[mythtv-users] Android Mythfrontend on Chromebook

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 19 May 2022 19:15:11 -0400, you wrote:

>I looked at two very recent recordings both from the local PBS 
>affiliate. One was from their main channel, the other from their 
>secondary channel. Both delivered by Xfinity/HdHomerun. The secondary 
>plays in the Android Mythfrontend, the main channel doesn't. From the 
>mediainfo below the issue seems to be AVC vs MPEG-2. I presume AVC is 
>essentially MPEG-4.
>
>One thing I can do is run the old mythplayer app which will fetch the 
>myth data and run an external player like mxplayer which handles the AVC 
>video. I guess the codec support through the Android API is just not up 
>to the task of AVC.
>
>The mythfrontend marks the main channel recording as 720. More 
>specifically the mediainfo program shows
>
>Video
>ID                                       : 1021 (0x3FD)
>Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
>Format                                   : AVC
>Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
>Format profile                           : High at L3.2
>Format settings                          : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
>Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
>Format settings, Reference frames        : 4 frames
>Codec ID                                 : 27
>Duration                                 : 43 min 52 s
>Bit rate mode                            : Constant
>Bit rate                                 : 3 454 kb/s
>Nominal bit rate                         : 5 000 kb/s
>Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
>Height                                   : 720 pixels

You are right - AVC is a subset specification of H.264, so H.264
(MPEG-4) support is needed.  But in this case, they are using the
High at L3.2 profile, which may be the problem rather than just H.264, as
it is a higher level profile that needs a faster CPU or direct GPU to
support it.  The bit rate is not high enough to be likely to be a
problem.