Script for analog V4L2 device support in TVH (via pipe:// mux)

Diego Rivera · 2016-01-19T22:05:22+00:00

Hi, all! In my setup, I have need to tune analog channels via Kodi/TVH, which is currently not supported in TVHeadEnd. My solution was to make use of the pi...

Michal Smolinsky

Hello.
Thank you for the good solution to work with analog tuners.
I have problems when switching channels.
My configuration:
Ubuntu 14.04 trusty, HTS Tvheadend 4.0.9-7~gbf276e0~trusty, Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150.
===
ffmpeg version N-80901-gfebc862 Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers
built with gcc 4.8 (Ubuntu 4.8.4-2ubuntu1~14.04.3)
===
VLC media player 2.1.6 Rincewind (revision 2.1.6-0-gea01d28)
===
http://prntscr.com/c5cu5z http://prntscr.com/c5cut8 http://prntscr.com/c5cv0e http://prntscr.com/c5cvsi http://paste.ubuntu.com/23052711/

Diego Rivera

Edit the network's configuration and set the "Max Input Streams" value to 1. This value controls how many concurrent streams you can obtain from a single "network" (tuner, really). Thus, if you have a single tuner, in this mode, you have to explicitly tell TVH that it can only obtain a single stream at a time from it. In this case, a single instance of the analog capture script can be used at any given time, and thus the network must be told this, lest it try to start more than one instance, which is what's happening here (see line 143 where it complains that the device is locked...the process locking it is the previous version of the script itself).

Max Nordanåker

Diego Rivera wrote:
> Maybe this device requires specific firmware to be loaded prior to use? Maybe a userland service needs to be started or configured?
>
> Without one of these devices to test with, it's impossible for me to debug the issue if the device behaves differently from the other "more standard" devices out there. I have tested this script with two different Hauppauge devices, and others have had success with other devices.
>

> Not sure what I can do to help here...

Hello again!

Back with another tuner (Hauppauge) and I think I'm close to figure this out.

Raspberry Pi 3, Wheezy, Kernel 3.19.

VLC, FFmpeg, ivtv-tune and v4l-utils are installed.

root@tvheadend:/home/hts/.hts/tvheadend# ./capture-analog -t europe-west -c SE12 -s /dev/video0 -o
SOURCES=[/dev/video0]
Using frequency table [europe-west]
Will tune to channel [SE12] (table=europe-west)
Begin capture from /dev/video0 (TUNER=true)
+ tune_device /dev/video0
+ local DEVICE=./capture-analog
+ local TUNING_FLAG=
+ local TABLE_FLAG=
+ true
+ true
+ TUNING_FLAG='-c SE12'
+ false
+ true
+ TABLE_FLAG='-t europe-west'
+ /usr/bin/ivtv-tune -t europe-west -c SE12 -d /dev/video0
/dev/video0: 238.250 MHz (Signal Detected)
+ cat /dev/video0
+ /usr/bin/ffmpeg -i pipe:///dev/stdin -f mpegts -c:v copy -c:a ac3 -b:a 224k -
ffmpeg version 0.8.17-6:0.8.17-2+rpi1+deb7u2, Copyright (c) 2000-2014 the Libav developers
built on Jun 18 2016 00:05:51 with gcc 4.6.3
The ffmpeg program is only provided for script compatibility and will be removed
in a future release. It has been deprecated in the Libav project to allow for
incompatible command line syntax improvements in its replacement called avconv
(see Changelog for details). Please use avconv instead.
[mpeg

 0x1583660] max_analyze_duration reached
[mpeg

0x1583660] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
Input #0, mpeg, from 'pipe:///dev/stdin':
Duration: N/A, start: 0.169356, bitrate: 8224 kb/s
Stream #0.0[0x1e0]: Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p, 720x480 [PAR 8:9 DAR 4:3], 8000 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc
Stream #0.1[0x1c0]: Audio: mp2, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 224 kb/s
Unrecognized option 'c:v'
Failed to set value 'copy' for option 'c:v'
+ set +x
root@tvheadend:/home/hts/.hts/tvheadend#

Bavo Verlackt

I will give it a try with the sundtek mediaTV pro (treiber 31 dec 2016), RPI 2, Archlinux, TVHeadend 4.1 and Kodi jarvis. Is there an update on this tuner or did you stop looking after the above conversation ended?

nf gb

Bavo Verlackt wrote:

> I will give it a try with the sundtek mediaTV pro (treiber 31 dec 2016), RPI 2, Archlinux, TVHeadend 4.1 and Kodi jarvis. Is there an update on this tuner or did you stop looking after the above conversation ended?

Hi, have you managed to use this tuner with analog TV? I've used the same tuner with the script with some changes, however in a raspberry pi 2 it is too slow. With a nanopi m4 can't get the audio, but I think this is a vlc/ffmpeg problem because I can capture both video and audio with mencoder. The problem is I don't know how to output to MPEG-TS from mencoder.

Tobi Habich

Very interesting work and nice to see that it is possible to widen the TVH capabilities by adding external scripts.
I was in a similiar situation when I wanted to make wilmaa (swiss IPTV provider) work with TVH in a reliable way.
When I read your description about the script I got reminded of many obstacles I had to tackle when I was creating my wilmaa solution.

One almost funny thing is, that I tried first with a VLC command line but did not get it to work. Therefore I switched to ffmpeg and (of course) I had synchronisation isuues for a long long time. So while you started with ffmpeg and ended up using VLC, I was doinig it the exact other way around. I failed on VLC but managed with ffmpeg. This is actually why I'm writing this. I want to share my ffmpg input and output filters with you, hoping this might safe some time in case you want to retry with ffmpeg at some point again. At the same time, I'll try to use VLC for my stuff and the way you create the VLC command line will be very helpful for me.

So here are the input and output sections of my finally well working ffmpeg command line. The audio and video of the output are perfectly in sync.....

Input:
pipe:///usr/bin/ffmpeg -loglevel fatal -reconnect 1 -reconnect_at_eof 1 -reconnect_streamed 1 -reconnect_delay_max 0 -err_detect ignore_err -analyzeduration 1 -probesize 32 -copyts -r 25

-i VIDEOSTREAM -i AUDIOSTREAM

Output:

-c:v copy -bufsize 5M -maxrate 10M -qmin 0 -g 250 -bf 1 -c:a copy -f tee -map 0:v -map 1:a -f mpegts pipe:1

The important parts to get the synchronisation issue solved are:
-copyts:
'at the input (the ts here stands for timestamp not for transport stream - just mentioning this because this confused me quite some time)
-r 25:
'leads to rewritten timestamps (why the copyts is still needed is something I can't explain but I can tell it is needed; you'll probably need to set it to r 30)
-f tee and map:

'first have to seperate streams (individual audio and video streams) and then combine them again (this is done with "tee" and the "map" commands in the output filer section; without seperating and a certain way of rejoining I had no success ever)

Maybe this safes time for someone....

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