[mythtv-users] Playback Video Stutters & Audio Quits on one Frontend

Craig Huff huffcslists at gmail.com
Sun Aug 9 21:45:04 UTC 2020


On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 9:05 PM jam <jam at tigger.ws> wrote:

>
>
> > On 5 Aug 2020, at 8:09 am, Craig Huff <huffcslists at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm stumped and need help.  I've been trying to understand why some
> video files work fine and others give me grief.  If I play a "bad" file on
> my BE/FE, it plays just fine.  If I play the same file on the remote FE, it
> will play ok for a second or two, but then the audio quits and the video
> will stutter like it's in slow motion.  If I play a "good" file, it works
> just fine anywhere.
> >
> > A "bad" file is one of my older recordings that has a file type
> description of:
> >           "MPEG sequence, v2, program multiplex"
> > (using the 'file' command in an xterm).
> > A "good" file is one of the newer ones with a description of:
> >           "MPEG transport stream data".
> >
> > The BE/FE is based on an ASRock Z77 Extreme4 motherboard with an Intel
> Core i3-3250 CPU @ 3.50GHz, integrated HD Graphics 2500 and 16GB of RAM.
> The video connection is DVI-D.
> >
> > The remote FE is based on an ASRock A785GM-LE motherboard with an AMD
> Phenom II X4 965 CPU @3.4GHz, Nvidia GT710 PCI-E 2.0 Graphics adapter, and
> 4GB of RAM.  The video connection is HDMI (with 5.1 Audio via the HDMI
> cable).
> >
> > The ethernet connection is 1GB/second rated, not tested.
> >
> > I fiddled around with various audio options and the pre-defined VDPAU
> profiles (made things worse! -- audio would drop out faster) vs. the High
> Quality profile.  I tried tweaking processor settings with cpufrequtils and
> only managed to get it running so hot it would freeze up until I forced it
> to shutdown and waited for it to cool off again.
> >
> > Short of transcoding the problem files to a format that works, or
> getting completely new hardware for the remote FE, I'd appreciate any
> suggestions for what I might have missed to try and get this to work.
> >
> > I'd also appreciate any advice on how to transcode the files into a
> format that will not cause this problem, preferably using Handbrake,
> Avidemux, and/or ffmpeg.
>
> I’d be very interested too!
> One of my FE is a wireless laptop. Most movies play just fine (including
> HD), but every now and then is a movie that is always stuttery
>
> James
>

Sadly, rebuilding seek tables didn't change anything.  I believe the
problem is with SD recordings captured using PVR-500 tuners that I'm trying
to play back on an HD TV via HDMI on a remote FE.  They play successfully
on the BE/FE connected to a digital monitor via DVI.  ffprobe describes the
couple I'm focusing on as:
        Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p(tv, top first), 720x480 [SAR 8:9
DAR 4:3], 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc
        Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16p, 384 kb/s

I will try to see what I can come up with to transcode them to MP4 or h.264
and see if that helps.  Any suggestions from the peanut gallery gratefully
appreciated.

--
Craig.
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