[mythtv-users] Streaming mpeg4 with mythstreamtv

Bob Cottingham bob at bobnvic.com
Tue May 17 14:58:10 UTC 2005


David Whyte wrote:
> Bob Cottingham <bob at bobnvic.com> wrote:
snip
>> I had no trouble streaming both my mpeg2 files from my PVR-250 or the
>> transcoded mpeg4 files over the internet. Everything worked great!
>>
>> Now if we could add streaming of our MythVideo files...
>
> If MPEG4 streamed OK, I guess there is just some tweaking of the
> mythstreatv code to get it to read videos too.  Sweet.
>
> I am curios, when you stream mmpeg4 files, does it use as much CPU as
> when it is transcoding MPEG2 to MPEG4 on the fly?  I doubt it would, but
> this would be a great reason for me to set up the transcoding feature =D

The load on the cpu was the same whether it was streaming mpeg2 or mpeg4.
There were a couple of differences in usage, however, that I didn't really
notice until after I sent the email.

I can not jump forward in the mpeg4 stream with the +1min button - it
simply starts at the beginning of the recording again with an error in the
logs (don't recall the error at the moment). I don't have any problem with
this in mpeg2 streams.

Secondly, the quality of the mpeg4 streams that were transcoded from mpeg2
by mythtv were fairly poor with a lot of blockiness. The original mpeg4
transcoded files look decent on a monitor and look completely fine on a
tv, however re-encoding them again on the fly, even at 1000kbs, really
brings out the flaws and makes it far worse. The mpeg2 files still look
good, however. Overall, I wouldn't use it to watch recorded files on my
local network. DSmyth, when it works well, is a better solution for me
there.

I tried streaming a DVD rip of Shrek (done with MythDVD, 'good' quality,
xvid), via the cli and it worked great. The quality was very good even at
the 300kbs video and 64kbs audio that I set it to. Quite impressed. Now we
just need to create a nice interface for MythWeb.

Bob C



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