[mythtv-users] HLS, transcoding with HD content etc

[Eric Sharkey]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 10:05 AM, Dan Poltawski <talktodan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I'm just starting to experiment with the built in with HLS support and other
> things for playing UK DVB HD content on iOS devices. Unfortunately my
> backend is nearly 10 years old and doesn't have much horsepower for
> transcoding.
>
> I'm wondering if anyone has any insights:
>
> 1) Is anyone pre-transcoding with HLS? Do you have a script for doing it
> with services API or do you take another approach?
>
> 2) Can modern hardware do the HLS transcode in reasonable time? The various
> android apps seem to suggest that way, so I'm considering upgrading my
> hardware for this (I realise this is a 'how long is a piece of string'
> question but wondering what others experiences are)
>
> 3) Are people using any other approaches for playing content on iOS? I am
> keen to avoid transcoding on the iOS side to get a better scrubbing
> experience... I am pretty clueless but I think that some of the UK channels
> might just need putting in another container format as they have mpeg4
> streams so that could avoid a transcode for those..
>
> 4) Are there quality limitations with the current HLS support? (Is it
> capable of 5.1 sound?)

I don't think there are really any iOS specific questions here.
Pretty much everything there would apply equally well to Android or
any other low power device.

Yes, modern hardware can transcode in real time, but I've never been
happy with the experience.  Seeking around in the recording is
generally awful and the quality is never as good as a high quality
transcode.  Some content I can watch natively on my phone (Samsung
Note 4) and other stuff is unwatchably glitchy or slow, requiring a
transcode.  It's not always easy to predict which is which.  If
there's something I intend to watch on my phone, I have a user job
which can transcode and put the output in MythVideo.  After that,
streaming it to the phone is flawless.  The transcode script runs at
about real time on my backend's AMD 8150 FX processor, using all eight
cores, but I don't make any attempt to watch it while it's
transcoding.

Eric