FFMPEG Direct Play hack windows server

[tspeirs 0]

Hi all,

 

First post here. Loving the software, especially the madvr support. Hope to see an update of Emby Theatre soon with a tv guide.

 

I wrote this little patch for myself to force live TV to not to reencode to h264 thus kind of forcing a direct play.

 

I attach source code and binary.

 

Instructions if you don't want to mess with the source.

 

Make sure nothing is playing in emby server (this is for windows server only).

 

Go to the appdata roaming folder for your user. You can get to this by just typing %appdata% in explorer in the address box.

 

Go to "emby-server\ffmpeg\and within the next folder.

 

Rename ffmpeg.exe to ffmpegorig.exe

 

Place ffmpeg.exe from the release folder of the attachment in the above folder.

 

That's it.

 

This basically replaces the command line sent to FFMPEG to tell it to copy rather than encode the video stream and turn off deinterlacing. I am using madvr to do the deiniterlacing.

 

Obviously use at your own risk but this works well for me until the Emby team allow a feature to do this.

 

PS: In case anyone is interested I am the author of GameEx.

emby ffmpeg hack.zip

Edited September 1, 2015 by tspeirs

[Luke 37003]

Welcome, good stuff! Curious - why at the ffmpeg level and not in our own command line params?

[tspeirs 0]

Hi Luke,

 

Only becaue I don't know how to do that. Or at least couldn't see a way. If there is a way I would be interested to know.

 

Cheers.

Tom.

 

PS: Its only a wrapper/launcher/loader by the way, its not actually a replacement ffmpeg.exe.

Edited September 1, 2015 by tspeirs

[Luke 37003]

I'm guessing this basically changes the codec to copy?

[tspeirs 0]

Yes, exactly. It also removes the deinterlace option as otherwise it wont work.

 

PS: I am using VU Player.

Edited September 1, 2015 by tspeirs

[Luke 37003]

Ok. We do actually already support that but the TV provider has to supply enough media info for the app to determine that it can do that. Most of them are providing nothing, although the new built in provider does supply pretty good info

[tspeirs 0]

So an update to VU Player is required in order not to reencode live TV rather than Emby-Server, is that what you are saying? Or where you just talking about the deinterlacing, which is still required in my case but I am using MadVR so don't need FFMPEG to do it.

Edited September 1, 2015 by tspeirs

[Luke 37003]

no, whatever plugin you're using to talk to VU player

[tspeirs 0]

By the way, just did a lifetime donation. I really like what you are doing here. Once I get the TV guide in emby theatre all my needs will be met. I know Kodi tends to rule the world but I've never been keen on the interface for a TV STB replacement. I've been there and got the T shirt for HTPC even before WMC and all I want to do is watch TV.

 

Cheers.

Tom.

[tspeirs 0]

Well the plugin is just the built in live TV.I am not doing anything else. In terms of talking to my satellite box that's done by Vu Player. The satellite box is OpenVix Engima 2. VuPlayer only supports Enigma 2. VuPlayer is basically a player for Enigma 2 boxes.

Edited September 1, 2015 by tspeirs

[Luke 37003]

ok, so the built-in live tv is streaming from your HD Homerun. So whether or not you'll get stream copy will mostly depend on the in-app bitrate setting, though other factors could come into play.

[tspeirs 0]

No, not homerun, I am using the VU Player service add on for live TV. There is no way to make it copy the video stream currently. Outside of the US Homeruns are not that great so bare that in mind. Also I don't think satellite is an option either for them even in the US. Then you also have the DRM stuff to deal with too. The Kickstarter is promising but I don't think it will replace the need for other services any time soon.

 

I guess what you really need from a design/architect perspective assuming the data is not going to be sent any time soon is some advanced options for live tv to control the encoding or just to control the encoding in general. These can easily be hidden away in your current interface to avoid feature creep. Or even just an XML file. Right now the command line sent to FFMPEG is hardcoded it seems.

 

But right now this hack works for me. Once the TV guide is implemented in the windows client I will be happy to switch. The listings are working for me too. I am not sure whether that is my direct account or its coming from the Enigma 2 box but its all working.

Edited September 1, 2015 by tspeirs

[Luke 37003]

Ok, so the add-on is what would need to be updated to supply more media info. then it ought to work without this.

[oldschool 7]

@@tspeirs,

 

In your instructions, could I get some clarification?

1) Do you need to install MadVR to get this to work?
2) Do you copy everything out of the ffmpeg hack.zip\emby ffmpeg hack\emby ffmpeg hack\bin\Release folder to the AppData\Roaming\MediaBrowser-Server\ffmpeg\<date> folder, or just the exe?

3) Does this rely on a beefy video card present in the machine, or can you use this without a video card and rely just on the processor video capabilities?

[oldschool 7]

I installed MadVR, but I'm getting this error in my transcode log:

 

Unhandled Exception: System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The system cannot find the file specified
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithCreateProcess(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()
   at ffmpeg.Module1.Main() in G:\Dropbox\-DATA-\-DOCUMENTS-\Visual Studio 2015\Projects\emby ffmpeg hack\emby ffmpeg hack\Module1.vb:line 68

 

I wonder if there's something in your file that is pointing to a local path G:?

[tspeirs 0]

Hi, you need to ensure you rename the original ffmpeg.exe in the folder to ffmpegorig.exe as in the instructions. It still uses this file. The patch just replaces the command lines sent. I only tested with the vu player plugin though.

 

You don't need madvr but in my case I needed something to deinterlacing.

 

The stream is sent without a reencode on the video so I guess it could take more resources. It could cause issues if you are trying to view on a non windows systems.

 

I am in the progress of adding madvr support along with a vu player plugin to GameEx so unless we get the tv guide Emby won't offer more over GameEx so I will probably leave this for now. I seem to have lost the channels for some reason so I got motivated to implement it in my own front end.

 

Cheers.

Tom.

[oldschool 7]

I don't have vu player plugin installed. I thought maybe the renaming was just to save a copy of the original (my mistake), so I followed your instructions and it still gives me an error.

 

Logs attached.

 

server-63577085683.txt

transcode-2f08477f-0d74-4a98-abaf-cd9350cdbaf2.txt

[Luke 37003]

@@tspeirs

 

if you have an enigma tv tuner then we have a better way of using that with Emby. Now with OpenVix you can add your enigma tuner directly to Emby using Emby's native support. No VU+ plugin needed.

 

You can learn more here:

 

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/52762-enigma2-livetvdvr-support/

 

Thanks !