Dean s wrote:
> I'm having the same problem.. where I have some of my iptv in ts and other (vod) in mkv.
> Can someone guide me through a solution?
Basically the pipe:// syntax I posted above should work for any IPTV stream (just replace the .m3u8 link with the .mkv link) BUT there is a big caveat. If all ffmpeg has to do is container conversion, such as when it converts .mp4 to .ts, then the conversion takes place significantly faster than real time and therefore will work. The problem is that if you are doing a conversion that actually changes the video format (not just the container), no consumer-grade system that I am aware of can do that in real time or faster, therefore trying to use the pipe:// syntax in that situation will fail because ffmpeg just can't keep up with the incoming stream.
I'm not familiar with .mkv streams so I don't know if converting .mkv to .ts is just a container conversion or an actual video format conversion. I would assume that because the -c copy argument is used, all the actual streams are simply copied and the only thing changed is the container (as is the case when converting .mp4 to .ts) but I can't be sure.
The other thing about using the pipe:// syntax is that it seems to deal best with single streams. Since you are adding it as a mux, in theory it can handle multiple streams, but in practice it doesn't always work (and it may in part depend on which version of Tvheadend you have as to whether it works). And the contents of something like a .m3u8 file can change at any time, which could necessitate needing to rescan the mux (assuming this works in the first place).
When you create the mux, these are the settings you need to be most concerned about:
Enabled: Enable
EPG scan: Disable
URL: Your pipe://... goes here (see my previous post)
ATSC: (leave unchecked)
Mux name: Give it a meaningful name (whatever you like)
...
Scan status: PEND (so it will scan the mux and hopefully find the stream(s))
...
In Tvheaend 4.2 or later you MAY also need to check these boxes under Expert Settings:
Accept zero value for TSID
EIT - skip TSID check
With regard to the last two, the problem with Tvheadend is every new version seems to add more settings but they don't always document what the new settings do, or in what situations they should be used. I created all my IPTV streams under 4.0 and they worked at the time I created them, though most have stopped working since, because providers change their stream addresses. But there were fewer settings in 4.0. My GUESS is that to more closely emulate 4.0 behavior you need to check both of those boxes, but I don't know for sure.