MTS for Sony does not play in Ubuntu Linux

[vangs]

Hi,

I have tried to play a .mts file from my sony camera on VLC 8.6 and VLC 9.2. It hangs.
I have tried the same file in windows and it plays fine

thanks

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

upgrade your FFmpeg, and take a bigger CPU.

[vangs]

Been there, have upgraded to the latest ffmpeg and I have a fast cpu. In any case, same machine runs windows and can play the file

[Shadow_7]

try --no-audio

and perhaps some other optimizations.

cvlc --no-skip-frames --no-drop-late-frames --no-video-deco --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 --no-audio file.MTS

Make sure you have the x264 stuff installed. Otherwise it wont be able to decode the video. --enable-shared (it's not the default) And yes, a beefier CPU, it's not multi-threaded in linux (yet). Assuming you're talking about 60i you need a beefy cpu. On my 2GHz laptop, I've got to scale things down to about 1024x756 to view at 60 fps and in realtime (80% cpu usage). At 30 fps I can view it at 720p. But not at 1680x920 on my desktop on my biggest monitor. I need to get a beefier cpu myself.

[vangs]

Thanks for the reply Shadow_7. I have the x264 stuff installed but it looks like you are correct about the cpu if vlc is singlethreaded in linux. Question is, how to you downscale and also how do you choose the fps.

[xtophe]

x264 is only an encoder so it doesn't matter if you have it or not.

And yes the decoding of H.264 is single threaded in libavcodec (from the ffmpeg project) and that's the library we use.
They are doing a lot of work to have multithreaded decoding but it's not easy and it's not yet stable

[Shadow_7]

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=50767

My exploits above in trying to deal with 60i MTS files before I buy an HD camcorder. VLC is supposed to be able to convert it. Media -> Convert / Save. But I've been unsuccessful so far. I've had some success with mencoder, and some with ffmpeg. ffmpeg in combination with the mjpegtools stuff seems to work best for me. Fewest steps, quickest conversion time. Although I still seem to need to separate video from audio before ending up with an end result. ffmpeg or mencoder by itself works, but gets whacky if the clip is longer than a couple of minutes. VLC seems best to play the media type, but that's about it so far.

The issue that seems to plague any of the methods is that 60i / 60fps content converts into 30fps without dropping any frames. Piping through mjpegtools lets me keep the 60fps framerate. But with current CPU abilities, I can only playback 60fps footage at just slightly better than DVD resolution.

HTH

[vangs]

have tried mplayer, it produces only the sound and pops up an error "invalid frame bit rate, please run with the -fps option"
Any ideas shadow_7?

[Shadow_7]

mplayer requires the -fps option to play .MTS files. For me at this time (disclaimer). mplayer wont even tab complete .mts filenames, like it does other file types. Mencoder is just as capable to convert to another format. But suffers the same artifact hell if the clip exceeds so many minutes. ffmpeg with yuv4mpegpipe seems to bypass that issue for me. And VLC at this point has yielded no usable results. For me at this time. VLC 0.8.6 produced a video that played back, but the video was pretty useless and didn't match the source material at all. VLC 0.9.4 and a couple previous versions seem to only want to extract audio from an MTS file.

So yeah, use the -fps 30000/1001 (or whatever rate applies) setting with mplayer. Otherwise it'll only do audio. For me at this time. -fps and -ofps with mencoder if you want to convert from the 60i original in the case of my .MTS sample files.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

As those files works on VLC Windows/MAc, your VLC install on linux is probably not good.

[Shadow_7]

The files work with VLC. Just "Convert / Save" in VLC doesn't output usable results for me. I can play them for the most part (baring CPU limitations). It's just converting them to something else so I can edit them in Open Movie / Cinelerra that gets problematic.

[vangs]

Well j-b, is it possible to have a list of the library versions that we need to have installed?

[riebling]

Maybe it's a 64-bit problem, but I have had no luck getting AVCHD (.MTS) files to play on Ubuntu Hardy, with any of the compiled latest version 0.9.8a, or building it myself. I'm pretty sure it's not a 'beefy CPU' problem, and pretty sure I have the latest ffmpeg etc.

I tried the command-line settings to do 'optimisation' with no luck either, each time receiving this response:

Code: Select all

VLC media player 0.9.8a Grishenko [00000001] main libvlc debug: VLC media player - version 0.9.8a Grishenko - (c) 1996-2008 the VideoLAN team [00000001] main libvlc debug: libvlc was configured with ./configure '--mandir=/share/man' '--infodir=/share/info' '--host=x86_64-linux-gnu' '--build=x86_64-linux-gnu' '--enable-maintaner-mode' '--enable-release' '--prefix=/usr' '--enable-libtool' '--enable-fast-install' '--disable-update-check' '--disable-gnome' '--disable-gtk' '--disable-familiar' '--disable-fb' '--enable-ggi' '--enable-sdl' '--enable-esd' '--enable-mad' '--enable-arts' '--enable-jack' '--enable-pulse' '--enable-lirc' '--enable-a52' '--enable-aa' '--enable-dvbpsi' '--enable-mozilla' '--with-mozilla-pkg=libxul-plugin' '--disable-kde' '--enable-mp4' '--enable-dvb' '--disable-satellite' '--enable-ogg' '--enable-vorbis' '--enable-shout' '--enable-qt4' '--disable-slp' '--enable-flac' '--disable-skins' '--disable-basic-skins' '--enable-skins2' '--enable-freetype' '--enable-mkv' '--enable-speex' '--enable-caca' '--enable-live555' '--enable-libmpeg2' '--enable-fribidi' '--enable-cdio' '--enable-mod' '--enable-theora' '--enable-modplug' '--enable-dvdnav' '--enable-gnutls' '--enable-ffmpeg' '--enable-ncurses' '--enable-smb' '--disable-gnomevfs' '--enable-bonjour' '--enable-mpc' '--enable-vcd' '--enable-vcdx' '--enable-notify' '--enable-twolame' '--disable-zvbi' '--enable-telx' '--enable-mediacontrol-bindings' '--disable-atmo' '--enable-taglib' '--enable-libass' '--enable-libdca' '--enable-real' '--enable-realrtsp' '--enable-alsa' '--enable-dv' '--enable-v4l' '--enable-v4l2' '--enable-pvr' '--enable-faad' '--with-faad-tree=extras/faad2' '--enable-x264' '--with-x264-tree=extras/x264' '--enable-dvd' '--without-dvdcss' 'build_alias=x86_64-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=x86_64-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-g -O2' 'LDFLAGS=-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions' 'CPPFLAGS=' 'CXXFLAGS=-g -O2' 'PKG_CONFIG_PATH=:extras/x264:extras/faad2' [00000001] main libvlc debug: translation test: code is "C" [00000409] dummy interface: using the dummy interface module... libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 1, expected 0) for PID 0 libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 1, expected 0) for PID 256 Segmentation fault

It sure would be nice to have a seamless playability of Sony HD files from camcorder but I am so bummed that having what I thought to be "latest greatest" hardware and OS (ok I admit there's newer Ubuntu now) would be the solution. VLC used to be the "Swiss army knife" of media players, able to handle "everything" that other players might choke at. I would like to help make sure this remains the case!

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

1) Don't buy Sony
2) Don't buy Sony
3) Give us samples so we can fix it.

[vangs]

any server to place the sample? It is around 37Mb

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

ftp://streams.videolan.org/incoming

[vangs]

Done

[dreamie]

Hi!

I have issues with Sony VideoCam HD-files (.mts) as well. They have the following specs: 1440x1080i, 25fps, . When playing the .mts files in VLC it's very choppy.

I have a Intel P4 3,4GHz dual core processor and 4GB of RAM and a Nvidia 7800GT graphics card so I don't think my system resources should be any problem. I can see that VLC uses about 50% of one core and about 20% of the other core.

I've uploaded a 31MB file (00190.MTS) in the incoming section, I hope it can be of help.

I also have trouble with a 1910x1080 x264 mkv file (720p files play ok)

Thanks,

Peter

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Deactivate loopfilter in VLC preferences.

[dreamie]

I tried that but it doesn't help. I might get a slight improvement but it's still very choppy.

I forgot to say I am not on a Ubuntu-system but on a WinXP machine, but I am viewing sony mts files so it's not entirely off topic.

I understand it's very hard for you to "guess" what could be wrong here, so is there any other way I can make some more extended debugging?

When playing in Windows Mediaplayer the video is in slow motion, isn't that weird?

/ Peter