Cant select stream profile

Nick Sillito

I am running tvheadend 4.3-1732~g10ed59ce3 on ubuntu server 18.04, and I have kodi 18 rc5 with the tvheadend plugin 4.3-1730~g10ed59ce3

I have set up a new streaming profile called "DI" designed to call ffmpeg to deinterlace the video on the server, before it sends it to the kodi client. The streaming profile is enabled and its enable in the "user".

If I then go into kodi and the the tvheadend htsp client, and I configure it in the "streaming settings" to use the "DI" profile (rather than leaving blank for the default) it comes back with the error message that the DI profile is "unavailable". Any suggestions as to what I have done wrong?

Jon M

I realise it's 4 months ago but did you ever resolve this? I have the same issue.

Thanks

Jon.

Nick Sillito

Sadly no -- I assume (and I don't know) that you cant process an HTSP this way

nit nit

As far as I understand, kodi htsp client enforce htsp streaming profile https://github.com/kodi-pvr/pvr.hts/issues/326

Jimbo

Hello. I have the same problem with TVHeadend and Kodi. I've created four different profiles on the server. However, when I select one in the TVHeadend client, I always get a message saying that this profile doesn't exist. Even if I leave the profile blank in the client (so it should use the default profile), the profile I set as the default on the server is ignored.

There should be some information by now as to why this is happening...

DeltaMikeCharlie

Jimbo - I just tried this on a fairly recent version of Kodi and TVH and the correct streaming profile was selected. The TVH PVR addon allowed me to manually type in the profile name and then prompted that a restart was necessary. After a reboot, I started to stream live TV and it used the correct profile. Playing a recording did not use a profile.

Intentionally typing in an invalid profile name resulted in an error, but only after the addon had restarted itself.

I'm using LibreELEC that I built myself from source in November 2023.

What versions of OS, Kodi and TVH are you using?

Jimbo

Hi. I'm using HTS TVheadend 4.3-2375 in conjunction with Kodi 21.2 and the latest HTSP Client 21.2.6.

I'm not entering a fake profile; I'm typing in the exact profile I created in TVHeadend. But can you explain the difference between what happens if I activate or deactivate "Use HTTP to stream channels" under Streaming?

ukn_unknown

Jimbo I assume you used spawn ... so answer applies to spawn profile.
htsp documentation https://docs.tvheadend.org/documentation/development/htsp/general
When you select a spawn profile TVH will pipe to ffmpeg (or whatever you use) and will receive the data processed back also as pipe. The received data can be used only with http transport (because TVH will not split data in: Video / Audio / Sub / others). HTSP protocol is optimized for Video/Audio transfer but ... require access to information at frame level (in order to prioritize key frames over other frames).

I activate or deactivate "Use HTTP to stream channels" under Streaming?

This will use http protocol (so you will loose some advantages from htsp protocol); but in your case is only option you have.

DeltaMikeCharlie

Jimbo Hi. I'm using HTS TVheadend 4.3-2375 in conjunction with Kodi 21.2 and the latest HTSP Client 21.2.6.

That is more recent than the versions that I tested with.

Jimbo I'm not entering a fake profile; I'm typing in the exact profile I created in TVHeadend.

After I tested it with a proper profile, I entered a fake profile to see if I could reproduce your error, and I could.

Does your profile name have any spaces or other special characters like punctuation or accented characters? If it does, perhaps try something really simple like 'abc' and work up from there.

Jimbo

DeltaMikeCharlie Does your profile name have any spaces or other special characters like punctuation or accented characters?

Yes....thats it....thanks 🙂

DeltaMikeCharlie

Jimbo thanks

You're welcome. Great news.

If it's not revealing any personal information, can you please post the name of the profile so that we know which values to avoid? Even similar, but not exact, values could be helpful.

This could end up being a bug in either how the Kodi pvr.hts client handles profile names or how TVH sends those names to clients.

Jimbo

I created several transcode profiles. I named those intended for CPU-only transcoding h264 and h265, respectively. With GPU support, I named h264 vaapi and h265 vaapi. The error was the vulnerability; now the profiles are called h264-vaapi and h265-vaapi.

DeltaMikeCharlie

Jimbo I named h264 vaapi and h265 vaapi. The error was the vulnerability; now the profiles are called h264-vaapi and h265-vaapi.

OK thanks. So the space failed and the dash worked.

DeltaMikeCharlie

Jimbo - Unfortunately, I have been unable to replicate this error so far.

If I use a profile name 'abc def' it works perfectly. I then created a profile named 'h264 vaapi' and it also worked perfectly. I watched for the incoming Kodi connection on my TVH log and it was clearly using the profile name that I provided.

I was able to force a failure when I entered an extra space at the end of the profile name in Kodi, however, if both Kodi and TVH had a space at the end, the profile worked.

I tested with pvr.hts version 20.7.2.1, so maybe there has been some regression. I will try testing with the latest development version of Kodi and pvr.hts when I have a chance.

Update: I have also tested with pvr.hts v21.2.6.1 without error.

Jimbo

So I access TVHeadend with two apps: the Kodi add-on (which I also prefer) and DreamPlayer for TVHeadend from the FireTV Appstore or Google Playstore. There I could see that the connection was aborted with an error. I could see the complete URL in the error message, which also included the codec name, and that made it clear to me that there shouldn't be any gaps in the URL. After replacing the gap with a minus sign, I was able to use the profiles I had created in TVheadend with DreamPlayer for TVHeadend. At the same time, the problems with the Kodi add-on disappeared. I assumed that was the problem.

DeltaMikeCharlie

Jimbo - Thanks for the additional information. In the Kpdi pvr.htp settings, have you enabled 'Use HTTP streaming for channels'?

Update: I have been able to reproduce this using http streaming in Kodi. I see an error in the TVH log when profile 'abc def' is requested. However, when I enter the same 'abc def' URL syntax in VLC, it requests profile 'abc+def' and is successful. When I enter 'abc+def' into Kodi, I get an error saying that the profile does not exist, however, it streams with the correct profile. I tried 'abc%20def' in Kodi, and that worked too in spite of a 'profile not found' error.

Jimbo

Right...sorry I'm only just thinking of this. That's why I initially asked what happens when I enable or disable HTTP for streaming. It was enabled initially, but I changed that at the same time as revising the codec name.