Transcoding - are you having success?

mrkrabs

mrkrabs

Vu+ Newbie
Hi guys,

One of the main features of the Solo2 for me is it's ability to transcode on the fly. So far, I'm not having much luck. I'm on the latest BH 1.7.9.3 image. I realise that transcoding is still very much in it's infancy and I'm expecting improvements down the line somehere.

I've had one noticeable experience with transcoding and to be honest the quality was awful. There is currently no option to select maximum bitrates etc. This would be very handy indeed. I've tried to view a channel from my place of work which normally plays SD fine without transcoding (I have 10Mbps upload) however, when I tried to play an HD channel with no encoding it will not play. I get some pictures but it breaks up and is totally unawatchable.

I thought transconding would take care of this as it will obviously use considerably less bandwidth but this doesn't seem to be the case. I could not get SD nor HD to transcode from my place of work. Albeit I am limited to Windows Media Player so would that be the problem? Unfortunately VLC player does not work at all. Possibly related to proxy settings or something. Is there a media player that will open from USB without the need to install it on the local machine? I'd need admin rights to do this which I don't have!

My one and only experience with transcoding was with Dreamdroid. I forced transcoding over the default 8001 port and tried playing a channel over 3G. The quality was absolutely terrible! It actually stopped working altogether after a few seconds so not sure what the problem was.

Anyway this thread is all about your experiences so far with transcoding and what you've done to improve this. It would be very helpful to me and I'm sure many others too. Appreciate the feedback. Cheers!
 
B

bokkie

Vu+ Newbie
After updating with the new drivers I think I can see a slight improvement streaming to my tablet/phone.
I use a combination of dreamdroid and wondershare player and it used to frequently drop off or lose connection.
But last night I streamed for about half an hour with no buffering, losing connection, etc.
Think there is also a slight improvement in the picture quality.
 
S

shkrapas

Vu+ Newbie
rassi said:
Extract and replace old four files from here:

/lib/modules/3.3.6-1.2/extra/


Transcoding quality is waaaay better with these.
Click to expand...
hello,is that sure?i mean this way of installing.because I have try it and I could say is slightly worse.
 
paolino

paolino

Vu+ User+++
Way of "installing" drivers is OK. After copying files you have to reboot your box. Maybe try those newer from 2013/02/06 (they are still BETA for testing).
If you have problems, report it. Anyway you can still reinstall last official drivers simply installing IPK package.
Solo2 drivers are here (please read all thread to aviod misunderstandings) http://www.vuplus-community.net/board/threads/vu-drivers.10951/
 
mrkrabs

mrkrabs

Vu+ Newbie
Thanks for the advice folks. Am I right in thinking that you guys are forcing transcoding over port 8001? I do not see the option to change this in Dreamdroid. Would love to be able to get the HD streams working properly in paricular. Has anyone had success streaming HD transcoded over the internet to their devices? Thanks
 
mrkrabs

mrkrabs

Vu+ Newbie
My impressions so far of transcoding is that it is absolutely awful. The picture quality on both SD and HD is completely unwatchable. It would be nice if we had a choice of what the maximum bitrate is and also the maximum resolution. This was one of the main reasons why I bought the box. Standard SD works ok over the Internet without any transcoding but I would love to be able to get transcoded HD content at least watchable.
 
M

malakudi

Vu+ Newbie
Transcoding seems to be configured for very low bitrates. In my tests, it tends to never exceed 500Kbit/sec, averaging at about 350Kbit/sec . This needs to be configurable - my upload speed is 1Mbit/sec so I cannot stream SD channels without transcoding, but 350Kbit/sec is very low.

Resolution is set to weird 416*224 for 4:3 or 16:9 channels which is also wrong. fps is also wrong, stream has 60 fps even I transcode 50fps channels. It could even be lowered to 25 fps on such low resolution, that would improve quality.

So, if VU+ is reading:
1. make target bitrate configurable
2. make resolution configurable, respecting 16:9 or 4:3
3. fix the fps value

transcoding is a great feature, just needs a little polishing.
 
gravatasufoca

gravatasufoca

Vu+ Newbie
Anyone is managing to transcoding with the new image released?
Here I just got the black screen on TV, but nothing on the VLC in PC.
 
A

acarlo

Vu+ Newbie
Anyone can advice ?
While I can watch a channel on the TV and direct streaming a second one to my PC, this seems to be not possible if I decide to stream a second channel using the "Transcoding" future.
What happen, it change the channel on the TV and so it will end up to have the same channel on the TV and on the computer.
In the web gui is already disables the "zap before stream" option.
thanks
 
paolino

paolino

Vu+ User+++
acarlo said:
Anyone can advice ?
While I can watch a channel on the TV and direct streaming a second one to my PC, this seems to be not possible if I decide to stream a second channel using the "Transcoding" future.
What happen, it change the channel on the TV and so it will end up to have the same channel on the TV and on the computer.
In the web gui is already disables the "zap before stream" option.
thanks
Click to expand...

It's not so clear, but seems, that you want 1.st channel on TV and 2.nd channel both on PC and Transcoded on mobile device.
This is not possible (three channels in use on two tuner machine).
 
A

acarlo

Vu+ Newbie
I want 1.st on TV and 2.nd on PC or transcoded.
If i use the normal streaming I can reach my goal, but if I try to use the transcode, so then I have the same channel on the TV and the tablet
 
mrkrabs

mrkrabs

Vu+ Newbie
The streaming works for me when transcoding but the quality is terrible so I just leave it off. SD streams fine for me over the internet anyway. Would really like to see more options with transcoding because at the moment I don't see how anybody can use it.
 
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