Device Profile for Dish Network Hopper and Joeys

[Shoulder Devil]

Peter,

Thanks for the response. Earlier, there was a link to download your hopper profile included in your post. I was able to grab the profile before the post was edited and I have been playing with it ever since. For the most part it works well, but there are a few minor issues that I am hoping you can help me work out.

1. Apparently I was wrong about the native support for MKV. The hopper can play the h264 video stream but seems to have a problem with the mkv container. Would it be possible to have mkv files transcoded to an MP4(h264/aac)? I have used ffmpeg in the past to reencode mkv files so that they could be played back on an Xbox 360. Xboxes don't have a problem with the h264 video stream or an aac audio stream but they don't understand the mkv container. By running the mkv through ffmpeg with a -vcodec copy switch, I could create a new mp4 file that contained the original h264 video stream and transcoded the DTS audio stream to acc. It reduced encoding times from hours to minutes and does not have the same resource impact on the machine doing the transcoding.

2. MP4 files with h264/aac are completely passed through by this profile. My MP4 HD files seem to stream with no studdering or hiccups. The only problem that I see is that there is a considerable amount of pixelation that is occurring during playback. It's so bad at times that the movie is unwatchable. I have encountered this problem once before while trying to create my own hopper profile. I don't really understand why it happens. It only seems to occur when the file is not transcoded in any way. The server doesn't really show any signs of stress, the network looks fine and the playback is good except for the pixelation I wonder if it is a bitrate issue?

3. AVI (Divx/Xvid) files are being transcoded to MKV(h264/aac). The performance of the transcode is OK, it will work without studdering, but apparently the hopper doesn't like the mkv container. Also, transcode times are much better for these standard def avi files if they are transcoded to something like mpeg2video rather than h264. Would it be possible to change the profile so that AVI files are transcoded mpeg2video/aac instead?

Thanks

James

[Peter]

Hi James,
we have removed support for the mkv container from the device profile and added an upper limit (level="41") on the MP4 container with h264 to try and improve streaming with your MP4 HD files. We have sent you a link for the updated device profile. If the pixelation of your MP4 HD files continues can you please send us the FFmpeg information of the file by right-clicking the file in Mezzmo and choosing 'Get FFmpeg Information..' then click 'Copy to Clipboard' in the dialog that appears and paste the contents into an email to support at conceiva.com so that we can investigate further.

Regarding the third issue, AVI (Divx/Xvid) files, it is not possible currently to select the transcoding format based upon the container, so we cannot use the device profile to make AVI files transcode to mpeg2video when the preffered transcoding format is set to MP4. We may introduce this capability into a future version of Mezzmo but until that time you can pre-transcode your standard def files to mpeg2video by right-clicking the file in Mezzmo and choosing 'Pre-transcode Files...', then check the box next to your device and click 'Choose Formats...' then select to transcode to mpeg.

[KYWalker]

I would like to test out the new profile as well. I have created my own that only transcodes the DTS to DD and leaves the H264 Video, but I am getting a bit of pixelation.
Thanks

[Paul]

Contact us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com and we'll provide the current device profile that we are working on.

[Peter]

The Dish Hopper device profile has been included in the Mezzmo 2.6 release.

[tropez]

The Dish Hopper device profile has been included in the Mezzmo 2.6 release.

I just upgraded, the new profile for Hopper/Joey is dog slow. I could not get a movie to play due to it transcoding at 42FPS. When I changed back to using Generic Device (NTSC) movies pretty much would play instantly and at 100+ FPS transcode speed. They look great. All of my movies are encoded using Handbrake's AppleTV or AppleTV 2 presets. FYI.

[KYWalker]

When using the new Dish Hopper/Joey profile, I can't get any MKV/DTS files to play at all. If I change the profile to not encode to MP4 but instead to MPEG2, it works. I would still rather play MKV files direct, but the macroblocking/pixelation is horrendous.