Mailing List Archive

On 17/05/2022 22:48, Ken Mandelberg wrote:
> I just figured out what the issue is on running the Android Mythfrontend on my Chromebook. The GUI
> works fine, the setup wizard and the video samples work fine, but my recordings just hang after a
> short sputter of sound and black screen.
>
> All my recordings are from Xfinity, and it turns out almost all of those in recent years are in 720.
> If I go quite a few years back into my recordings, Xfinity had them in 1080 and those do run ok. Now
> that I look harder there are in fact some newly recorded ones from a nostalgia channel that are in
> 1080 and they do play.
>
> My Chromebook is an Intel Celeron N3060 and it wants the 32bit Arm Mythfrontend app. Its running
> recent ChromeOS (103), and I don't know if different Chromebook hardware would work differently.
>
> As far as I know Leanfront is not an option for a Chromebook.
>
> Also this is probably a clue of why the Xfinity Stream App doesn't work properly on the Chromebook.
> On Demand content plays, but DVR recordings and Live TV hang. I'm guessing its 720 vs 1080 although
> I don't have a way of checking format in that app.
>
Your Chromebook has an Intel CPU and it wants an ARM app? Something wrong here, surely?

--

Mike Perkins

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On Tue, May 17, 2022 at 9:49 PM Ken Mandelberg <km@mathcs.emory.edu> wrote:

> All my recordings are from Xfinity, and it turns out almost all of those
> in recent years are in 720. If I go quite a few years back into my
> recordings, Xfinity had them in 1080 and those do run ok. Now that I
> look harder there are in fact some newly recorded ones from a nostalgia
> channel that are in 1080 and they do play.

Check the encoding. (Pretty much) all the newer
720p's are going to be MPEG4, and at least some
of the older recordings are likely MPEG2.

Some hardware (or the OS) may report it supports
codecs that they do not actually properly support
(so the result is either hangs/black screens, or
bad visual artifacts). Chromebooks all over the
place in terms of proper support (even when
the hardware supports the codes, the OS version
may not). Some vendors have a list of known
devices that they override the selection for
(and fall back to software decode, which itself
may not work if the processor is not sufficiently
capable).
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On Tue, 17 May 2022 21:57:24 +0000, you wrote:

>On Tue, May 17, 2022 at 9:49 PM Ken Mandelberg <km@mathcs.emory.edu> wrote:
>
>> All my recordings are from Xfinity, and it turns out almost all of those
>> in recent years are in 720. If I go quite a few years back into my
>> recordings, Xfinity had them in 1080 and those do run ok. Now that I
>> look harder there are in fact some newly recorded ones from a nostalgia
>> channel that are in 1080 and they do play.
>
>Check the encoding. (Pretty much) all the newer
>720p's are going to be MPEG4, and at least some
>of the older recordings are likely MPEG2.
>
>Some hardware (or the OS) may report it supports
>codecs that they do not actually properly support
>(so the result is either hangs/black screens, or
>bad visual artifacts). Chromebooks all over the
>place in terms of proper support (even when
>the hardware supports the codes, the OS version
>may not). Some vendors have a list of known
>devices that they override the selection for
>(and fall back to software decode, which itself
>may not work if the processor is not sufficiently
>capable).

TV programmes that are 1080 are usually 1080i, and deinterlacing is
always a problem on any except the best GPUs. If it has to be done on
the CPU, you will likely need to select a lower mode that the CPU can
cope with.
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Mike Perkins wrote on 5/17/22 17:52:
> On 17/05/2022 22:48, Ken Mandelberg wrote:
>> ....
>> All my recordings are from Xfinity, and it turns out almost all of
>> those in recent years are in 720. If I go quite a few years back into
>> my recordings, Xfinity had them in 1080 and those do run ok. Now that
>> I look harder there are in fact some newly recorded ones from a
>> nostalgia channel that are in 1080 and they do play.
>>
>> My Chromebook is an Intel Celeron N3060 and it wants the 32bit Arm
>> Mythfrontend app. Its running recent ChromeOS (103), and I don't know
>> if different Chromebook hardware would work differently.
>>
>>
> Your Chromebook has an Intel CPU and it wants an ARM app? Something
> wrong here, surely?

I build for Linux, but for Android I rely on Peter Bennett's builds. He
doesn't build the Intel version of the APP. The Chromebook can run the
32bit Arm apps, so thats what I use. I imagine many Apps are only
distributed in Arm which is more common. I don't know if an Intel build
would make much difference, one way or another the virtual machine is
interpreting byte codes.




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Stephen Worthington wrote on 5/18/22 01:48:
> On Tue, 17 May 2022 21:57:24 +0000, you wrote:
>
>> On Tue, May 17, 2022 at 9:49 PM Ken Mandelberg <km@mathcs.emory.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> All my recordings are from Xfinity, and it turns out almost all of those
>>> in recent years are in 720. If I go quite a few years back into my
>>> recordings, Xfinity had them in 1080 and those do run ok. Now that I
>>> look harder there are in fact some newly recorded ones from a nostalgia
>>> channel that are in 1080 and they do play.
>> Check the encoding. (Pretty much) all the newer
>> 720p's are going to be MPEG4, and at least some
>> of the older recordings are likely MPEG2.
>>
>> Some hardware (or the OS) may report it supports
>> codecs that they do not actually properly support
>> (so the result is either hangs/black screens, or
>> bad visual artifacts). Chromebooks all over the
>> place in terms of proper support (even when
>> the hardware supports the codes, the OS version
>> may not). Some vendors have a list of known
>> devices that they override the selection for
>> (and fall back to software decode, which itself
>> may not work if the processor is not sufficiently
>> capable).
> TV programmes that are 1080 are usually 1080i, and deinterlacing is
> always a problem on any except the best GPUs. If it has to be done on
> the CPU, you will likely need to select a lower mode that the CPU can
> cope with.
>
I looked at two very recent recordings both from the local PBS
affiliate. One was from their main channel, the other from their
secondary channel. Both delivered by Xfinity/HdHomerun. The secondary
plays in the Android Mythfrontend, the main channel doesn't. From the
mediainfo below the issue seems to be AVC vs MPEG-2. I presume AVC is
essentially MPEG-4.

One thing I can do is run the old mythplayer app which will fetch the
myth data and run an external player like mxplayer which handles the AVC
video. I guess the codec support through the Android API is just not up
to the task of AVC.

The mythfrontend marks the main channel recording as 720. More
specifically the mediainfo program shows

Video
ID                                       : 1021 (0x3FD)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L3.2
Format settings                          : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : 27
Duration                                 : 43 min 52 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 3 454 kb/s
Nominal bit rate                         : 5 000 kb/s
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels


The secondary channel recording shows

Video
ID                                       : 1006 (0x3EE)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : MPEG Video
Format version                           : Version 2
Format profile                           : Main@Main
Format settings                          : CustomMatrix / BVOP
Format settings, BVOP                    : Yes
Format settings, Matrix                  : Custom
Format settings, GOP                     : Variable
Format settings, picture structure       : Frame
Codec ID                                 : 2
Duration                                 : 29 min 57 s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 1 797 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 18.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 528 pixels
Height                                   : 480 pixels

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On 5/19/22 18:30, Ken Mandelberg wrote:
> Mike Perkins wrote on 5/17/22 17:52:
>> On 17/05/2022 22:48, Ken Mandelberg wrote:
>>> ....
>>> All my recordings are from Xfinity, and it turns out almost all of
>>> those in recent years are in 720. If I go quite a few years back
>>> into my recordings, Xfinity had them in 1080 and those do run ok.
>>> Now that I look harder there are in fact some newly recorded ones
>>> from a nostalgia channel that are in 1080 and they do play.
>>>
>>> My Chromebook is an Intel Celeron N3060 and it wants the 32bit Arm
>>> Mythfrontend app. Its running recent ChromeOS (103), and I don't
>>> know if different Chromebook hardware would work differently.
>>>
>>>
>> Your Chromebook has an Intel CPU and it wants an ARM app? Something
>> wrong here, surely?
>
> I build for Linux, but for Android I rely on Peter Bennett's builds.
> He doesn't build the Intel version of the APP. The Chromebook can run
> the 32bit Arm apps, so thats what I use. I imagine many Apps are only
> distributed in Arm which is more common. I don't know if an Intel
> build would make much difference, one way or another the virtual
> machine is interpreting byte codes.
>
Mythfrontend is written in C++. There are two versions arm 32bit and arm
64bit. I don't know about building an intel version.

If android mythfrontend runs, then leanfront should be able to run.
leanfront is written in java so it should be compatible. Only the ffmpeg
audio part of leanfront is written in C.

I can easily build an intel version of leanfront (the ffmpeg audio is
the part that would be different). My development builds always have
intel 32bit and 64 bit included. The production builds only have arm 32
and arm 64 (to reduce the size).

Peter

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On Thu, 19 May 2022 19:15:11 -0400, you wrote:

>I looked at two very recent recordings both from the local PBS
>affiliate. One was from their main channel, the other from their
>secondary channel. Both delivered by Xfinity/HdHomerun. The secondary
>plays in the Android Mythfrontend, the main channel doesn't. From the
>mediainfo below the issue seems to be AVC vs MPEG-2. I presume AVC is
>essentially MPEG-4.
>
>One thing I can do is run the old mythplayer app which will fetch the
>myth data and run an external player like mxplayer which handles the AVC
>video. I guess the codec support through the Android API is just not up
>to the task of AVC.
>
>The mythfrontend marks the main channel recording as 720. More
>specifically the mediainfo program shows
>
>Video
>ID?????????????????????????????????????? : 1021 (0x3FD)
>Menu ID????????????????????????????????? : 1 (0x1)
>Format?????????????????????????????????? : AVC
>Format/Info????????????????????????????? : Advanced Video Codec
>Format profile?????????????????????????? : High@L3.2
>Format settings????????????????????????? : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
>Format settings, CABAC?????????????????? : Yes
>Format settings, Reference frames??????? : 4 frames
>Codec ID???????????????????????????????? : 27
>Duration???????????????????????????????? : 43 min 52 s
>Bit rate mode??????????????????????????? : Constant
>Bit rate???????????????????????????????? : 3 454 kb/s
>Nominal bit rate???????????????????????? : 5 000 kb/s
>Width??????????????????????????????????? : 1 280 pixels
>Height?????????????????????????????????? : 720 pixels

You are right - AVC is a subset specification of H.264, so H.264
(MPEG-4) support is needed. But in this case, they are using the
High@L3.2 profile, which may be the problem rather than just H.264, as
it is a higher level profile that needs a faster CPU or direct GPU to
support it. The bit rate is not high enough to be likely to be a
problem.
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