Choppy TS playback & What to convert TS files to if Needed

[mikeshick]

My TS files are playing very choppy on VLC. The file comes from an online educations summit. I have not been able to change settings in VLC to get smooth playback.

However, when I convert the TS files to AVI, they seem to have the same quality of video and audio, and VLC plays them smoothly.

1) First, can anyone offer advice on what settings to alter to get smooth TS playback? I've seen some references for turning off High Quality Audio Resampling, but I think this setting was available on older versions, not 3.0.3.
2) I'm not that versed in video and audio format files. I'm curious what I'm loosing by converting from TS to AVI. The avi files are smaller, so I assume that some quality is lost. For my current use, this is irrelevant. However, I'm curious if anyone can shed light on this?
3) Is there a way to know what quality of file is inside the TS file?
4) Is there a "best" format to convert the TS file to in order to obtain the same quality converted files?

Thanks,

[unidan]

Hi,

can you provide the logs when you're in the choppy playback situation ?

To help you, we need messages, to completely understand what your problems is.
To fix this, please be sure before you start the playback to:

1. Open: Tools -> Messages.
2. Set Verbosity to 2
3. Start playback to reproduce your issue
4. Save text in a file or copy into clipboard
5. Then paste the full resulting log here between [​code]and[​/code] (or use Pastebin.com if it's too long)

Also don't forget to name your Operating System and provide the VLC media player version.

For 2), AVI is not a format with good properties compared to the others from what I've heard.

For 3), you can use <ctrl+j> to get the informations of the played media from VLC.

For 4), there is no best format for a file but there are best format depending on how you want to use it. I believe you can use matroska is this situation though. Demuxing and remuxing without changing the inner codec will not alter the quality of the stream.

[mikeshick]

Thank you!!!

Operating System: Windows 7 64bit
VLC Version 3.0.3 Vetinari

Code: Select all

ts error: libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 0, expected 2) for PID 0 ts error: libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 0, expected 2) for PID 4096 ts warning: lost synchro ts debug: skipping 24 bytes of garbage ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0x2 (pid=0) ts error: libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 0, expected 2) for PID 0 ts debug: PATCallBack called ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0x2 (pid=4096) ts error: libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 0, expected 2) for PID 4096 ts debug: PMTCallBack called for program 1 ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0x3 (pid=256) main warning: playback way too early (-472869): playing silence main debug: inserting 22697 zeroes main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor ts warning: lost synchro ts debug: skipping 24 bytes of garbage ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0x2 (pid=0) ts error: libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 0, expected 2) for PID 0 ts debug: PATCallBack called ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0x2 (pid=4096) ts error: libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 0, expected 2) for PID 4096 ts debug: PMTCallBack called for program 1 ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0x3 (pid=256) main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0x3 (pid=257) main warning: playback way too early (-447306): playing silence main debug: inserting 21470 zeroes ts warning: lost synchro ts debug: skipping 24 bytes of garbage ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0x2 (pid=0) ts error: libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 0, expected 2) for PID 0 ts debug: PATCallBack called ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0x2 (pid=4096) ts error: libdvbpsi error (PSI decoder): TS discontinuity (received 0, expected 2) for PID 4096 ts debug: PMTCallBack called for program 1 ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0xd (pid=256) ts warning: discontinuity received 0x0 instead of 0x3 (pid=257) main warning: playback way too early (-445516): playing silence main debug: inserting 21384 zeroes main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor main debug: incoming request - stopping current input main debug: incoming request - stopping current input main debug: incoming request - stopping current input main debug: killing decoder fourcc `h264' main debug: removing module "avcodec" main debug: saving a free vout main debug: reusing provided vout main debug: removing module "h264" wasapi debug: reset mmdevice debug: state changed: 0 main debug: killing decoder fourcc `mp4a' main debug: removing module "faad" wasapi debug: reset main debug: removing module "samplerate" main debug: removing module "float_mixer" main debug: keeping audio output main debug: removing module "mpeg4audio" main debug: removing module "ts" main debug: Program doesn't contain anymore ES main debug: removing module "record" main debug: removing module "cache_read" main debug: removing module "filesystem" main debug: dead input qt debug: IM: Deleting the input main debug: nothing to play main debug: destroying useless vout main debug: removing module "direct3d9" direct3d9 debug: Direct3D9 scene released successfully direct3d9 error: SetThumbNailClip failed: 0x800706f4 direct3d9 debug: Win32 Vout EventThread terminating direct3d9 debug: Win32VoutCloseWindow direct3d9 debug: WinProc WM_DESTROY main debug: removing module "inhibit" qt debug: releasing video... qt debug: Video is not needed anymore main debug: removing module "freetype" main debug: removing module "yuvp" main debug: removing module "swscale" main debug: looking for addons finder module matching "addons.store.list": 3 candidates main debug: using addons finder module "fsstorage" main debug: removing module "fsstorage"

this is the codec in the TS file
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vz8gy64ypk5mn ... 1.png?dl=0

[mikeshick]

Any idea?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

What produced this file?

[mikeshick]

I downloaded from a website using IDM

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Your IDM software is broken.

[mikeshick]

How do you know this? Playback of same files through plex has zero issues.

Can I upload for a sample file for review?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Sure.

[mikeshick]

Donna Gates - Candida Summit.TS:
http://gofile.me/6xN6p/yAc3l1stL

[InTheWings]

Broken stream. PCR every 3 seconds

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

You can play it in VLC with --demux avformat option.

[mikeshick]

sorry, what is PCR?

is --demux avformat available in android app?

how do i access this function on desktop?

thanks

[mikeshick]

Never got a response to question above. Interestingly, I took the same TS file and converted it via wondershare to a hvec mp4 file. Everyone of the converted files plays fine. So, it don't understand the TS file being bad, if it can still produce perfect audio and video in another format. Still puzzled.

[ramij]

I am facing the same issue. TS video is choppy. The issue started when I upgraded to latest VLC from 2.2. The same video was played in both the versions. Was downloaded through IDM.

[mikeshick]

converting to another format works fine for me. Advice above wasn't helpful, unfortunately.

[paultry]

For .ts files stored on and streamed from a Windows machine, copy ffmpeg.exe to windows\system32; create a .bat file containing {for %%f in (*.ts) do call ffmpeg -i "%%~f" -vcodec copy -acodec copy "%%~nf.mp4"} (omit the brackets) in folder containing .ts files. Run the .bat file - takes just a few minutes to create .mp4 copy of .ts, video and audio quality equal to original, which streams nicely to Android VLC and to WDTV Live.

[justtryingtohelp]

Not sure if this is still necessary or not but I was having issues getting my audio to not be choppy even though video was fine. I could also use a third party program to convert to mp4 and it played back fine, and I also downloaded with IDM and have avoided many streaming video .ts files because of it. I hate to waste disk space and I'm lazy so I didn't like the extra step. What I found mostly corrected my issues with them in my specific case anyway. I'm using a Windows 10 desktop too, and I don't use it on my phone so I'm not sure if the menu options are the same. I also just updated to the most recent version as of this post date. But here goes:

Open VLC and navigate to the 'Tools' menu. For me it's just at the top bar of the program.

Click on 'Preferences' option.

Switch the option 'Show settings' from 'Simple' to 'All' (It may say something like 'Full preferences view' instead of 'All').

Click on 'Input / Codecs' for drop-down menu.

Click on 'Demuxers' for drop-down menu.

Select MPEG-TS codec to change options.

Under the Extra PMT section I have an option for 'Trust in-stream PCR' with a checkbox that is checked by default. If I deselect/disable that it seems to correct the choppy audio.

My theory would be that during download with IDM, during the append process when it puts all the parts it's separately downloaded back together it can sometimes not line all of the pieces back up perfectly, and this manifests itself in data that the codec has trouble translating, making it repeat back incorrect video or sound data, resulting in choppiness. But I'm no expert. I just played around with tons of settings and kept resetting to default when I changed too many at once.

*Just adding, I think the PCR is a sort of alignment for the seperate audio and video files in a .ts video, and when the codec trusts the alignment that isn't quite right when downloading in this fashion it results in "errors" of a sort. It can limp forward with the choppy effects, but when it runs it's own calibration tests it corrects for the errors, but codec algorithms are still a bit out of my expertise.

Hope this helps someone! Good luck!