Constantly hitting frozen frames on Roku client with HDHomerunPrime

[AboveUnrefined 7]

Hello!

I'm hitting issues while watching TV with the HDHomerunPRIME - I'm hitting frozen frames like what happened a long time ago... I fixed this by forcing transcoding but now all of the sudden I can't simply do that anymore...

Is there anyway I can force transcoding to happen while utilizing the HDHomerunPRIME? Things worked perfectly when I set it to transcode everything at 4MBps, now it's not so straightforward... I might be missing something in the settings since I haven't been in there in a while... If there's a way I can just force the transcoding to happen like I had it, that'd be perfect -- I mentioned in another thread that it looks like things shifted around recently and I might me missing a setting... I hope that's it!

[ebr 14958]

6 hours ago, AboveUnrefined said:

Things worked perfectly when I set it to transcode everything at 4MBps, now it's not so straightforward...

Hi.  Exactly what isn't so straightforward anymore?

[AboveUnrefined 7]

29 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Exactly what isn't so straightforward anymore?

I used to be able to set transcoding for all streams at a static 4Mbps - that was for everything and transcoding would happen for everything.

Now it's like it's detecting that certain streams might be less than that and allows for passthrough, which passes through bad frames causing the freeze frame to happen. I've noticed on channels that are lower resolution I only get options that are very low bandwidth for transcoding and the result is unacceptable.

I did just go through the settings on the emby client and noticed that allow passthrough was enabled so I disabled it, I guess I'll find out if that might work... The thing is that I haven't touched anything and all of the sudden the problem came back after a very long time.

[ebr 14958]

Let us know if that works.

Thanks.

[AboveUnrefined 7]

I was hitting more of the frozen frames again today after turning that setting off so it's still happening.

It seems like something is allowing passthrough to happen and stop transcoding whenever the source stream is less than the set transcoding rate... If I go try and set the transcoding rate on any of the culprit channels I only get very low rate options and they're unacceptable.

I'm guessing what needs to happen is transcoding at least to change around the container so Roku doesn't get bad mpeg2 frames. It seems like it was doing this before but within the past couple months it stopped doing it so I'm seeing this happen a lot now.

Is there any way I can force transcoding to happen regardless of whether it's optimal or not? I'm using a video card that does the process rather trivially so it's not an issue for me to do this and fix the stupid Roku issue...

[speechles 1929]

Hi. Apologies for the problem. We do not DirectPlay Live TV on the Roku. We cannot DirectPlay the TS container and get a stream you can seek within. With Live TV it is either DirectStream or Transcode. There is only those two because we want you to be able to rewind into the buffer (up to the point you first started to watch that channel) all the time. With DirectPlay on a TS container you can only Pause and build a buffer and then watch Live TV with a buffer as large as how long you paused (depending on Roku model is 10-30 minutes max. Yes. The Roku will unpause Live TV on you when you pause during DirectPlay and keep it paused over the amount of time 10-30 mins.). We want you to be able to buffer as long as you have watched the channel. We want you to be able to pause Live TV as long as you want. We want you to be able to go back to when you first started to tune that channel and everything in between up to real-time. This is why we do not Direct Play Live TV on Roku in case you wondered.

In the Settings for Playback is "Allow direct streaming of live streams". Make sure that says NO. It will always Transcode Live TV.

Enable the "Stats for Nerds" using the cog/gear on the Video Player OSD. You can then see how the playback method is decided. Then use "Attempt Playback Correction" and see where the playback method falls next. Once it hits Transcode  (which it should after one press with Live TV when it says DirectStream) it will be able to work through any errors in the streaming as it will be converting mpeg2 -> h264 and the Roku will consume the converted on-the-fly h264 stream. You should use the "Attempt Playback Correction" to force a new playback method rather than changing the quality/bitrate. Changing the quality/bitrate will obviously make the video worse. Using Playback Correction will keep the same quality and merely change playback method.

 

Perhaps it is Hardware Acceleration causing you problems during Live TV with errors while Transcoding on the Roku? Try with Hardware Acceleration turned OFF and see if those issues disappear. If they do let us know. Thanks.  Not meaning you should always keep it off. Meaning let us know so we can fix it and know about the issue. Thanks again.

Edited May 30, 2022 by speechles

[ebr 14958]

15 hours ago, AboveUnrefined said:

If I go try and set the transcoding rate on any of the culprit channels I only get very low rate options and they're unacceptable.

Hi.  That indicates that the incoming signal is very low bitrate.  It only shows you values at or below the source bitrate.

[AboveUnrefined 7]

17 hours ago, speechles said:

Hi. Apologies for the problem. We do not DirectPlay Live TV on the Roku. We cannot DirectPlay the TS container and get a stream you can seek within. With Live TV it is either DirectStream or Transcode. There is only those two because we want you to be able to rewind into the buffer (up to the point you first started to watch that channel) all the time. With DirectPlay on a TS container you can only Pause and build a buffer and then watch Live TV with a buffer as large as how long you paused (depending on Roku model is 10-30 minutes max. Yes. The Roku will unpause Live TV on you when you pause during DirectPlay and keep it paused over the amount of time 10-30 mins.). We want you to be able to buffer as long as you have watched the channel. We want you to be able to pause Live TV as long as you want. We want you to be able to go back to when you first started to tune that channel and everything in between up to real-time. This is why we do not Direct Play Live TV on Roku in case you wondered.

In the Settings for Playback is "Allow direct streaming of live streams". Make sure that says NO. It will always Transcode Live TV.

Enable the "Stats for Nerds" using the cog/gear on the Video Player OSD. You can then see how the playback method is decided. Then use "Attempt Playback Correction" and see where the playback method falls next. Once it hits Transcode  (which it should after one press with Live TV when it says DirectStream) it will be able to work through any errors in the streaming as it will be converting mpeg2 -> h264 and the Roku will consume the converted on-the-fly h264 stream. You should use the "Attempt Playback Correction" to force a new playback method rather than changing the quality/bitrate. Changing the quality/bitrate will obviously make the video worse. Using Playback Correction will keep the same quality and merely change playback method.

 

Perhaps it is Hardware Acceleration causing you problems during Live TV with errors while Transcoding on the Roku? Try with Hardware Acceleration turned OFF and see if those issues disappear. If they do let us know. Thanks.  Not meaning you should always keep it off. Meaning let us know so we can fix it and know about the issue. Thanks again.

Thanks speechles, I'll try out what you're suggesting and provide feedback once I can confirm anything. It's a pretty annoying problem since it happens sporadically and there's no guarantees... I just know things were pretty solid over the year up until about a month or so ago - it could be just that more bad frames are just being pumped through from the source, it's hard to say.

[Luke 37231]

21 hours ago, AboveUnrefined said:

Thanks speechles, I'll try out what you're suggesting and provide feedback once I can confirm anything. It's a pretty annoying problem since it happens sporadically and there's no guarantees... I just know things were pretty solid over the year up until about a month or so ago - it could be just that more bad frames are just being pumped through from the source, it's hard to say.

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

[AboveUnrefined 7]

So, over recent usage, it seems like I've been encountering a lot less frozen frames. I suspect it's more downstream doing a better job at splicing frames/delivering content since I have seen these waves of bad frames coming through...

only thing I'm noticing recently is audio getting way out of sync... I'm going to tinker around to see what's going on there

the best advice I've received so far was to use the "attempt playback correction" option whenever I do hit a frozen frame. When I did hit frozen frames, that'd solve it pretty quickly instead of stopping/resuming the stream. it does work a treat when having to explain it to my wife who'll hit these issues... at least now I have a way to let her resume watching without getting quirkyness on stopping/resuming a stream.

 

I'll report back if I find anything with the audio sync issue... I wonder if there's something deeper going on there.

[richt 73]

Not sure about the Prime, but other HDHomerun models have had performance / tuning problems due power supply problems.  You might consider posing the question on the SD forums,

[AboveUnrefined 7]

On 6/10/2022 at 12:01 AM, richt said:

Not sure about the Prime, but other HDHomerun models have had performance / tuning problems due power supply problems.  You might consider posing the question on the SD forums,

it's most definitely not that, but thanks for the feedback. The frozen frames are coming out from the stations having a malformed mpeg2 packet. Roku doesn't handle it AT ALL and it freezes on the frame. It's been a problem with Roku and they just don't acknowledge it.

I had things set so EVERYTHING would get encoded to be transcoded and not be mpeg2 but something happened over time with updating that it just doesn't seem to do that anymore and I re-encounter the frozen frame problem. I'm getting more time now so maybe I'll get down to what the hell changed to make it so it was the way I had it, it's probably something with the video card drivers changing in my linux environment, so I will start there.