[mythtv-users] MythWeb: ASX stream or direct download (over ADSL)?

[Karl Newman]

On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 1:08 PM, James Miller <gajs-f0el at dea.spamcon.org>
wrote:

> Again my post will refer to a new MythTV (0.27.20140303, Gentoo)
> installation. I want to ask about scenarios for viewing recorded content on
> that installation from remote locations--remote meaning outside my private
> LAN. Think scenarios where I am traveling and staying in a motel in a
> different city, for example. My internet connection at home is through a
> cable modem, while at motels in this country (US) the standard connection
> seems to be ADSL. Of course MythWeb is installed and is accessible from
> outside the LAN.
>
> So I've fiddled a bit with MythWeb's ASX streaming in the past but have
> not had much success--I don't recall details at the moment. Maybe it was an
> issue of getting the right application to handle an ASX stream? In any
> case, I'm trying it out again on this new installation.
>
> I can say that, on my private LAN, it's working acceptably. I don't notice
> any lagging or jitters so far when streaming recordings. I've tried testing
> it from outside my LAN but am having trouble with that--I think owing to
> the fact that I've enabled, in Apache, authentication for non-LAN
> connections. My attempts seem to be failing owing to the fact that starting
> the stream requires re-entry of log-in credentials, and somehow the browser
> I'm using is not handling that. Before putting additional efforts into
> getting that working, though, I'd like to ask here what is the experience
> of others who have tried to do this ASX streaming under scenarios such as
> I'm describing? Has it worked acceptably? And, btw, does this facility
> involve some sort of on-the-fly re-encoding?
>
> Finally, I'll mention that, in the past, I would run a re-encoding job on
> such programs as I might want to view from outside my LAN, and I would then
> simply download the recordings (using the "direct download" link in
> MythWeb) from the remote location and view them on my laptop. To make this
> option manageable, I would seriously downgrade the video quality such that
> the resulting file was about 1/10th the size of the original recording. I
> could download a file of that size in something like 15 minutes or so, even
> over the slowest of motel broadband connections. The video quality bordered
> on intolerable, but the sound was acceptable. In any case, if doing the
> direct download might be the preferable option to trying to do an ASX
> stream for this sort of scenario, I'd like to ask for tips on re-encoding
> the file to a similar size, but with slightly better video quality. I
> should mention in closing that downloading recordings from a remote
> connection seems to work fine on this system.
>
> Input will be appreciated.
>

I used to use the built-in mythweb transcoding and Flash player (JWPlayer)
but any little hiccup would interrupt the transcode and I'd have to start
all over again. It got frustrating enough (and I finally got reasonable
upload bandwidth at home) that I just gave up and download the MPG files
via sftp. But then again, all my recordings are SD (~1 GB/hour). I do have
an h264 job set up to transcode for my phone (to save space and also to be
able to Chromecast them) but for that I usually grab some recordings ahead
of time, not while I'm on the road. I often don't bother to transcode when
I'm traveling.

Karl
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