TVHeadend Raspberry Pi and Transcoding

lord slash · 2014-11-04T22:19:08+00:00

Hi guys, I've setup a TVHeadend back end with my raspberry pi and raspbian, where I stream the italian tv to my home in Germany. The system works perfectly d...

Robert Mast

Gnag Flow wrote:
> couldn't find the exact command to disable h265 in this thread earlier.

Sorry, it was x265, for example see page 5 of this thread.

> and for tvheadend source i am using the source "deb https://dl.bintray.com/djbenson/deb wheezy unstable".
> can you recommend another one?

> i am using a raspberry pi 3 with raspbian jessie.

If you don't want to build you could use "deb https://dl.bintray.com/djbenson/deb jessie unstable"

that works for RPi2 and 3.

If you want to build (because the build available doesn't contain TVHeadend transcoding) you should teach yourself some git and fetch a more recent source from https://github.com/tvheadend/tvheadend

First Last

Gnag Flow, I had the EXACT same problem. Solution for me was to disable ffmpeg_static in the build (https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/unable-to-build-tvheadend-on-fresh-osmc-kodi17-install/22972).

I still can't find any muxes though, neither can w_scan :|.

Edit: I see now that that actually disables transcoding (whatever that is) and that is actually the subject of this topic. Sorry, I was just trying to help :).

Bernard Konys

I used to have a running gstreamer transcoding from tvheadend source and outputting to a particular port with the following:

gst-launch-1.0 souphttpsrc location= http://192.168.1.53:9981/stream/channelnumber/34 is-live=true ! tsdemux name=demux demux. ! queue ! h264parse ! queue ! omxh264dec ! videoscale method=3 ! video/x-raw,width=640,height=400 ! queue ! omxh264enc inline-header=true periodicty-idr=25 ! queue ! h264parse config-interval=1 ! queue ! mpegtsmux name=mux ! tcpserversink host=192.168.1.53 port=8554 demux. ! queue ! mpegaudioparse ! queue ! mux.

I have no notes of used versions, but will be trying to reproduce during upcoming weeks. Wouldn't the TCP server sink from gstreamer itself be enough for using pipe://?

Robert Mast wrote:
> Antonio S wrote:
> > I have read somewhere else that http-proxy uses "multiple, unpredictable ports"
> > What does it means? It just start an http server on a well specified port, nothing more
>
> I thought to have seen a different port number mentioned in the error following my attempt to use http-launch.
> I'm not sure my router accepts those random ports, I often use 22 vpn-tunnels at home while straight communication on the LAN on other ports often goes in error. A vpn-tunnel via MobaXTerm doesn't support UDP though.
>
> > Now: I'm not quite sure the goal we have here: of course one is to being able to transcode, but I assumed we wanted to get the transcoded stream back into tvheaded via pipe, to play it as a normal "channel".
> > But maybe it's just my goal ;)
>

> I already saw a pipe-example somewhere, if that's enough for TVHeadend to connect.

Andrei D

Hello,

This is the command I use in IPTV Mux for hardware decoding/encoding :

pipe://ffmpeg -loglevel fatal -c:v mpeg2video -i http://127.0.0.1:9981/stream/channelnumber/19?profile=MPEG2 -vcodec h264_omx -preset ultrafast -s 1024x576 -r 29.97 -bf 2 -trellis 2 -b 3500k -bt 700k -acodec copy -metadata service_provider=Digi -metadata service_name=DigiSport2 -f mpegts -tune zerolatency pipe:1

I use a compiled FFmpeg with enabled h264_omx and mpeg2_mmal.I use just pipe://ffmpeg because pipe:///usr/bin/ffmpeg pints to another version of FFmpeg.So after creating an IPTV network,go to muxes,add mux,and at the url put the command.After that go back to Networks,select the IPTV network and force scan it.It will find one service that can be mapped.Do not map with the same number,or use another way to point to the channel(with ticket).Make sure that MPEG2 is alowed for 127.0.0.1 or use username and password.

PS:I use mpeg2video instead of mpeg2_mmal because of bad quality of mpeg2_mmal combined with h264_omx. Maybe someone could point for improvements.In this case the raspberry uses avarage 10% load.Or with htop ffmpeg process varies from 40-60-90% and all 4 cores working splitting that amount.If i use h_264_mmal and h264_omx the results are not that bad but for streaming to a big tv not recomended ,I will use it for mobile.In this case the rasbberry stays under 10%,or 5%.I am not sure that h264_omx supports that flags -preset -r -bf...,but if you don't use -s xxx x xxx it will look very bad.As for profile it won't matter if its pass or MPEG2,I created this for gstream. Sorry for bad language and if I mistaken something.

In the future maybe it will be a way to point tvheadend to use our ffmpeg build, not the static one.In that case we could use transcoding profiles.

Andrei D

Can you please help me?I build tvheadend on raspberry with the built in ffmpeg and the shared one with enabled omx and mmla options.I can se tge h264_omx profile but the output video is green(i can see some pixels or something).I tried all tge presets and olso raspian and osmc.So the transcoding is working but video output is garbage.I fallowed this forum instructions.If I run outside tvheadened the output image is ok.

Jan Kowalski

Hi,,

Anyone is able to change resolution or thick "deinterlace" when h264_omx is set to transcoding? When resolution is set to 0 and deinterlace is disabled, all working fine. But of I want to change resolution to for example 360, picture doesn't appear in "Watch TV".

J N

Firstly, thanks to all your hard work on achiving transcoding on our rpi :)

To get compilation and installation work on my rpi3 with raspbian stretch i had to set "LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/vc/lib".
Without this, compilation failed because mmal and bcm libraries aren´t found by linker.

Strangely enough the command "ldconf -p" list all the needed libraries correctly.

My commands that i used:

export LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/vc/lib make distclean ./configure --disable-libvpx --disable-libvpx_static --enable-mmal --enable-omx --enable-omx-rpi make -j5 sudo LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/vc/lib make install

The last command needs "LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/vc/lib" in front of make, because with sudo the env isn´t available.

Greets

Catscrash Catscrash

Hi,

I used J N's commands as a basis and created a tvheadend package with:

LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/vc/lib AUTOBUILD_CONFIGURE_EXTRA="--disable-libvpx --disable-libvpx_static --enable-mmal --enable-omx --enable-omx-rpi" ./Autobuild.sh

the build process went fine, but when I start the new tvheadend version up, it looks like this:

https://pastebin.com/cWZZUjdZ

What went wrong? Any idea?

mpmc

There are no crash lines, so there not a lot to be gleamed from that - looks like an abort.

Alexander Meinke

Hi,

I also managed to get transcoding for ts (mpeg2video, mpeg2audio) -> ts (h264, ac3) and ts (h264, ac3) -> ts (h264, ac3) working by using gstreamer.

SW:

Raspberry Pi reference 2018-06-27 image tvheadend 4.3-1273~g610c6fa74~raspbianstretch gstreamer1.0-omx-rpi-config 1.10.4-1+rpt3 gstreamer1.0-omx-rpi 1.10.4-1+rpt3

Then I added a new stream profile (Configuration -> Stream) from MPEG-TS Spawn/built-in template and the following command line:

CMD:

gst-launch-1.0 fdsrc fd=0 ! decodebin name=decoder decoder. ! queue ! avenc_ac3 ! mpegtsmux name=mux ! fdsink fd=1 decoder. ! omxh264enc ! mux.

This profile can then be used in playlist's url by adding ?profile=transcoding. For example:

http://raspberrypi.lan:9981/playlist/channels?profile=transcoding

That's all.

The pipeline could be tuned further, but therefore I need to investigate on gstreamer's pipeline. For example program information could be added to the stream. The decodebin is used to transcode any source transparently. The fdsrc and fdsink elements won't produce any overhead by walking the network stack as it would with sources like souphttpsrc.

One error that occur is by stopping the playback. It seem the write pipe (stdout) is closed before fully empty. The error in tvheadend log is:

Aug 09 11:54:26 raspberrypi tvheadend[13380]: spawn: ERROR: from element /GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstFdSink:fdsink0: Could not write to resource.
Aug 09 11:54:26 raspberrypi tvheadend[13380]: spawn: Additional debug info:
Aug 09 11:54:26 raspberrypi tvheadend[13380]: spawn: gstelements_private.c(317): gst_writev_buffers (): /GstPipeline:pipeline0/GstFdSink:fdsink0:
Aug 09 11:54:26 raspberrypi tvheadend[13380]: spawn: Error while writing to file descriptor 1: Broken pipe

Another error relates to decoding mpeg2 with mmal. The log says:

Aug 09 11:53:45 raspberrypi tvheadend[13380]: spawn: mmal: mmal_vc_port_info_set: failed to set port info (2:0): EINVAL
Aug 09 11:53:45 raspberrypi tvheadend[13380]: spawn: mmal: mmal_vc_port_set_format: mmal_vc_port_info_set failed 0x6a018650 (EINVAL)
Aug 09 11:53:45 raspberrypi tvheadend[13380]: spawn: mmal: mmal_port_disable: port vc.ril.video_decode:in:0(MP2V)(0x6a018650) is not enabled
Aug 09 11:53:45 raspberrypi tvheadend[13380]: spawn: mmal: mmal_port_disable: port vc.ril.video_decode:out:0(0x6a018970) is not enabled
Aug 09 11:53:45 raspberrypi tvheadend[13380]: spawn: mmal: mmal_port_disable: port vc.ril.video_decode:ctr:0(0x6a018340) is not enabled

Maybe someone with rpi's mpeg license active could test the pipeline.

Cheers

Robert Pique

good one ..

Catscrash Catscrash

Alexander Meinke wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I also managed to get transcoding for ts (mpeg2video, mpeg2audio) -> ts (h264, ac3) and ts (h264, ac3) -> ts (h264, ac3) working by using gstreamer.

Hi Alexander, how did you compile tvheadend for raspberry to get the transcoding settings? When I install from repository, the transcoding options are missing, when I compile tvheadend crashes shortly after startup

Alexander Meinke

Hello Catscrash,

I did not compiled tvheadend myself. There are arm/rpi prebuilt packages. You can use doozer or bintray. For more information look at https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend/wiki/AptRepository. After that I installed the gstreamer omx packages and added the transcoding profile.

Catscrash Catscrash

Hi Alexander,

thanks for that - Did you do anything else to the packages to enable transcoding? The doozer and bintray tvheadend armhf packages seem to have transcoding disabled - see attachment

mpmc

Catscrash Catscrash wrote:
> Hi Alexander,
>

> thanks for that - Did you do anything else to the packages to enable transcoding? The doozer and bintray tvheadend armhf packages seem to have transcoding disabled - see attachment

You can still use the mpegts-spawn profile & pass the job to gstreamer :).

Alexander Meinke

Mark Clarkstone wrote:
> Catscrash Catscrash wrote:
> > Hi Alexander,
> >
> > thanks for that - Did you do anything else to the packages to enable transcoding? The doozer and bintray tvheadend armhf packages seem to have transcoding disabled - see attachment
>

> You can still use the mpegts-spawn profile & pass the job to gstreamer :).

Exactly. Thank you Mark :).

Andy B

Is this enough for it to be bundled into a rpi+transcoding build or way too early just yet?
I have a rpi3b+ and happy to test when ready.

Alexander Meinke

Andy B wrote:
> Is this enough for it to be bundled into a rpi+transcoding build or way too early just yet?

> I have a rpi3b+ and happy to test when ready.

I do not understand your question.

There are five steps at the moment:

1. Get Pi Image from Foundation
2. Get your TV adapter working
3. Install gstreamer with omx
4. Install tvheadend

5. Create Spawn stream-profile

Gstreamer is a pure external project and has nothing to do with tvheadend. Ffmpeg is also external, but was chosen to be included in tvheadend but does not offer transcoding at the moment.

Some other goals could be:

- tune gstreamer pipeline (for example bitrate or resolution)
- test gstreamer pipeline (should deliver smooth experience independent of source because there is mpeg2, h264 and last but not least h265)
- try to get gstreamer omx plugins from ugly/bad to base/good (could be difficult with codecs that require license)

- as ffmpeg is chosen to be included, support the mainline / upstream development in the omx area

I think the last point turns the answer to your question to: NO, too early.

Cheers

Andy B

Thanks. I'm struggling to figure out the finer details.

Please could you help fill in the blanks?

1. Get Pi Image from Foundation

--> I have tried with RASPBIAN STRETCH LITE and RASPBIAN STRETCH WITH DESKTOP

2. Get your TV adapter working

--> Already done and it has been working fine.

3. Install gstreamer with omx
How is this supposed to be done? I saw previous comments earlier in the thread that it is using:
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0
sudo apt-get install gstreamer-1.0
also saw other forums suggesting:
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-tools
also tried:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-omx

4. Install tvheadend
--> I'm using the steps at the bottom of this page (https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend/wiki/AptRepository)

Currently with version: HTS Tvheadend 4.2.6-16~g42e737f28

5. Create Spawn stream-profile
--> The only profiles that appear from the list are:
+ MPEG-TS Pass-through/built-in
+ Matroska (mkv)/built-in
+ HTSP Stream Profile
+ Audio stream
--> No spawn profile..? Why is it missing?

Saen Acro

Andy B wrote:

> --> No spawn profile..? Why is it missing?

update to 4.3.xxxx

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