.

Yesterday, I recorded a 2-hour FIFA Women's World Cup soccer game in 4k HEVC (=H.265), which came in at 16 GB or 8GB per hour. I am very excited this is already possible with SageTV/R5000HD!

[Narflex]

The problem is mostly that SageTV's internal format detector won't be able to detect H.265 since that wasn't really used yet when we wrote it. Also, the version of FFMPEG we used back then didn't have H265 support either...which is the fallback format detector. That's the main problem you're going to run into is having SageTV actually determine the format of the file so it'll allow playback of it. However, it *might* work if you try to playback the file after it's done recording...did you try that?

[jpwegas]

Wasn't someone working to merge the Sage specific changes from the old ffmpeg into the current ffmpeg tree? I'm not sure what the current state of that is.Would that help address the detection, or should detection (also?) be added to the internal Sage detection code?

--John

[AlphaCrew]

Got me curious about it, checked to see if my Ceton Infinitv 4 could capture it. and sure enough it can..

Does anyone know if Comskip can process a 4K file?

Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 3.29 GiB
Duration : 26 min 25 s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 17.8 Mb/s

Video
ID : 256 (0x100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L5.1@Main
Codec ID : 36
Duration : 26 min 25 s
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 10 bits

Audio
ID : 257 (0x101)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AAC LC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Format version : Version 2
Muxing mode : ADTS
Codec ID : 15-2
Duration : 26 min 25 s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -918 ms
Language : English

Menu
ID : 4096 (0x1000)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Duration : 26 min 25 s
List : 256 (0x100) (HEVC) / 257 (0x101) (AAC, English)
Language : / English
Service name : Service01
Service provider : FFmpeg
Service type : digital television

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by AlphaCrew

Got me curious about it, checked to see if my Ceton Infinitv 4 could capture it. and sure enough it can..

Just curious, what are you using for a 4K source?

--John

[AlphaCrew]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

Just curious, what are you using for a 4K source?

--John

Verizon FiOS

[jpwegas]

Thanks for the info! I was able to use a HDHR Prime to record the 4k content on the special 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup channel (1498), so it's nice to know this is possible without a new tuner. Unfortunately, our household is 100% HD300s so I can't actually play the content. :-(

--John

[NetworkGuy]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

Thanks for the info! I was able to use a HDHR Prime to record the 4k content on the special 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup channel (1498), so it's nice to know this is possible without a new tuner. Unfortunately, our household is 100% HD300s so I can't actually play the content. :-(

--John

So you can use SageTV to record 4K content?

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by NetworkGuy

So you can use SageTV to record 4K content?

Yes, using using prime_encoder or OpenDCT Sage will record the stream from the HDHR Prime.

After recording a show I can play the file using VLC.

Importantly: Normally prime_encoder and OpenDCT do some very basic stream copying of the video using ffmpeg (to clean up the timelines, no re-encoding). I had to disable this post-processing step. Even with the newest version of ffmpeg, just copying the streams makes the file unplayable in VLC. Not sure if this is related to 4k support in ffmpeg or missing option.

Finally and not surprisingly, I was not able to view the show using HD300s. The full client or Android miniclient may be able to play it (see this comment/thread) but I did not try those options.

The news to me is that the Prime can handle 4k streams.

--John

[Tiki]

There is no chance that the HD300s will ever play 4K streams without transcoding and downsampling. They do not have enough processing power to do software decoding on their own. They do not have the HEVC codecs built in to their hardware. They don’t support the latest HDMI standards, so they are limited to full HD (1080) output.

It is possible that with some work, the Sage server could be upgraded to transcode a 4K stream to something the HD300 can play, but the quality will be reduced and it will probably require a pretty powerful processor in the Server.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by Tiki

There is no chance that the HD300s will ever play 4K streams without transcoding and downsampling.

I didn't expect they would. I was just clarifying that even though the Prime lets Sage record the 4k streams, if you use HD300s (as I do), it's not really meaningful.

--John

[NetworkGuy]

Would a Sage Client be able to play back a 4K stream?

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by NetworkGuy

Would a Sage Client be able to play back a 4K stream?

This comment and this comment state that if Sage doesn't recognize a file format, it will send the file to the client anyway, and if the client has a codec that can handle the file it should play.

I don't have a full client on Windows so I'm not able to test that option.

I do have a Shield but I do not have it set up at the moment so I don't know if it works.

Sorry I don't have a better answer, hopefully someone else can chime in with their experience.

--John

[SHS]

Originally Posted by NetworkGuy

Would a Sage Client be able to play back a 4K stream?

No it will be the same as Server side after all they both share the same codec

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by SHS

No it will be the same as Server side after all they both share the same codec

A windows client and Android Client do not share server codecs ... they use whatever is available on the system it is installed.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

A windows client and Android Client do not share server codecs ... they use whatever is available on the system it is installed.

That depend are we talk about real SageTV Client or Placeshifter which what the Android Client is base around
P.S. both the SageTV Server and Client do share the same codec, but the Placeshifter for Android/Linux/Windows Client don't

[pjpjpjpj]

Nm

[wnjj]

https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65196