After the latest release the web-based and remote (cellular) streaming is no longer functioning correctly. As recently as last Saturday all was working perfectly. Now with the web-based streaming on another pc on the same LAN set to to 1080p @ 10 mbps it is remuxing at 4Mbps only. Remotely using an iPhone with the setting at 4Mbps it no longer gets past the spinning wheel and sometimes freezes the app. I have restarted both the comuter and the iphone and the dvr server is up to date. I have also cleared the existing cache and that also has not helped. Any help would be appreciated.
What is the source recording? If its from TVE, its probably only 4mbps to begin with so its being streamed at the original remux instead of unnecessary decode+re-encode.
Does the DVR log tab show any errors? Is the DVR set to hardware or software transcoding?
It is recorded from a HDHR Prime channel through a cable card. The DVR is set for hardware decoding. I will have to look at the log when I get home though.
So after playing with the DVR and settings for the last few days I have narrowed down some of the issues. During my testing I was using an iPhone and iPad (both worked identically) on my home network and then manually limited the bitrate through the ios apps for testing. It is an old computer (Athlon 64 X2 6000+, 8 gigs, AMD HD 7750 graphics card). Recordings are HDHR Prime with Comcast, most channels are AVC HD except for the network channels. I found:
- With the latest version of the DVR (2020.02.19.0306)
- watching through the web-based player it will transcode at either 4mbps or 10 mbps depending on the show (though the web based player setting is set at 1080 10 mbps).
- Playing on the LAN, original streams without any issues
- Limiting to 4mbps (to simulate cellular limit) always causes transcoding of any video.
- Using ios software based transcoding to 4 mbps works both on LAN and remotely through cellular for the AVC encoded shows (network shows fail but understandable due to weak computer).
- Using ios app hardware transcoding causes the ios app to freeze after less than one second, ususally having to force close the app. I can see on the DVR in the activity section that it is trasncoding though.
- Doing a system restore I was able to get back to version 2019.12.05.0128 and found some significant differences.
- watching through the web-based player it will transcode to 10 mbps always (setting is set at 1080 10 mbps).
- Transcoding most AVC HD recorded files with 4mbps limit will play without transcoding both on the LAN or through cellular (I am assuming this is because the bitrate was less than 4mbps to begin with no no transcoding needed).
- The system restore was not kind to the DVR and became very unstable and stuck in in a trying to update loop which caused me to have to undo the system restore and it is now acting like it was with the latest firmware.
Looking back, my old pc was not doing transcoding with the old firmware even over cellular so it ran smoothly. Getting transcoding into the mix outside of the web player has mixed results due to the old hardware.
Is there a reason the cellular bitrate tops out at 4mbps. If being able to stream the original assuming your Internet could support it as an option would solve all my problems.
Also some clarification on the significant changes of when the transcoder kicks in between the 2 firmware versions would also be helpful.
Thanks.
Can you take a screenshot of the View Details of the shows you are taking about here so I can get a better handle on what exactly is going on? There have been some differences and improvements to how we detect the bitrates of the recordings to reduce the need to transcode. There may be bugs in how we handle it that only show up in very specific situations that we’ll need to fix.
Ink Master and It’s Always Sunny both transcode at 4mbps in the web player and Amazing Race transcodes at 10 mbps in the web player. All now transcode with cellular streaming maxed out at 4 mbps where as before Ink Master and Sunny would stream directly at the 4 mbps cellular setting. Amazing Race always transcoded.
If you look at the bitrates for the Ink Master and It's Always Sunny …, you'll see that their bitrate is under 4Mbps (4,000,000 bits per second). Because the files' bitrates are less than the requested maximum, Channels will merely remux the TS container to an HLS stream for compatibility. The Amazing Race bitrate, however, is greater than 4Mbps, and therefore it transcodes instead of merely being remuxed.