After recording the .TS file will not play well on other devices

John Gammel

System is an updated Raspberry Pi 3 B with OSMC, TVheadend 4.0.9 and a Hauppauge 955Q tuner with "v4l" firmware installed. Since it's the US (Englewood, FL) the tuner is using ATSC. It records to the local 32GB card in /home/osmc with a pass stream profile. Tests earlier had lots of artifacts during playback so I also installed the MPG2 codec from the RPi store. Now with the same process the .TS file is terrible - starts but has limited audio and next to no video.

This is the config.txt file:
gpu_mem_1024=256
hdmi_ignore_cec_init=1
disable_overscan=1
start_x=1
disable_splash=1
decode_MPG2=0xf1e2797b (this is a smushed value)

decode_WVC1=0x99b85364 (this is a smushed value)

My next steps are?

John Gammel

A couple of information items. Each was a different scheduled 10 minute recording of WINK-HD (thus HD data stream). Without the MPG key installed the file was 1.1GB. With the key installed it was 600MB which is considerably smaller.

John Gammel

I thought I would do some more investigating so I did a 10 minute recording on the WINK SD channel. Then thought I disabled to the MPG2 and rebooted but I get this:

# decode_MPG2=0xf1e2797b

# decode_WVC1=0x99b85364

osmc@osmc:/boot$ vcgencmd codec_enabled MPG2
MPG2=enabled

Joe User

1. What "other devices"
2. does that mean it DOES play well on some device and if so which?
3. does live TV play ok? On what device/player?

4. most HD channels are not mpeg2 and recording (with pass profile and not transcoding) has nothing to do with mpeg2 decoder.

John Gammel wrote:

> My next steps are?

Provide better explanation of what is going on and provide some tvheadend logs.

Maybe upload a short .ts file which can be evaluated.

Hiro Protagonist

John Gammel wrote:

> System is an updated Raspberry Pi 3 B with OSMC, TVheadend 4.0.9 and a Hauppauge 955Q tuner with "v4l" firmware installed. Since it's the US (Englewood, FL) the tuner is using ATSC. It records to the local 32GB card in /home/osmc with a pass stream profile. Tests earlier had lots of artifacts during playback so I also installed the MPG2 codec from the RPi store. Now with the same process the .TS file is terrible - starts but has limited audio and next to no video.

You shouldn't need MPG2 codec on the recording device [only the playback device if it's a Pi].

Don't record to the SD card, try it with a usb stick instead.

This doesn't seem to have anything to do with XBMC [or Kodi] as frontend, unless there's something you're not telling us.

John Gammel

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum.

I wanted to ensure that the 955Q wasn't the source of the problem so I attached it to one of my Xeon based Windows 10 systems. Redid a complete scan with the WinTv software - both the WINK HD and SD stations weren't detected. So I then found another station (WXCW) that both systems had and started testing with that. Even a one hour .ts file now plays fine even when recording to the boot disk. I can only assume that the WINK stations are in-and-out of range.

This is a total puzzle to me. How can such a strong station just "disappear"? They are only about 33 miles away with no significant elevation changes and partly over the harbor. Just goes to show the importance of rechecking your work.

Thanks for the help. Now I just need to get an enclosure that doesn't have large "holes" in it that risks shorts.