LiveTV issue: Unable to tune channel

[neik 837]

Hi pünktchen,

 

thanks for your input!

 

To be honest I do not know what a http referer / user agent is - this is way above my knowledge - I wouldn't even know what to put in there for testing purpose. Do you have any suggestion?

Nevertheless, I wonder why I would be needing this because on other clients it does stream all channels flawlessly.

 

@@ebr, I was able to test LiveTV on a Android Box and it behaves exactly like on the FTVS and on the Nexus 4 with Emby for AndroidTV.

My impression is that this has something to do with the App (just my thought).

[diegov 21]

I have a similar issue. Emby Android TV app won't play any of my Live TV channels unless i turn on remuxing, however my other clients work fine and KODI on the same Android TV box plays the live channels no problems, so the issue does appear to be app related. These are free to air channels available in my country using remote urls.

log.txt

Edited June 14, 2018 by diegov

[ebr 14913]

I think the answer at this point is that you need to enable the option "Allow video playback that requires conversion without re-encoding".  That is allowing a remux to a compatible container for this app which should have a very minimal impact on your server.

 

As the note below this option states, disabling any of them could cause playback errors in some apps.

[diegov 21]

The only problem with that option is we are now adding FFmpeg into the mix and some live streams will not work with FFmpeg, i assume its because these live channels change bitrate dynamically?

 

Attached is a free to air stream that works without remuxing enabled on the Android Phone and LG Emby app, but with remuxing enabled it does not show on any app.

 

At the moment, i have to toggle between "Allow video playback that requires conversion without re-encoding" on and off depending on which client i'm using and which channel i'm watching, which is a little challenging

 

It would be great if we can eventually have transcoding turned off from the client side vs server side.

 

Thanks

stream.txt

Edited June 14, 2018 by diegov

[neik 837]

Hi ebr,

 

I think you are right!

At least for my usecase enabling remux does allow the App to stream all the channels (I tested).

 

Just one more question regarding the available players (Exo vs MVP):

On the one hand if Exo opens the stream it seems to have a far better HW acceleration on the FTVS than the MPV but

on the other hand MVP is more reliable in opening but has a choppy playback while streaming HD channels - looks like the FTVS is struggling keeping up.

 

Is there a way to get the best of both worlds?

[ebr 14913]

Just one more question regarding the available players (Exo vs MVP):

On the one hand if Exo opens the stream it seems to have a far better HW acceleration on the FTVS than the MPV but

on the other hand MVP is more reliable in opening but has a choppy playback while streaming HD channels - looks like the FTVS is struggling keeping up.

 

Is there a way to get the best of both worlds?

 

 

I'm afraid there is no perfect answer at this time.  In general, Exo works best on the platform as it is written by Google for Android.  However, these variable live streams are where it gets really tricky.  I would leave the setting at Exo because, if there is an error, part of our error recovery will include trying to play the stream with MPV.

[neik 837]

Hi ebr,

 

just one last question: Just saw in the settings that you can use an external player for LiveTV and now I was wondering if there is an external player with a support like MVP + a better hw acceleration that can be used on the FTVS.

 

Do you (or anyone) have experience with this?

 

Last but not least, big thanks to you ebr for being so patient with me, really appreciate your support! :-)

[ebr 14913]

Some people have had good luck using VLC as an external player for their live TV streams.  You can set the app to do that just for Live TV if you wish.

[neik 837]

Well, the flickering and messy image I am experiencing with some HD channels seems to be a particular Fire TV issue. Apparently the HW decoder doesn't handle things quite well, already tried several other players (VLC, MPV standalone, MX Player, etc.) and all show the same behaviour:

 

- With HW decoder: Image flickers and gets messy

- SW decoder only: Image looks fine but the FTVS doesn't have enough horsepower to SW decode HD channels (1080) - as expected I would say.

[Luke 37067]

The only problem with that option is we are now adding FFmpeg into the mix and some live streams will not work with FFmpeg, i assume its because these live channels change bitrate dynamically?

 

Attached is a free to air stream that works without remuxing enabled on the Android Phone and LG Emby app, but with remuxing enabled it does not show on any app.

 

At the moment, i have to toggle between "Allow video playback that requires conversion without re-encoding" on and off depending on which client i'm using and which channel i'm watching, which is a little challenging

 

It would be great if we can eventually have transcoding turned off from the client side vs server side.

 

Thanks

 

@@diegov I tested this and had no problem in the web app.

[diegov 21]

@@diegov I tested this and had no problem in the web app.

Thanks for testing Luke. I do have varied success when remuxing through FFmpeg and appreciate its hard to troubleshoot. Today i had constant freezing on a channel, as soon as i disabled transcoding and direct played on supporting devices the stream it was fine.

[neik 837]

Well, the flickering and messy image I am experiencing with some HD channels seems to be a particular Fire TV issue. Apparently the HW decoder doesn't handle things quite well, already tried several other players (VLC, MPV standalone, MX Player, etc.) and all show the same behaviour:

 

- With HW decoder: Image flickers and gets messy

- SW decoder only: Image looks fine but the FTVS doesn't have enough horsepower to SW decode HD channels (1080) - as expected I would say.

 

Regarding this I opened an issue on the github of MPV-Android and the dev is trying to figure out what is happening here. After getting him a logcat he pointed out this:

V/mpv ( 4859): [cplayer:warn] Invalid video timestamp: 2.518411 -> -9223372036854775808.000000
The hardware decoder is not returning any useful timestamps.
I/MediaCodecLogger( 4859): tv.emby.embyatv.HW.video.avc Dropping frame
Some emby-specific mediacodec component seems to be dropping frames.

Does anyone know what he means? Unfortunately, this is way to technical for me. :-(

 

Here the link to the issue: https://github.com/mpv-android/mpv-android/issues/129

Edited June 17, 2018 by neik

[Luke 37067]

Thanks for opening the ticket.

[neik 837]

FYI...

 

For those interested, here is the opinion of one of the VLC Devs: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=144988&p=474980#p474980

[neik 837]

Short update on this:

 

There is now a open ticket over at ffmpeg: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/7298

They are aware of the problem on the FTVS but do not have a solution yet, time will tell if they will ever find one.

 

In case somebody is experiencing this as well here is a workaround to the issue:

 

If I activate the "Deintarlace HD-content" in the FTVS-App and deactivate the "Direct stream" option the server transcodes the interlaced HD stuff and it plays fine on the FTVS using the Exoplayer.

The downside is you need quite a beefy server that can handle 1080 transcode. In my case the remote server can hardly handle it.

 

€dit:

 

@@Luke or @@ebr, to lower the load on the server due to the transcoding, is it possible to force a transcode to 720? I assume that would cause a significant less load than the transcode to 1080. Thanks!

Edited July 6, 2018 by neik

[Luke 37067]

Thanks for the info. If you lower the quality setting then the resolution will lower as well.

[neik 837]

Hi Luke,

 

do you mean the quality settings in the transcoding settings on the server? If not could you be more specific please?

My settings there are already pretty low:

 

- Thread count: Auto

- Encoding preset: ultrafast

- CFR: 28

 

With this settings Emby is still transcoding to 1080.

Edited July 6, 2018 by neik

[Luke 37067]

I mean inside the app. As you lower the bitrate setting, the max allowed resolution will be lowered as well.

[neik 837]

That is good when you are having bandwith issues but in this case it isn't really usable.

 

Yes, it works as you said but I can't introduce an overall bandwith limit as it would cause everything to be transcoded and not only the live TV streams and limiting the specific channel everytime I open it isn't doable as it would be annoying after some time.

 

I assume there isn't a flag (yet) that allows the user to choose the target resolution independent of the bandwith, right? If so, has this already been requested or can I open a Feature Request about this?

I think this would be quite useful to a couple of people over here...

[Luke 37067]

we don't have a per item transcoding setting, so right now you would just have to change the quality, and then change it back when you switch to a different type of content.

 

 

 

 choose the target resolution independent of the bandwith, right

 

No, no plans for this. You could end up with bitrates that don't make sense for a selected resolution. If we allow users to make their own mess we will just end up getting hammered with troubleshooting.