Hello,
I purchased the DVR yesterday and so far am impressed. However I ask that you add some options to allow us to manipulate the video during playback from DVR and live TV.
I have basic cable and all channels except locals are broadcasted in SD. In USA the channels are broadcasted in 4:3 however the actual content is 16:9 so the broadcaster letterboxes the content.
I have work arounds using vlc that correct this by cropping the top and bottom. For instance here is the shortcut I use for VLC.
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --video-filter=croppadd{croptop=60,cropbottom=60} --deinterlace=1 --deinterlace-mode=blend --qt-minimal-view http://192.168.1.179:5004/auto/v77?transcode=none
Now the video plays back in 16:9 correctly. My thoughts were you could add a section where we could add our own video manipulation profile settings. Some channels (bounce) broadcast in 16:9 however all the content other than commercials is broadcasted in a 4:3 ratio. So in this case if they play a 16:9 movie they are playing 16:9 inside of 16:9.
Here is a shortcut to combat this last described problem
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --video-filter=croppadd{croptop=60,cropbottom=60,cropleft=88,cropright=88} --deinterlace=1 --deinterlace-mode=blend --qt-minimal-view http://192.168.1.179:5004/auto/v101?transcode=none
A lot of channels are like this. So I asking for the ability to allow us to create these crop settings and then allow us to apply the settings to a couple of places. I would first suggest allowing us to set the custom filter on the channel listing so that any playback via live tv or via DVR would adopt the settings for the channel. The 2nd setting would be to allow an override on the actual recording when its made, because yes some things actually broadcast in 4:3. Also an override would be needed for live tv as well in case you have a 16:9 crop set at the channel level which works for 95% of the shows but that show that is being broadcast is actually in 4:3.
If you implemented the crop scenario you would have to probably resize the video to 720:480 and apply a 16:9 AR options to ffmpeg. Or if your cropping to 4:3 you would send the 4:3 AR command and also keep 720:480.
I tested another competitor app called InstaTV for appleTV and they offer a ZOOM mode button during playback. This also works but I would prefer the video is sent correctly to begin with.
Some people may say just use the ZOOM feature on your TV. However on my TV the ZOOM button only works if the incoming content is detected as 480i in the video stream. So if I am watching actual cable then the ZOOM option works and I do have my TV hard coded to go into ZOOM mode on that type of broadcast. However when using the product via appletv or roku you are no longer receiving an interlaced signal because the roku or appletv is outputting a progressive based signal from the physical unit.
I don't see this being too hard to implement, especially the actually encoding piece because you are already doing that with ffmpeg. This just adds some manipulation the original stream. For the AppleTV app since you reading directly from the HDHomeRun you would have to add a zoom control in the same manner as InstaTV. Of course when the AppleTV reads from DVR recordings you could resize on the fly there and the user wouldn't have to press any zoom button.
I am willing to do any and all testing necessary. I am pretty knowledgeable in the video encoding with ffmpeg. I am testing using the beta ROKU app, in this scenario live tv is done by the man in the middle which is the dvr server. Just hoping for some advanced controls in that man in the middle scenario. I am also testing with web player so that feature would be nice there too.
For clarification of the recording of items the drop down selector for crop filters does not alter the actual recording only the preferred playback video filter adjustment. So when you playback if its set to default on the recording it uses whatever is set at the channel level, which may be nothing at all. If its set to a pre-defined filter then during playback it uses that filter.
-HR
Lets remove these black bars from my SD channels...
Left is original broadcast via vlc, right is same broadcast being played with video filters applied. Please let us have native playback with video correction
Here is an example of bounce 16:9 inside of 16:9 with corrections applied via vlc.