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VirtualTV plugin


pünktchen

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Dibbes

Please try video container "ts".

 

Runs fine on the ATV now... Great stuff! Absolutely love this!!

 

Can even run the stream 6 times on different devices...

 

A few things I've noticed:

  • When I run various streams though, it hangs when it´s supposed to go to the next video. It resumes when I kill all but one stream. I guess this is a server issue and not a plugin issue
  • Under the Programmes menu, it gives me the folder name as title and not the artist. I suppose this is because I never sorted the videos in an artist folder but they are all jumbled together in the main folder...

 

5e413aa8dd71b_Untitled.png

 

  • Also (I'm just going to mention this. It's already been mentioned before in this post somewhere), the guide is not really the best for this, as it's not granular enough. However, I don't have any suggestions on how to make it better or if it's even something you can do with the plugin...
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pünktchen
When I run various streams though, it hangs when it´s supposed to go to the next video. It resumes when I kill all but one stream. I guess this is a server issue and not a plugin issue

To be honest, i've never tried multiple streams with continous playback  :o  I'll investigate this.

 

Under the Programmes menu, it gives me the folder name as title and not the artist. I suppose this is because I never sorted the videos in an artist folder but they are all jumbled together in the main folder...

Yes, i'm using the parent items name and images for the guide data.

That's because i've found no precise documentation about the necessary folder structure for music videos and so i've chosen Artist\Title\Artist - Title.extension for my test library. That gives me a nice artist overview with the folder view in the web app.

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Dibbes

 

Yes, i'm using the parent items name and images for the guide data.

That's because i've found no precise documentation about the necessary folder structure for music videos and so i've chosen Artist\Title\Artist - Title.extension for my test library. That gives me a nice artist overview with the folder view in the web app.

 

 

  • 5e4152ad80f6d_Untitled.png
  •  
  •  5e41532a357b1_Untitled2.png

 

It's not required to put all videos in their own folder (recommended though), so I never did... makes play-listing easier if you have everything in one folder

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jachin99

This will be next. What do you think will be the best approach for random items, always interleave one movie with one tv episode?

 

I was thinking of making a channel for certain shows but I know others might want something different.  Maybe let the user enter a time value so they can decide if they want something like movies, tv shows, home videos, etc.  Its just an idea, 

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Dibbes

Mixed content would be great... that would mean I could setup a channel for just the DC universe or Star Trek or something with series and movies and then sort it on Premiere Date... it would be almost like a Smart Playlist... 

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pünktchen

I was thinking of making a channel for certain shows but I know others might want something different.  Maybe let the user enter a time value so they can decide if they want something like movies, tv shows, home videos, etc.  Its just an idea, 

Do mean something like from 8 AM to 8 PM tvshows and the rest of the day movies? Sounds very complicated.

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Dibbes

Please try video container "ts".

 

With this container I don't get any audio when playing a bunch of files on channels that do not have continuous playback set (it's not all, just about half and I'm not sure why), when I then set that to EmbyDirectStream (TS container, AAC audio), I get audio, but subtitles no longer work.

 

When I put MKV with FFmpegDirectStream, I have subtitles and audio, but continuous playback doesn't work on the Shield. (The nVidia Shield is my primary playback device, by the way)

 

Oh, and EmbyDirectPlay for the beta server only gives me a spinning circle...

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pünktchen

Oh man, and i was about to remove the container choice... now it looks like i have to create separate options for the different playback modes. Damn ATV app!

What audio codecs do not work?

 

Ps. the EmbyDirectPlay mode is only expected to work in browsers yet.

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jachin99

Do mean something like from 8 AM to 8 PM tvshows and the rest of the day movies? Sounds very complicated.

 

I meant a time value for the file.  For example a TV show is usually about an hour long (about 40 minutes with no commercials) anime can be as short as twenty minutes, and a movie could be about an hour and half to two hours.  If it impedes development then don't even worry about it.  I'll just be glad to have it.  

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pünktchen

Now i understand. But this is just another channel condition. It has nothing in common with my question that you've quoted at first  ;)

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jachin99

I'm honestly not sure about the best way to mix them in. It wouldn't seem to make much sense if just tv shows or just movies when the user is asleep at night for example. Mixing them like that might be the best way to go.

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Psyborg

In PseudoTV this gets done via "Interleaving Channels". Some of the source channels can stay hidden and are just used as sources for other channels.
 
I cite the quite old but still good "Milkman's Guide to the Ultimate Media System" p. 42 about doing this in PseudoTV:

What is Interleaving?
"Interleaving enables you to mix channels together. This means you could have a Syfy channel channel that plays all the regular programming, that also interleaves a Sci-Fi Genre Movie every 10 shows.

It can also be used to mix in some channel fillers, for example mixing “Manswers” clips into your Spike-TV Channel.

How about mixing in some Concerts & Special Events into your MTV Channel? Another good use is to interleave channel bumpers and/or adverts into your channels."

 

...and:

Interleave Procedure:

1) Create a new channel and set it to use your bumpers, adverts, channel fillers or specials.
2) Add a rule to hide this channel.
3) On your main channel, add a rule to interleave the hidden channel.
4) Set “Min & Max Interleave Count” options as needed.

- If Min & Max counts are set to 1, it will add the bumper after each show
- If Min & Max counts are set to 2, it will add the bumper after every second show
- If Min = 1 and Max = 3, it will add the bumper after every 1,2 or 3 shows (at random)

Note: If you have multiple interleave rules, they will be followed systematically from top to bottom. If you want it to be Episode > Advert > Bumper > Episode > Advert > Bumper, then you will need two rules:

Rule 1: (Advert) Min = 1, Max = 1, Starting = 1
Rule 2: (Bumper) Min = 2, Max = 2, Starting = 1

 

This is very flexible. I don't know if something like that will be possible with VirtualTV some day. But it's good to know how this was solved there.

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jachin99

I had some trouble playing an mkv file earlier.  I sat down to test things out and post logs but the guide rolled over to a .ts file.  The file was a little slow to load but seemed to play ok.  I tested things in Emby Theater, and the web app.  I'm posting the log I have because it looked like the web app might have had some trouble playin my .ts file.  I'll try to test this out some more later tonight 

embyserver.txt

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jachin99

I tried my one channel periodically throughout the evening. I had no trouble playing the channel on Android mobile. I also didn't seem to have any issues with emby theater for windows. It looks like version .7 works so I'll add a few other channels and continue testing.

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Dibbes

Oh man, and i was about to remove the container choice... now it looks like i have to create separate options for the different playback modes. Damn ATV app!

What audio codecs do not work?

 

Ps. the EmbyDirectPlay mode is only expected to work in browsers yet.

 

Apple TV is worse, believe me, I tried... LoL

 

What exactly do you need at this time to see what the issues are?

 

 

On a side note: the addition of Music Videos makes the use of the Shows row on the Programmes page largely unusable. There are so many videos there, that the Shows are pretty much blotted out. Is there a way to get those separate from series? (Again, probably something for the server side......)

Edited by Dibbes
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pünktchen

Apple TV is worse, believe me, I tried... LoL

 

What exactly do you need at this time to see what the issues are?

Nothing from your side yet. Yesterday i tested different playback situations the whole evening and these are my findings:

 

Continous playback with mkv on the Shield also works sometimes. It seems to break when subtitles come into play. Somehow my concat instance of ffmpeg doesn't like the way Emby is embedding some subtitles in the source stream and so it just stops. The only solution will be no subtitles or burning them into the video. I think i will go for the second approach.

 

Continous playback with mkv in a browser seems to work if i palm some general media info off on Emby instead of relying on ffprobe. This needs some further testing on my side.

 

Single playback with ts on the shield has no audio if the audio codec is DTS. I remember @@CBers already reported this. I think that's because although a ts container allows every kind of audio codec,

DTS it is not officially specified. The Android Exoplayer only supports the official specs, so it just fails in contrast to ffmpeg in Kodi.

 

Conclusion: i have to burn in subtitles and provide my own media info for continous playback, then mkv should work everywhere. Hopefully!

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pünktchen

On a side note: the addition of Music Videos makes the use of the Shows row on the Programmes page largely unusable. There are so many videos there, that the Shows are pretty much blotted out. Is there a way to get those separate from series? (Again, probably something for the server side......)

I think everything that is not marked as Movie, Kids, News or Sport will be sorted under Shows. There's no other category i can set.

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Dibbes

Nothing from your side yet. Yesterday i tested different playback situations the whole evening and these are my findings:

 

Continous playback with mkv on the Shield also works sometimes. It seems to break when subtitles come into play. Somehow my concat instance of ffmpeg doesn't like the way Emby is embedding some subtitles in the source stream and so it just stops. The only solution will be no subtitles or burning them into the video. I think i will go for the second approach.

 

Continous playback with mkv in a browser seems to work if i palm some general media info off on Emby instead of relying on ffprobe. This needs some further testing on my side.

 

Single playback with ts on the shield has no audio if the audio codec is DTS. I remember @@CBers already reported this. I think that's because although a ts container allows every kind of audio codec,

DTS it is not officially specified. The Android Exoplayer only supports the official specs, so it just fails in contrast to ffmpeg in Kodi.

 

Conclusion: i have to burn in subtitles and provide my own media info for continous playback, then mkv should work everywhere. Hopefully!

 

Have you tried simultaneous streams? I mean various devices running the same channel at the same time with continuous playback?

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pünktchen

Have you tried simultaneous streams? I mean various devices running the same channel at the same time with continuous playback?

Not yet. One step after the other  ;)

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CBers

Nothing from your side yet. Yesterday i tested different playback situations the whole evening and these are my findings:
 
Continous playback with mkv on the Shield also works sometimes. It seems to break when subtitles come into play. Somehow my concat instance of ffmpeg doesn't like the way Emby is embedding some subtitles in the source stream and so it just stops. The only solution will be no subtitles or burning them into the video. I think i will go for the second approach.
 
Continous playback with mkv in a browser seems to work if i palm some general media info off on Emby instead of relying on ffprobe. This needs some further testing on my side.
 
Single playback with ts on the shield has no audio if the audio codec is DTS. I remember @@CBers already reported this. I think that's because although a ts container allows every kind of audio codec,
DTS it is not officially specified. The Android Exoplayer only supports the official specs, so it just fails in contrast to ffmpeg in Kodi.
 
Conclusion: i have to burn in subtitles and provide my own media info for continous playback, then mkv should work everywhere. Hopefully!
 
Now this may not even be possible, but where Continuous Playback is used, couldn't the plugin (server) monitor the end of one video and then start the next one? I guess this is a playlist.
 
When you say "burn in subtitles", will they still honour the user's subtitle settings? Will you be able to tun them on/off easily ?
 
There are subtitle settings in the ATV app, which allows them to be visible if the source has them.
 
Sorry I haven't been able to do any testing over the last few weeks, but I still read through the thread as people post.
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pünktchen

My one channel seemed to run out of guide data.  When I tested the channel this morning, the guide was empty and I had to do a guide refresh to get content back into the channel.  I'm attaching logs.  

Your Marvel channel has guide data for 31.5 hours and your primetime is set to 00:00. This is the time where the first program will start on the day of the guide refresh!

So if you do a guide refresh at lets say 23:00 only 8.5 hours of program are left for the following day.

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pünktchen

Now this may not even be possible, but where Continuous Playback is used, couldn't the plugin (server) monitor the end of one video and then start the next one? I guess this is a playlist.

Even if i monitor the playback it will not work, because the problem is the player (client). The player just stops at the end of a file or stream and the user has to initialize a new live tv streaming session.

 

When you say "burn in subtitles", will they still honour the user's subtitle settings? Will you be able to tun them on/off easily ?

I don't know what happens with the setting "Smart", but "Never", "Always" and "Only Forced" will be honoured. Burned in subtitles can't be switched off, because they will be merged (transcoded) with the video stream.

 

Sorry I haven't been able to do any testing over the last few weeks, but I still read through the thread as people post.

No problem.

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Dibbes

Even if i monitor the playback it will not work, because the problem is the player (client). The player just stops at the end of a file or stream and the user has to initialize a new live tv streaming session.

 

This is killing my SSD's though... next to the fact that when there are 4 users running different streams, it runs out of space...

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