Channels > Channels w/o transcoding?

Channels DVR Server
#1

Duplicating another forum member's solution, I setup a 'base' channels DVR that contains my TV Tuners. Then I setup an additional channels DVR in docker (need separate user/storage/statuses etc). This works well, BUT, it's transcoding twice. The base channels dvr is transcoding MPEGTS from my HDHomerun to h.264 and then the second instance is transcoding for my players. Double transcoding is bad.

Is there any way to convince channels to never transcode? Can I have the 'base' system just repackage instead of transcode?

the point of this is to share tuners so I don't have to buy tons of tuners to service a small number of channels.

#2

Are you sure it's actually transcoding and not just remuxing?

#3

Have you tried using stream.mpg
See this thread

#4

'base':

Watching ch16.1 from 172.17.0.3 (Transcoder Running at 10mbps: 33s @ 1.03x (30.05fps)): strength=100% quality=100% symbol=100% rate=8.7Mb/sec sigerr=5%

docker1:

Watching ch16.1 from 10.39.40.187 (Transcoder Running at 1mbps: 44s @ 1.03x (29.88fps))

I've forced my client to 1Mbps.

Channels 'base' is pulling in the 10Mbps stream from the HDHomerun and transcoding it.

if my client is set to 'original' or any bitrate higher than the 3.6Mbps output from base, then it says 'remuxing'

if my client is set to anything less than the 3.6Mbps then it transcodes it.

#5

interesting.
http://10.39.40.112:8089/devices/1078D876/channels/16.2/stream.mpg?format=ts

this plays in VLC and shows mpeg2 video codec and channels shows 'watching' but not transcoding. This might be the solution, just have to make my own m3u instead of the exported one.

#6

In the M3U playlist that your docker is using to pull from base, append &vcodec=copy to the URL to force remuxing versus transcoding, regardless of the web player bitrate set in the web UI of base.

#7

http://10.39.40.112:8089/devices/1078D876/channels/16.2/hls/master.m3u8&vcodec=copy

this is a copy/paste from the m3u but with that added but VLC wont play it.

#8

Probably should be ?vcodec=copy in your case (just guess as your base url has no query string already, thus needs to be ?, if you had a query string, then & is correct)

#9

Curious what you mean by this

Channels DVR will share tuners if it's enabled in the clients using it.

#10

‘Sharing’ in this context is sharing the moeg2 stream, I need it transcoded.

I tried with a ? In the url but I still got the h264 stream so that didn’t take

#11

You can export an M3U:
http://10.39.40.112:8089/devices/1078D876/channels.m3u?format=ts

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#12
#13

is that in the 12.24.0028 you posted yesterday?

#14

The format=ts parameter when requesting the channels.m3u endpoint has been there for quite some time.

#15

He's talking about a change that was made 3 months ago to create a m3u playlist for your HDHR Prime device using
http://10.39.40.112:8089/devices/1078D876/channels.m3u?format=ts

that results in entries containing
http://10.39.40.112:8089/devices/1078D876/channels/ch#/stream.mpg?format=ts

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#16

ok, well I couldn't get that to work in this setup, but, I updated to 12.24.0028 and it does

I'll test further to verify everything but this is the setup now.

'base' Channels DVR has all channels loaded

'child' Channels DVR get's a new M3U setup as MPEG-TS with http://<base_ip>:8089/devices/source_id/channels.m3u?format=ts

and that's it. Works. Channels 'base' shows 'watching' status, no transcoder. 'child' transcodes.

awesome.

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#17

well, I'm basically going to call this solved and working.

I spun up 2 'child' DVRs, a 3rd physical DVR, and played a single channel from each of their web players. HDHomerun shows just one channel in use and the base DVR shows 'watching' for each of those child instances.

just to clarify WHY I would want such a weird setup, I have a family 'campus' and I'm distributing content around the house, the appartment downstairs, the parents house, brother's house, and so on. I want everyone to have their own watched status and their own DVR libraries because quite frankly, I can't get them to behave themselves otherwise, always deleting or altering other people's stuff and so on.

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#18

Its not that uncommon. I have 1 channels dvr serving 3 other channels dvr's and 1 emby server at home. 1 for me (office) 1 for my wife (living room) and 1 in my daughter's bedroom. This has been working flawless for several months.

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#19

I have the same setup (all Android devices). The living room setup was greatly improved by installing (from inside the channels app) the beta version. This gives you two Channels icons on the home screen, each pointing to their own channels dvr IP address. Until user profiles happen, it's been the easiest way to use multiple dvr servers on a single device.

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