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

[James Linder]

> On 21 Sep 2015, at 8:00 pm, mythtv-users-request at mythtv.org wrote:
> 
>> 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 please give some detail: what you watch with
My android experience is pretty ratty. I use a galaxy-tab-s and although it does well on youtube streams and the local TV streams ABC:iview SBS:catchup the myth streams are pretty much guaranteed to fail somewhere.
Are the transcode scripts ones that you published a while ago? Those are the ones I’m using.

My ongoing pain is that my wife watches myth with her iPad flawlessly while my android is a disaster

James