DirecTV HR24 transcoding got worse with v3.0.0.0

[smitbret]

Transcoding to an HR24 has awfule picture quality. Blocking everywhere and any kind of motion or shadows are just a mess. I have them set for 1280x720 transcoding with the HR24(MP3) profile and have tried the different quality settings but there is no difference between the settings. Even adjusted to 10808p and wiggled the quality slider with the same results. Interestingly, the transcoding was very consistent at 42fps no matter which resolution or quality setting I chose. With v2.7.x.x I could never do real time transcoding of 1080p.

Also, there seems to be an issue with the bitrate. I've noticed that one BR rip will error out at the HR24, saying the bitrate is too high.

Could I just replace the profile from v2.7.x.x in v3.0.0.0 to resolve the problem?

[Paul]

No - you should not use the v2.7 device profile in v3.0. We'll fix the v3.0 device profile to get you back up and running.

Please post the FFmpeg information for one of the videos that has poor quality. Right-click on the video in Mezzmo and click 'Get FFmpeg Information'.

[smitbret]

Thanks, Paul. It's all of my videos that seem to have the very poor video quality (they look like a bad, bad DivX from 8 years ago). I sent a support e-mail with the Mezzmo logs a day or so a go and Peter sent back a new profile, but it didn't have any effect. I cleared all of the transcoding files per his instructions and tried again with still no results. I think I'm gonna remove everything Mezzmo from the system and reinstall v2.7 to make sure I'm not on crack and maybe see if there's just something latent running around from the beta testing or something.

If that doesn't work, I'll post the FFmpeg info. I know you guys don't have access to the DirecTV system so I appreciate you guys working so well with me on this.

[Paul]

Good luck with it. We'll help out if it is still poor quality, so do let us know the results.

[smitbret]

Fixed (I assume). I did all of the uninstalling and reinstalling and it didn't make any difference. E-mailed that to Peter and he had me download and insert a previous version of FFMPEG in the Mezzmo program folder. Works like a dream now. Excellent help again, as always. Thanks.

[Paul]

Interesting result. We'll look into the differences between the two FFmpeg's to make sure the latest FFmpeg that we're shipping with Mezzmo does not cause other problems.

[IsNull]

The DTV HR34-700 and H25-500 do not have profiles. Would we expect them soon?

[Paul]

The DTV HR34-700 and H25-500 do not have profiles. Would we expect them soon?

Have you tried the existing DirecTV device profiles? Any of them work well with these models? If not, then we're happy to create new device profiles for these models. We'll need some more information about them - i.e. what file formats (video, music, photo and subtitle) that they support via DLNA streaming. If you can email that to us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com, then we can create the device profiles for you to try.

[Nyarlathotep]

I checked DBSTalk and didn't see anything that would indicate that those two boxes differ from other HR/H boxes in regards to the Music/Photos option. In other words, they have the same lacking DLNA support as the others.

[smitbret]

I work as a technical support agent and trainer for DirecTV and although DirecTV has never really come out with an official statement, it appears that MediaShare specs are the same for all of the HD boxes, regardless of model. I've often wondered if the Conceiva guys knew something I didn't with the separate profiles. I've successfully used all of them with my HR24s and H24s in the past.

DirecTV has no official statements for MediaShare beyond the file formats it supports (MPEG 2, MP3 & JPEG) and that it is just a beta that they don't offer official support for. Even in tech support we have to speculate, and the consensus is that the cap is 10mbps but should really be kept between 7 or 8 as a precaution. If you were to call tech support, most agents won't even know what MediaShare is.

I may do some encoding at some constant bitrates weekend and see what limitations I run into.

[Paul]

Thanks for this information, smitbret. We don't have any DirecTV devices here so we can only go on what our users tell us regarding file support and how Mezzmo is performing with these devices. Any information you can provide will certainly help.

[smitbret]

OK, so I took a clip from the Blu-Ray of Despicable Me and encoded it at different bitrates (5mbps-25mbps) in the MPEG-2 format. The encoding was done with Xilisoft Videconverter and the bitrates were constant, not variable. Audio was also encoded with MPEG-2 at 128k Stereo.

I streamed it with the HR24 profile and turned the transcoder off. Errored out at 25k, 20k, 18k, 12k, 10k, 9.5k but played fine at 9k. Looks like the absolute peak to include the audio and video is 10k and it's probably only safe to encode in the 8k-9k range.

Incidentally, I cleared the transcode files for 127 Hours again, set the quality for 720x480-Lowest Quality/Fastest Transcode, turned the transcoder back on and played it back. Same error, same spot. Found it odd that the TV did not upsample the picture to 1920x1080; the 720x480 picture was entirely windowbox/letterbox on all four sides... or did FFMPEG add the borders in the transcode? I wish I knew more about FFmpeg.

[Thedude54]

Fixed (I assume). I did all of the uninstalling and reinstalling and it didn't make any difference. E-mailed that to Peter and he had me download and insert a previous version of FFMPEG in the Mezzmo program folder. Works like a dream now. Excellent help again, as always. Thanks.

I am having the same problem streaming to my Directv HR2x receivers (since upgrading to Mezzmo v3.0). The most annoying problem is some HD movies stop playing saying the bitrate is too high. I did NOT have this problem using V2.7. I would like to try fixing the problem the same way that smitbret did - by replacing the ffmpeg.exe file in the Mezzmo directory. Does Concevia use a custom version of ffmpeg or can I download the static Build directly from http://ffmpeg.org/download.html ? If I can use the ffmpeg.exe from http://ffmpeg.org/download.html and I am running Win7 x64 - which version should I download, x86 (32 bit) or x64?

Thanks,
TheDude54

[smitbret]

I am having the same problem streaming to my Directv HR2x receivers (since upgrading to Mezzmo v3.0). The most annoying problem is some HD movies stop playing saying the bitrate is too high. I did NOT have this problem using V2.7. I would like to try fixing the problem the same way that smitbret did - by replacing the ffmpeg.exe file in the Mezzmo directory. Does Concevia use a custom version of ffmpeg or can I download the static Build directly from http://ffmpeg.org/download.html ? If I can use the ffmpeg.exe from http://ffmpeg.org/download.html and I am running Win7 x64 - which version should I download, x86 (32 bit) or x64?

Thanks,
TheDude54

We haven't gotten it fixed, yet. Changing the FFmpeg version solved the picture quality issue, but the HR24s keep dropping it due to bitrate. We are working on a resolution, though, but it will probably take time.

[Thedude54]

We haven't gotten it fixed, yet. Changing the FFmpeg version solved the picture quality issue, but the HR24s keep dropping it due to bitrate. We are working on a resolution, though, but it will probably take time.

Smitbret,

Thanks.. I hope there is a fix soon for the bitrate issue.

I have another (general) question. Since Mezzmo has no Device Profile for the Directv HR34 - which profile does it use when trans-coding? Streaming to my HR34 from Mezzmo is working for non-HD video - so Mezzmo must recognize that it needs to trans-code to mpeg2 somehow. Is there someplace in the app that I can see which profile is being used?

[Paul]

...which profile does it use when trans-coding?

Go to the Media Devices dialog in Mezzmo and you will see all your devices listed there. In addition, the device profile that is assigned to your device is listed there. You can change the device profile to whatever device profile you wish to use. For your HR34, choose one of the DirecTV device profiles. After changing the device profile, restart your Mezzmo server and try streaming again.

[Thedude54]

Go to the Media Devices dialog in Mezzmo and you will see all your devices listed there. In addition, the device profile that is assigned to your device is listed there. You can change the device profile to whatever device profile you wish to use. For your HR34, choose one of the DirecTV device profiles. After changing the device profile, restart your Mezzmo server and try streaming again.

Thanks Paul for the info, I have HR20, HR22, HR24 and HR34 receivers - all 4 are using the HR22 Profile - from a previous post that I read, it should not matter since all Directv HRxx receivers follow the same mpeg2 protocol.

[smitbret]

Thanks Paul for the info, I have HR20, HR22, HR24 and HR34 receivers - all 4 are using the HR22 Profile - from a previous post that I read, it should not matter since all Directv HRxx receivers follow the same mpeg2 protocol.

If you roll back to v2.7.1 it should work fine on all of the DirecTV boxes regardless of which profile you use. I know when the HR34 came out, there were some problems with the MediaShare function within the box itself but those issues have been resolved on a DirecTV level. I would imagine that any of the profiles would work with the upcoming HR44 as well.

[Arco]

Please keep this post updated. I am also having this issue. I had to downgrade to 2.6.7 to make my mediashare work again.

[juliend]

I started a thread on this before I read all the way through this thread. I'll watch for resolution here. In the meantime, I will roll back versions.

[Paul]

We'll re-check our device profiles for Directv units and report back if we see any problems that we may have introduced.

[tek4life]

I am having the same problem streaming to my Directv HR2x receivers (since upgrading to Mezzmo v3.0). The most annoying problem is some HD movies stop playing saying the bitrate is too high. I did NOT have this problem using V2.7. I would like to try fixing the problem the same way that smitbret did - by replacing the ffmpeg.exe file in the Mezzmo directory. Does Concevia use a custom version of ffmpeg or can I download the static Build directly from http://ffmpeg.org/download.html ? If I can use the ffmpeg.exe from http://ffmpeg.org/download.html and I am running Win7 x64 - which version should I download, x86 (32 bit) or x64?

Thanks,
TheDude54

Had the same problem on all my DirecTV boxes, but was able to fix it by editing the performance of the media devices. You'll need to drop it down 2 ticks to prevent it from getting bit rates that are too high, anything higher than that and it fails during playback. The only problem I still have is that some of the movies are ending prematurely (a couple minutes before the end)... still haven't figured that one out. Also, I just upgraded to 3.0.2 and the problem remains the same so I had to adjust the peformance settings back down. Seems to be a problem with all 3.x releases but could be tied to something they are doing in FFMPEG.

[Paul]

Thanks for this information, tek4life. We'll make sure the Directv device profiles do not have too high bitrates & that ffmpeg.exe is not producing files with too high bitrates.

Regarding the video ending prematurely, we may have fixed this issue so please email us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com and we'll supply a patch for you to try.

[Paul]

Just a follow-up: We think the high-bitrate problem on Directv set-top boxes was related to the ffmpeg.exe that was shipped in Mezzmo v3.0.0.0 -> v3.0.2.0. We've built a new version of ffmpeg.exe and early testing from a few users suggest the high bitrate problem is fixed. Email us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com if you wish to try it.

[smitbret]

Just a follow-up: We think the high-bitrate problem on Directv set-top boxes was related to the ffmpeg.exe that was shipped in Mezzmo v3.0.0.0 -> v3.0.2.0. We've built a new version of ffmpeg.exe and early testing from a few users suggest the high bitrate problem is fixed. Email us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com if you wish to try it.

Got the fixes installed last night and can confirm that the problem seems to be resolved. I wasn't able to watch more than about 15 minutes into any movie, but none of them dropped out with the Maximum Bit Rate error at the spots they dropped out before. Quality also seems to be much better, although 1 movie (127 Hours) still suffers some streaks of blocking in some dark areas for about the first 00:02:00 and then looks fine; almost like it has to warm up. It's not in the original but it is just this one title. Maybe a bad/inefficient encode from BR to x264. I'll re-rip and see if the problem remains.

Now, if only DirecTV would start supporting MPEG-4 in Media Share......

[Paul]

Many thanks for the confirmation, smitbret. This ffmpeg.exe build will be included in the upcoming Mezzmo v3.1 release that we're planning to release next week.

[bubaucsal]

Many thanks for the confirmation, smitbret. This ffmpeg.exe build will be included in the upcoming Mezzmo v3.1 release that we're planning to release next week.

Where can I get this version of ffmpeg.exe to download?

[Paul]

Email us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com for the updated ffmpeg.exe - or wait until we release Mezzmo v3.1, which will include the updated ffmpeg.exe and other fixes. Planned for release later this week.

[smitbret]

Many thanks for the confirmation, smitbret. This ffmpeg.exe build will be included in the upcoming Mezzmo v3.1 release that we're planning to release next week.

Just a quick note. A few days ago, I noticed one of my movies dropped off with the <maximum bitrate> error again after I made the changes (or thought I had). It has not happened again. In fact, I built a new Media Server a few days ago and did a fresh install of the OS and installed Mezzmo with the tweaks for DirecTV boxes and haven't seen the problem since.

One thing that keeps cropping up, though..... one particular movie, 127 Hours, still consistently has poor quality for the first couple of minutes. It has horrible blocking in dark areas and fast action. Over the last couple of months I have changed quality settings, reinstalled Mezzmo probably a dozen times and have even re ripped the original file. No matter what I do, the quality is still bad for the first 2 minutes of that movie. It clears up and looks fine after that and it only occurs with that movie (so far). It's not much of an issue since I haven't seen it anywhere else. It doesn't occur on my WD Live Hub with transcoding turned off so I would assume it is some kind of issue with ffmpeg.

Like I said, it's nothing that I am concerned about, just wanted to make note.

[Paul]

Thanks for reporting this, smitbret. If you want us to have a look at the issues in 127 Hours, then upload the file to a filesharing site and email us the download link to support [at] conceiva [dot] com.