DVB-T mpeg4 AVC (H.264) stream - NO Video.

[Quad]

Hi. I am trying to get the DVB-T stream for the Norwegian terrestial network to play on VLC.
Used to have problems with the HE-AAC audio stream but that seems to fixed in the latter versions of VLC - but we can't get the H.264 (AVC) to show the video.
We have tried a few the later builds + the daily builds (0.9.0) on windows as well as Mac.

Enclosed is a TS with some seconds of the transmission. ftp://195.5.113.100/pub/video/RecordedTs.ts

Is there any workaround or codec trick for this situation??

Thanks for your kind help and inputs.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Fill a ticket.

[johnnypeste]

I have downloaded your file.
It plays well in wmp. Tour de France )
In vlc it gives the same error as I get when decoding ORFHD DVB-S channel, namely:

ffmpeg warning: cannot decode one frame (13175 bytes)
ffmpeg warning: non existing PPS referenced
(h264@00AD1430)

I think vlc (or ffmeg) is not yet good enough to decode h.264
We have to wait and I'm waiting for over 2 months.

It shouldn't be very difficult but it seems it is.

Regards

[johnnypeste]

After searching I found something that can be the cause to this problem:

ffmpeg (used by vlc) does not properly uses parallelization (coreavc used in wmp does...)
It seems that ffmpeg uses an implementation called "slice based parallelization" which is not the best way to do it.
What is strange is that mplayer also uses ffmpeg and it plays the stream... (well... maybe I'm wrong...)

Nevertheless, my thesis is:
If the stream is not encoded in multiple slices (which probably is the case for ORFHD and your stream) then ffmpeg will fail...

There are 2 possible solutions:
1) Wait for the ffmpeg developers to improve this (can take a while because it seems that it is not their priority)
2) Try to disable the"slice based parallelization" in the settings ffmeg part of vlc (but I didn't find how to do it...)

Can anybody help?

Regards

[johnnypeste]

UPDATE!

Got nostalgic and went try all the old vlc versions
The old vlc 0.8.5 plays my ts file!!
It's the only one that does it.

the 0.8.6 series and the 0.9.0 builds are all broken.

I don't think it is a ffmpeg problem anymore...

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

The latest trunk of VLC did fix the playing of the file.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

UPDATE!

Got nostalgic and went try all the old vlc versions
The old vlc 0.8.5 plays my ts file!!
It's the only one that does it.

the 0.8.6 series and the 0.9.0 builds are all broken.

I don't think it is a ffmpeg problem anymore...

H264 packetizer.

[johnnypeste]

I tried the 27 july nightly build that you talked.
It opens the file but it fails to stream the file to ps3 through tversity (ps3 reports unsuported data type)

vlc 0.8.5 works fine (playing and streaming) so I will have to continue using it.

Many thanks

[Quad]

Great! Thanks a lot for the good work!

The 0.9.0 works nicely on the H.264 off the multicast, the ts file looks a bit jumpy, but that could be the TS file itself... viewing the source is perfect

Having said that 0.9.0 doesn't seem to handle the .xspf files I made for the different H.264 and mpeg2 multicast. I have only tried this on the OS X version and apologies for this input being off topic - just thought I would mention it...
Entering the adresses manually works fine.

Thanks again a lot for your kind help and the knowledgeable inputs! Ace!

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

xspf should be supported. Please open new topic and new bugs for new issues.