WTV Playback Jitters / Multi-Client

[tuckeroos]

Greetings:

I have a windows / Mac / iOS Device household. We have a range of media in various formats, however it is WTV that is causing grief. More specifically the video is jittery (its like it forgets every 3 frames out of 4)... kinda like slow motion playback - however the audio is fine. But as I've been troubleshooting, I've stumbled upon a variant that makes this problem very interesting.

Firstly:
- I initially thought the network was at fault, however I copied various files to my local MAC (VLC 2.1.1 Ricewind) and the same problem manifests
- If I run a windows virtual machine (via Fusion) on my Mac and use windows media player to playback the WTV file - either locally or from any of the other PC's (or NAS) in the house - it works fine.
- I tried VLC iOS and the same problem.
- I installed VLC 2.1.1 in my Windows virtual machine - it works FINE (either with local or network source)
- if I open any other source (eg: ripped DVD (mpeg2), MKV, etc) - they all work fine

But here's the weird variant:
- Being in Australia, we have a variety of free-to-air television stations.
- The problem ONLY manifests with WTV files recorded from channel 2.
- If I open content recorded from other channels, say 7 or 9, it works fine

So to summarise:
- the problem manifests with iOS / Mac VLC using WTV files from channel 2 only
- the problem DOES NOT manifest using Windows VLC

I'm using Windows 7 media centre to do all the recording.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Please share the file that has the issue.
Seriously.

[tuckeroos]

Um, seriously, they are all over 12GB. I'll record some smaller segments and post accordingly.

[tuckeroos]

I'm still trying to solve this problem, I haven't found a way of uploading the large file, but perhaps what I have found removes VLC from the list of suspects.

I tried to re-encode a smaller (1.3GB) WTV file to MP4 using handbrake. The WTV had the same playback issues in VLC
The resulting MP4 had exactly the same symptoms. During the conversion process, I noticed the following in the logs

[09:42:30] sync: video time didn't advance - dropped 7 frames (delta 2080 ms, current 169927479, next 169937952, dur 10473)
[09:42:30] sync: video time didn't advance - dropped 1 frames (delta 247 ms, current 169958897, next 169969370, dur 10473)
[09:42:30] sync: video time didn't advance - dropped 7 frames (delta 2080 ms, current 169970679, next 169981152, dur 10473)
[09:42:30] sync: video time didn't advance - dropped 1 frames (delta 247 ms, current 170002097, next 170012570, dur 10473)
[09:42:30] sync: video time didn't advance - dropped 7 frames (delta 2080 ms, current 170013879, next 170024352, dur 10473)
[09:42:30] sync: video time didn't advance - dropped 1 frames (delta 247 ms, current 170045297, next 170055770, dur 10473)
[09:42:30] sync: video time didn't advance - dropped 7 frames (delta 2080 ms, current 170057079, next 170067552, dur 10473)
[09:42:30] sync: video time didn't advance - dropped 1 frames (delta 247 ms, current 170088497, next 170098970, dur 10473)
[09:42:30] sync: video time didn't advance - dropped 7 frames (delta 2080 ms, current 170100279, next 170110752, dur 10473)
....
[09:42:44] sync: got 18262 frames, 53112 expected

I'm still researching, if I find more info, I'll report it. I'd like to find out if VLC/Handbrake share any of the same underlying tools.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

they do.