Microsoft DVR-MS video container support request

[Don_Karnia]

Tried a one-hour recording... no sync issues at all.
Great stuff!!! :D

[silversting]

no sync issues either, after a quick try on an 1hr recording. I do lose sound whenever I skip backwards in the video.... advancing fixes the problem!

[anywonder]

Also tried quickly and it's looking good :) I don't get a crash after fast forwarding for a while with this new dll which is great and of course a/v sync seems good as well.

(my region is ntsc canada analog cable)

Thanks again John

[djdanger]

no joy at all for me. no sync at all.stays consistently out until i use the FF or Rewind controls then it just goes awol :shocked:

recording pal on hauppage tv dvb card. watching over hard wired network,

[John Donaghy]

Thanks to everyone who's tested the new version.

no joy at all for me. no sync at all.stays consistently out until i use the FF or Rewind controls then it just goes awol :shocked:

recording pal on hauppage tv dvb card. watching over hard wired network,

Can you post a short clip (15 seconds) where someone is talking?

John

[anywonder]

ok just found one small issue with my shows

If I skip back 30 seconds using SmallStepBack or using the 7 second step back, sometimes no audio plays and sometimes it gets out of sync. If I fast forward a bit or skip forward using SmallStepForward then it gets back in sync. One one of my shows, pressing back (which triggers the 7 second skip back) skipped forward for some reason but that only happened with one show. The other problem didn't happen with the other mplayer.dll, just for reference.
(ntsc analog cable)

[Robo983]

Thanks for the work John. This is great! I am the guy that uses Meedio to record. I have seen no audio sync problems yet. My FF works better than ever. I still can't RW but I do not think I ever have been able to with any format. I am still on XBMC-CVS_2006-09-24-T3CH to fix the problems I had on the 2.0 final not FF or RW anything. The only thing I noticed is that if I use the skip back I loose audio sometimes but skiping forward restores the audio in sync. I am going to try it with the latest XBMC build this weekend to see if I still get good results. I plan to try a Beyond TV MPG files also but I hope I won't be needing BTV anymore with this fix. I didn't see any mention from anyone else about picture quality but my picture quality was great also. I thought I saw on one show pixalation but it was probably my network or my record quality.

[Macfox]

Even a few minutes would help though, because I can at least look inside the file to see how it might be different.


Another sample for you. I don't get any audio when playing this file with your latest mplayer.dll release.

Sample:
SD - PAL From Channel 10 - Australia.
Small - 59MB - ~1 Minute
http://users.on.net/~rardill/TEN%20Digital_Manual_200703110045p4523.dvr-ms

[John Donaghy]

[QUOTE=Macfox;128146]Another sample for you. I don't get any audio when playing this file with your latest mplayer.dll release.

I got the sample thanks. The problem is that the audio codec is AC3 but it is marked it as MP2 in the file. I've seen this before (always on Australian samples for some reason) and I just submitted a patch for it to ffmpeg. I'm planning to work on an mplayer patch next so I should have it working in the next test dll I release here.

John

[HairyHaggis]

Hi all,

I found this thread while looking up the problem I'm having with DVR-MS files. Even with the latest mplayer.dll from this thread audio plays correctly but video seems to play at double speed. I know this issue has been mentioned before elsewhere but I've not been able to resolve it. It's pretty frustrating since I bought the Xbox for this purpose :( and it's a ball-ache to convert it all to some other format for streaming.

I'm using a T3CH build of XBMC from late February.

Is there a known fix that I've missed?

Would a sample of my recorded TV from Media Center be helpful?

Thanks.

[John Donaghy]

Hi all,

I'm using a T3CH build of XBMC from late February.

Is there a known fix that I've missed?

Would a sample of my recorded TV from Media Center be helpful?

Thanks.

If you're sure that you have the latest dll I posted and that it doesnt work for you then, yes, even a 20 second a sample would be very helpful.

[HairyHaggis]

Here you go...

http://www.oaktreephoto.co.uk/New Street Law_BBC One_14_03_2007_21_12_48.dvr-ms

Thanks for your help.

[John Donaghy]

Here you go...

http://www.oaktreephoto.co.uk/New Street Law_BBC One_14_03_2007_21_12_48.dvr-ms

Thanks for your help.

This file played fine for me on my xbox. Are you sure you're using the latest mplayer.dll I posted?

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=P58WYF3I

(That guy looks like Harry Potter???)

[prulleman]

Could someone tell me if it's also possible to watch a file of a recording in progress? And if not, will this ever be possible?

(just interested, I don't have a capture card yet, but I'm about to buy one, and looking at all the possibilities :))

[Don_Karnia]

Could someone tell me if it's also possible to watch a file of a recording in progress? And if not, will this ever be possible?


Yep, just tried it then, works great.

I've noticed that my dvr-ms files now play with a constant 2ms video delay - as in, the audio comes slightly before the video and I have to change the audio delay in the settings. Although this isn't a major issue, and it does have a simple workaround, would you be able to look into this John?

[John Donaghy]

Yep, just tried it then, works great.

I've noticed that my dvr-ms files now play with a constant 2ms video delay - as in, the audio comes slightly before the video and I have to change the audio delay in the settings. Although this isn't a major issue, and it does have a simple workaround, would you be able to look into this John?

Is this just when watching a recording in progress, or does it happen on all shows? If it occurs on all shows is it now behaving differently than before or did you just not notice it before? I'd need a sample demonstrating the problem in order to investigate further.

[Don_Karnia]

It seems to happen on all shows, I think I might have noticed it before but just thought I was imagining it. I'll start uploading a one-minute sample and hope my internet connection can handle it...

[Don_Karnia]

http://www.badongo.com/file/2540713

[HairyHaggis]

This file played fine for me on my xbox. Are you sure you're using the latest mplayer.dll I posted?

Oops, my mistake :rolleyes:

For some reason it seems I had an XBMC installation nested inside another and I had replaced a redundant copy of mplayer.dll.

I've removed the extra XBMC installation and replaced the correct mplayer.dll and all is fine.

Sorry about that and thanks for taking the time to help a numpty ???

[John Donaghy]

It seems to happen on all shows, I think I might have noticed it before but just thought I was imagining it. I'll start uploading a one-minute sample and hope my internet connection can handle it...

I agree there's a slight problem here but I'm not sure what the cause is. It also happens in the windows build of maplayer and I've a feeling it might have something to do with the av sync mechanism in mplayer itself rather than in the asf demuxer. I will try to investigate at some point after I get the code into accepted into the main source tree (windows and xbmc).

John

[John Donaghy]

I've uploaded a new version of mplayer.dll based on the mplayer_prelim sources as promised. The main change is that it should more generally be able to correctly detect the audio stream.

There could be some unexpected regressions though given that it is based on mplayer_prelim but also some improvements (e.g. aspect ratio should now work).

Feedback (both good and bad) appreciated.

Also, dont forget to back up your old mplayer.dll and use at your own risk.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CQC8YLAM

[xino]

i am not greedy but I want XBMC to be able to play flash files:P

[Macfox]

I've uploaded a new version of mplayer.dll based on the mplayer_prelim sources as promised. The main change is that it should more generally be able to correctly detect the audio stream.

There could be some unexpected regressions though given that it is based on mplayer_prelim but also some improvements (e.g. aspect ratio should now work).

Feedback (both good and bad) appreciated.
...



John you're a champ. Audio detection now works for us Aussies as per the AC3/MP2 detection. I'll spread the news to the Mediaportal XBMC integration users. Keep up the good work.

[John Donaghy]

John you're a champ. Audio detection now works for us Aussies as per the AC3/MP2 detection. I'll spread the news to the Mediaportal XBMC integration users. Keep up the good work.

I'm glad it works for you. Thanks to some help I got from Jon Elwood (who is working on adding this to DVRMSToolbox - see here (http://babgvant.com/forums/1/2758/ShowThread.aspx)) we discovered that the method in the dll I posted doesnt always work. So some people might still have problems detecting the audio. However that's now fixed and should be available once this is incorporated into mplayer_prelim.

Can you also let me know if there are any sync issues or picture jerkiness with this latest version? I saw a couple of problems on some recordings I had but I'm not sure what the cause was.

BTW who are the Mediaportal XBMC integration users? Is there a thread somewhere for this?

Thanks,

John

[Macfox]

Mediaportal - XMBC plugin by Chad

http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/mp_xbmc_intergration_scripts_v0_6d_update-t2263.html

We needed this update as MP only records in DVR-MS currently. Up til now you had to transcode to play under XBMC. Now it just works.

I haven't seen any breakup or sync issues apart from a the tiny bit of breakup after ffw or rew. Other than that, no issues for me.

I'll keep testing and report back any issues.

Regards
Rob

[fvfv]

I finally got my first dvr-ms file to play fine on the XBOX. I honestly think you are one of the first developers that have been able to create a non-unix mplayer that plays dvr-ms.

My shameless request : Can you either build or show me the steps on how to build a windows binary (being cyg-win or mingw) of mplayer that can play dvr-ms and works as good as the one you built ?

When I removed the reference to "-demuxer 35" on my "movie.dvr-ms.conf" file, the file played quite good, on sync and with good sound. So I believe you built an mplayer that does not need the asf demuxer.

I cannot believe that initial support for dvr-ms has been around since 2004 and on 2007 I am still unable to play dvr-ms with the latest win32 binaries.

Thanks for your support.

[elupus]

get new a mplayer from their svn today, build.. play with -demuxer lavf... his patch for ffmpeg has been accepted.

speaking of wich, John, there where some comments on the svn log mailing list on your patch.

[elupus]

John:

do you have an alternate patch that you use when building with our mplayer version? tried the one for mplayer's demuxer, but it crashes on dvr-ms files and gives no video on non dvr-ms files (due to missing fps/frametime)

<edit> found the missing fps/framerate, still have crashes thou </edit>
<edit> forgot about this message completely, i've got it to work </edit>

[John Donaghy]

John:

do you have an alternate patch that you use when building with our mplayer version? tried the one for mplayer's demuxer, but it crashes on dvr-ms files and gives no video on non dvr-ms files (due to missing fps/frametime)

<edit> found the missing fps/framerate, still have crashes thou </edit>
<edit> forgot about this message completely, i've got it to work </edit>

Are you porting the patch I submitted to the Mplayer dev list? I can send you a version that works against the XBMC player_prelim sources if you like.

For what's it's worth I think we should go ahead and release it now that Nico has given it a tentative thumbs up.

[John Donaghy]

I finally got my first dvr-ms file to play fine on the XBOX. I honestly think you are one of the first developers that have been able to create a non-unix mplayer that plays dvr-ms.

My shameless request : Can you either build or show me the steps on how to build a windows binary (being cyg-win or mingw) of mplayer that can play dvr-ms and works as good as the one you built ?

When I removed the reference to "-demuxer 35" on my "movie.dvr-ms.conf" file, the file played quite good, on sync and with good sound. So I believe you built an mplayer that does not need the asf demuxer.

I cannot believe that initial support for dvr-ms has been around since 2004 and on 2007 I am still unable to play dvr-ms with the latest win32 binaries.

Thanks for your support.

Jon Elwood (DVRMSToolbox (http://babgvant.com/forums/1/2758/ShowThread.aspx)) has been creating Windows builds of MPlayer with my changes as well as a few of his own tweaks. You can download a prebuilt binary here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GODTUZ2H

[elupus]

yup, i'v already applied the mplayer demuxer part, and getting ready to make prelim mplayer our standard. I'm abit hessitant to update lavf/lavc in at the moment since that could break other things, so it will not contain the fix for now, but that shouldn't matter too much.

[John Donaghy]

Jon Elwood (DVRMSToolbox (http://babgvant.com/forums/1/2758/ShowThread.aspx)) has been creating Windows builds of MPlayer with my changes as well as a few of his own tweaks. You can download a prebuilt binary here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GODTUZ2H

Jon told me that the original link is broken. Here's one that should work:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GODTUZ2H

(Can I edit my posts?)

[John Donaghy]

yup, i'v already applied the mplayer demuxer part, and getting ready to make prelim mplayer our standard. I'm abit hessitant to update lavf/lavc in at the moment since that could break other things, so it will not contain the fix for now, but that shouldn't matter too much.

That's great news. We dont really need lavf demuxer to play dvr-ms files. Things like seeking dont work as well in dvr-ms files plus I've seen it crash on samples that the native demuxer handles fine. The only advantage it has currently are:


a/v syncing is slightly better in some circumstances - sync sometime goes out with the native demuxer but it recovers in a few seconds
my recent lavf patch means that it can detect audio better but I'm working on porting that to the native demuxer and should have a patch for you soon

[fvfv]

The megaupload link says that the file is unavailable.

I have been trying for the last 3 days to compile a win32 binary under mingw but all I get is undefined references complains.

I Svn'ed the latest from mplayer.hq.hu and the error references are in :

libavcodec/libavcodec.a(parser.o):parser.c:(.text+0xec4): undefined reference to `ff_ac3_freqs'.

I cannot find where ff_ac3**** calls are implemented. They are defined on the source as extern subroutines (extern const uint16_t ff_ac3_freqs[3];)

But, what library or package implements them ?

[John Donaghy]

The megaupload link says that the file is unavailable.

I have been trying for the last 3 days to compile a win32 binary under mingw but all I get is undefined references complains.

I Svn'ed the latest from mplayer.hq.hu and the error references are in :

libavcodec/libavcodec.a(parser.o):parser.c:(.text+0xec4): undefined reference to `ff_ac3_freqs'.

I cannot find where ff_ac3**** calls are implemented. They are defined on the source as extern subroutines (extern const uint16_t ff_ac3_freqs[3];)

But, what library or package implements them ?

Oops, I sent you the wrong link. Sorry. This should work but if not let me know. Building mplayer isnt straightforward if you havent done it before. Plus, large file support is broken in MINGW but I know Jon's version includes a workaround for that.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=61SK2JIK

[fvfv]

Thanks a lot !!!!

This version plays dvr-ms, same as the xbox. There are still some sync problems and shuttering, but I guess this is to be expected from cutting edge development.

How do I keep up with development ?

Will new changes be reflected on this thead or is there anywhere else I can get news on new changes , straight from the mplayer developers ?

Thanks for your support.

[John Donaghy]

Thanks a lot !!!!

This version plays dvr-ms, same as the xbox. There are still some sync problems and shuttering, but I guess this is to be expected from cutting edge development.

How do I keep up with development ?

Will new changes be reflected on this thead or is there anywhere else I can get news on new changes , straight from the mplayer developers ?

Thanks for your support.

I occasionally post fixes to the Mplayer developers list if you want to monitor that. I havent seen anyone else send patches for dvr-ms in quite a while.

I'm always interested in samples that dont play well so if you want to post a short clip to somewhere like megaupload.com I'd appreciate it, plus it'll increases your chances of getting it working properly. About a minute in length with people talking is good enough.

[fvfv]

I just got a 2 minute recording off an ATI HDTV Wonder.

Here is the link

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8B0XFH2M

It plays out of sync as it starts and then it fixes itself.

[fvfv]

John. I was wondering if you could help me here.

I would like to be able to implement what xbmc does when pressing the "Enter" button on the DVD Remote, which causes mplayer to cycle thru different aspect-ratios. I know that mplayer has the "c" command, which supposedly cycles on "fullscreenmode", but is only available with the -vo sdl output driver.

I have not been able to get mplayer with sdl on windows. Is there any other way I can accomplish this on the current svn mplayer, that is, cycle aspect rations with a key press ?

Thanks.

[elupus]

that isn't done using mplayer, that our video output that does the cycling. and no there is no such function in mplayer on windows. you have to specify aspect on commandline.

[John Donaghy]

I just got a 2 minute recording off an ATI HDTV Wonder.

Here is the link

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8B0XFH2M

It plays out of sync as it starts and then it fixes itself.

What software did you record this with - Windows MCE or something different? The contents are a little different than anything I've seen before. I got some help from Jon Elwood on this and he posted a new version of mplayer for windows here which might work better:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FPAWCHKG

The av sync is still out at the start with this version though because the information that helps determine the framerate isnt present - or else it's somewhere else in the data. It should correct itself in a few seconds though which might be good enough.

John

[fvfv]

It was recorded with GBPVR (http://gbpvr.com)on an ATI DVD Wonder Card.

[John Donaghy]

It was recorded with GBPVR (http://gbpvr.com)on an ATI DVD Wonder Card.

Just to let you know, I passed this sample to Jon Elwood (http://babgvant.com/forums/7/2758/ShowThread.aspx) and he tweaked my code a bit and got it to play perfectly. At some point in the near future one of us will submit the fix to the main mplayer project and from there it should make its way into XBMC. In the meantime I think he posted a working build that includes this fix on his forum.

John

[fvfv]

The last binaries I downloaded worked flawlessly.

Perfect synch and auto audio detection.

Thanks a lot for all the help.

[Auldar]

Hi John,

Firstly, thank you for your (and jelwood's) work on both mplayer, mencoder, and ffmpeg.


Have all your changes been ported into the latest SVN versions of XBMC yet? I've loaded it up, and it does appear to have most of your changes, but I did lose audio on a PAL recording after skipping forward.


The biggest issue I want to report though on PAL recordings, is a fairly significant amount of deinterlacing artifacts..

What's the best way to show you the issue? Upload a short capture to megaupload? Screenshots?

I hope you're still working on this..

[Auldar]

Hi John,

Firstly, thank you for your (and jelwood's) work on both mplayer, mencoder, and ffmpeg.


Have all your changes been ported into the latest SVN versions of XBMC yet? I've loaded it up, and it does appear to have most of your changes, but I did lose audio on a PAL recording after skipping forward.


The biggest issue I want to report though on PAL recordings, is a fairly significant amount of deinterlacing artifacts..

What's the best way to show you the issue? Upload a short capture to megaupload? Screenshots?

I hope you're still working on this..

Actually - I may not have my deinterlace options set correctly in XBMC. I'll get back to you if this is a real issue.

[Auldar]

Actually - I may not have my deinterlace options set correctly in XBMC. I'll get back to you if this is a real issue.

Hmm - well I played with the deinterlace options, and it's no good. With deinterlacing options enabled (in the video properties during playback), the files become unwatchable - lost frames, very jumpy.. Seems like CPU overload..

[Auldar]

Hmm - can't edit.

For the record, I tried every deinterlacing option, and all work bad, some much worse than others, but none of them were watchable..

[John Donaghy]

Hi John,

Firstly, thank you for your (and jelwood's) work on both mplayer, mencoder, and ffmpeg.


Have all your changes been ported into the latest SVN versions of XBMC yet? I've loaded it up, and it does appear to have most of your changes, but I did lose audio on a PAL recording after skipping forward.


The biggest issue I want to report though on PAL recordings, is a fairly significant amount of deinterlacing artifacts..

What's the best way to show you the issue? Upload a short capture to megaupload? Screenshots?

I hope you're still working on this..


AFAIK elupus ported pretty much everything I did to the latest XBMC SVN including things that are not yet in the Windows version of MPlayer.

Unfortunately though I cant really help you with deinterlacing because I dont know much about it. Some obvious questions come to mind though that might help somebody shed light on the problem:


Is this a dvr-ms-only issue for you?
Are the problems in HD recording only and if so, what's the frame size? (If you're having trouble deinterlacing SDTV then something must be very wrong).
Maybe you can post a sample for someone to verify the problem on their hardware.
Anyone else seen this?


John

[Auldar]

AFAIK elupus ported pretty much everything I did to the latest XBMC SVN including things that are not yet in the Windows version of MPlayer.

Unfortunately though I cant really help you with deinterlacing because I dont know much about it. Some obvious questions come to mind though that might help somebody shed light on the problem:


Is this a dvr-ms-only issue for you?
Are the problems in HD recording only and if so, what's the frame size? (If you're having trouble deinterlacing SDTV then something must be very wrong).
Maybe you can post a sample for someone to verify the problem on their hardware.
Anyone else seen this?


John

Hi John,

Yep, DVR-MS only.

SD recordings from Vista MC.

I'll post a sample when I can..

[elupus]

John:
Hmm.. maybe i broke something now. I ported the mplayerhq svn version of your patch. So what isn't in mplayer's svn?

[John Donaghy]

John:
Hmm.. maybe i broke something now. I ported the mplayerhq svn version of your patch. So what isn't in mplayer's svn?

elupus

The things that arent in the main mplayer are:

Better detection of audio stream type (mainly related to HD)
Some seeking improvements
Removal of some now redundant mpeg video parsing functions


I believe you ported my original patch but Nico wanted me to break it up into smaller chunks. So I resubmitted the main piece and left the (relatively small) remaining three pieces till later. The three omissions are unlikely to affect de-interlacing in any way but the main piece could have been broken somehow when you ported it.

Aludar: Can you (or anybody else) confirm that this is only a de-interlacing problem? I mean, does playback work on a standard TV but not work properly on a HDTV due to de-interlacing causing problems. That's my understanding of the problem but I find it hard to see how that could be a dvr-ms-only issue unless playback is also broken on a standard TV.

Unfortunately I dont have a HDTV to check this out but I'll try to rebuild mplayer.dll from SVN and see if playback works for me. Perhaps it's a PAL-only issue or a Vista-only issue so I'll definitely need a sample.

[Auldar]

:grin:elupus

The things that arent in the main mplayer are:

Better detection of audio stream type (mainly related to HD)
Some seeking improvements
Removal of some now redundant mpeg video parsing functions


I believe you ported my original patch but Nico wanted me to break it up into smaller chunks. So I resubmitted the main piece and left the (relatively small) remaining three pieces till later. The three omissions are unlikely to affect de-interlacing in any way but the main piece could have been broken somehow when you ported it.

Aludar: Can you (or anybody else) confirm that this is only a de-interlacing problem? I mean, does playback work on a standard TV but not work properly on a HDTV due to de-interlacing causing problems. That's my understanding of the problem but I find it hard to see how that could be a dvr-ms-only issue unless playback is also broken on a standard TV.

Unfortunately I dont have a HDTV to check this out but I'll try to rebuild mplayer.dll from SVN and see if playback works for me. Perhaps it's a PAL-only issue or a Vista-only issue so I'll definitely need a sample.

Hi John,

I saw it on normal 4:3 CRT with XBMC running at 576i as well as my 16:9 50" Plasma with XBMC running in 1080i..

I also had a PAL DTV recording with no audio, so perhaps your audio changes are still required..

I'll try to find the time to post a 5-10 second sample (my wife's recovering from an operation atm, so I'm quite busy looking after her and the kids :P).

[elupus]

John:
ok, could you send me the latest uptodate patch and i'll reapply it. i'm trying to squash the other asf bug that has shown up. (ie wrong fps playback on some streams)

[John Donaghy]

John:
ok, could you send me the latest uptodate patch and i'll reapply it. i'm trying to squash the other asf bug that has shown up. (ie wrong fps playback on some streams)

I'm not sure what exactly you need here so I'll send you a PM to keep the noise out of this discussion.

John

[John Donaghy]

I'm not sure what exactly you need here so I'll send you a PM to keep the noise out of this discussion.

John

Update: I just built the latest version and had a look at the code. It seems to be very close to what is in mplayerhq - so the audio detection and seeking improvements are NOT in xbmcmplayer anymore. Also, it doesnt play dvr-ms properly at the minute either for some reason - I'm getting choppy picture and sound. I'll have to investigate further to find out why this is when I get a chance.

I'll also create patches for the audio and seeking improvements in the near future and submit them to mplayerhq and to elupus.

[John Donaghy]

Update:...

I'm getting choppy picture and sound. I'll have to investigate further to find out why this is when I get a chance.


It seems I was wrong about dvr-ms playback not working with the latest mplayer.dll -- at least on my recordings. Once I updated to the latest version of XBMC everything was fine. (Sorry elupus -- you did a great job!)

John

[prulleman]

Hi John, I have a question about this subject, I have one of the latest T3CH builds which includes:
2007-05-28 9130 updated: asf demuxer to mplayerhq version. contains a new version of John's dvr-ms demuxer code. (mplayer.dll) fixed: mplayer would spew out more caching messages than normal since rewriting of cache aborting routine (mplayer.dll) fixed: noise filter would use wrong image size for direct rendering wich caused libavcodec to break because of the changed stride of the image. (mplayer.dll)

I have some problems with seeking forward and backward. It looks like the percentage seeks do not work, but when you overrule this in the advancedsettings.xml, the fixed seconds also don't work.

When a recording is finished (total time known) the normal forward and backward are 5 minutes (also when set to 30 seconds), big fw and big bw are complete messed up, (end /start of file). Step back is also strange.
Only the fast fw and f bw (2x, 4x etc) are working.

When a recording is still running, the fast ff and fast bw doesn't work, so the only thing you can do is 5 minutes forward or 5 minutes backwards... This kinda sucks when the comercial breaks aren't exactly 5 minutes.. :)

The video quality is very good BTW!.

[John Donaghy]

Hi John, I have a question about this subject, I have one of the latest T3CH builds which includes:
2007-05-28 9130 updated: asf demuxer to mplayerhq version. contains a new version of John's dvr-ms demuxer code. (mplayer.dll) fixed: mplayer would spew out more caching messages than normal since rewriting of cache aborting routine (mplayer.dll) fixed: noise filter would use wrong image size for direct rendering wich caused libavcodec to break because of the changed stride of the image. (mplayer.dll)

I have some problems with seeking forward and backward. It looks like the percentage seeks do not work, but when you overrule this in the advancedsettings.xml, the fixed seconds also don't work.

When a recording is finished (total time known) the normal forward and backward are 5 minutes (also when set to 30 seconds), big fw and big bw are complete messed up, (end /start of file). Step back is also strange.
Only the fast fw and f bw (2x, 4x etc) are working.

When a recording is still running, the fast ff and fast bw doesn't work, so the only thing you can do is 5 minutes forward or 5 minutes backwards... This kinda sucks when the comercial breaks aren't exactly 5 minutes.. :)

The video quality is very good BTW!.

Yes, thanks for letting me know. I have a fix for seeking that should address most of these issues and I hope to post a patch soon.

Some of the test dlls I posted a while ago on this thread should have the fix, so it might be worth trying one of those.

John

[prulleman]

Thanks, I will give it a try

[goku31640]

I had a question, I was wondering if there is anyway to add the Vista Media Center recorded shows to the XBMC library?

I know the correct naming format is 1x02,s01e02 etc.. but Vista Media Center names them by Date

Example:House_KSAS_05_05_2008_19_58_07.dvr-ms
Example:House_KSAS_28_04_2008_19_58_06.dvr-ms

Is there anyway to add these to the Library in XBMC? I would rename them, but then I couldn't see them in order in Vista Media Center.

Or is there any way to automatically copy a video as soon as its recorded to another directory and ill just add that source to XBMC and rename those files?

[canyonquest]

I'm in the same boat.

I use DVRMSToolbox to cut commercials and rename the files based on OriginalBroadcastDateTime, Title, and SubTitle
http://babgvant.com/
Thus
/Recorded TV/House_KSAS_05_05_2008_19_58_07.dvr-ms
becomes;
/Recorded TV/House/(2008-05-05) House - Living the Dream.dvr-ms
Windows Media Center doesn't seem to mind the change.
I run a batch file under the Task Scheduler to create TBN's with the same name using ffmpeg.
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=29699
This makes the shared episodes somewhat user-friendly in XBMC but it still isn't as great as library mode.

XBMC seems to only care about season and episode numbers but this info isn't in the dvr-ms metadata. Anybody have any suggestions on how to get episodes into the library automatically (thetvdb.com api, nfo file creation, etc.)?

Thanks.

[StodgyWaif]

It would be great if XBMC could have built in support for these files. I don't even bother with the video library as it stands. Just browse the share and play them to find out which episode is which.

If anyone knows of some sort of automated way of getting this to work right, please share!!

[rgviewer]

I was wondering if you could share how you created a batch file and how you used Task Scheduler to auto update your thumbnails. I am able to open a command prompt in C:\Users\Public\Recorded TV and generate thumbs, but it would be very helpful if it could do it all automaticaly.

Also you said that you use DVRMSToolbox to rename all your recordings. I also use this to remove commercials but haven't found any place in the program to allow to change names.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks
Ron

[jangeador]

Has the issue with Seeking been fixed yet. I have a fairly new t3ch build and I have the issues with seeking not working.

Thanks.

[jangeador]

I'm in the same boat.

I use DVRMSToolbox to cut commercials and rename the files based on OriginalBroadcastDateTime, Title, and SubTitle
http://babgvant.com/
Thus
/Recorded TV/House_KSAS_05_05_2008_19_58_07.dvr-ms
becomes;
/Recorded TV/House/(2008-05-05) House - Living the Dream.dvr-ms
Windows Media Center doesn't seem to mind the change.
I run a batch file under the Task Scheduler to create TBN's with the same name using ffmpeg.
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=29699
This makes the shared episodes somewhat user-friendly in XBMC but it still isn't as great as library mode.

XBMC seems to only care about season and episode numbers but this info isn't in the dvr-ms metadata. Anybody have any suggestions on how to get episodes into the library automatically (thetvdb.com api, nfo file creation, etc.)?

Thanks.


Can you please tell me in detail how you do this, or what profile you are using. I am trying to do just that, because it would be much easier to search the shows if there were folders. Also, do your dvr-ms files allow you to skip back and forward, the jumps in the file are not working for me.

Thanks.

[canyonquest]

Can you please tell me in detail how you do this, or what profile you are using. I am trying to do just that, because it would be much easier to search the shows if there were folders. Also, do your dvr-ms files allow you to skip back and forward, the jumps in the file are not working for me.
Thanks.

I'm not sure I could give a detailed response without getting too far off topic. Plus I'd probably just end up confusing you more. This link was helpful for me.
http://babgvant.com/Wiki/view.aspx/DVRMSToolbox/Customize
I think there was a modified mplayer.dll floating around in these forums specifically built for dvr-ms, or you could try adjusting timeseek values in advancedsettings. But if there's no commercials, where's the need?

I think I read somewhere that the xbmc library scan for television might incorporate OriginalBroadcastDateTime in the future. This would be totally awesome and would be the last step in total automation for my current setup.

[jangeador]

I'm not sure I could give a detailed response without getting too far off topic. Plus I'd probably just end up confusing you more. This link was helpful for me.
http://babgvant.com/Wiki/view.aspx/DVRMSToolbox/Customize
I think there was a modified mplayer.dll floating around in these forums specifically built for dvr-ms, or you could try adjusting timeseek values in advancedsettings. But if there's no commercials, where's the need?

I think I read somewhere that the xbmc library scan for television might incorporate OriginalBroadcastDateTime in the future. This would be totally awesome and would be the last step in total automation for my current setup.

My DVR-MS Files just won't work. I have played with the timeseek settings in the advance settings xml file. Can someone please verify this, and if they read fine on your xbmc, which version are you using?

Thanks.