[mr-b]

Hi

Some of the .rec files produced by my Toppy PVR (Topfield 5800) do not appear to play on XBMC 10.1. Nothing happens when I click the file.

Other .rec files play fine in XBMC and the problematic files always play fine in mplayer on Win7. Some of them play in VLC, some don't. Debug log at http://pastebin.com/zh9r3Ked.

Any ideas why?

[jhsrennie]

From the log I'd say the ffmpeg library isn't recognising the video format. The analysis looks very odd. VLC also uses ffmpeg (I can't remember if it's the same version as XBMC) so it makes sense that VLC is struggling as well. mplayer does not use the ffmpeg code.

There's not a vast amount we can do about this. We will be moving to the latest version of ffmpeg, but not for v11.0 as it's quite a lot of work.

JR

[paavoris]

AFAIK those *.rec files are just renamed mpeg-ts files (*.ts) and I have sometimes problems with them too. There might be some additional "Topfield only" metadata included, but it should not matter.

My problematic tv recordings are named as *.ts. and problems are usually "unseekable" files, where XBMC drops out from playback when I try to seek forward/backward.

Only cure for me is:

1. Try to remux this file to (for example) m2ts container. This usually leads to serious audio sync problems though and can't be used as an option, when my recording has DVB subtitles or they would be lost.
   
2. Encode to different format. DVB subtitles are lost too (no one seems to care about those, and I actually don't blame them)
   
3. Try to fix that recording with TSDoctor. http://www.cypheros.de/tsdoctor_e.html - this one has never failed for me - yet. :p
   

Yes, TS Doctor is commercial program. Sorry about that. There might be some free programs to do the same thing too, but I'm way too lazy to try every one of those. There is a 30 day free trial available though.

(I am in no way affiliated with TS Doctor and I'm only mentioning this because it has been the only progran that works for me without any hassle and it preserves DVB subtitles too.)

Those recorded ts-files (rec, ts, tp) can be quite problematic, since they usually are recorded "as they come from antenna/tuner" without any processing, so every transmission error is included too. That's why they call it "Transport Stream" - it is quite immune to transmission errors, but some demuxers/decoders may not be.

[mr-b]

Tx for all the useful info.

So what would be the best way of determining whether ffmpg could be changed to address this? I'm not familiar with it at all. It appears to be a media converter i.e. so I'm wondering how I could test it directly to find any errors.

Also I tried TSDoctor on a couple of problem files and it worked perfectly, identifying and logging errors and producing XBMC-playable files. Preserving the subtitles is important to me and it does this just fine. It even has a batch mode for easier processing. :-)

[jhsrennie]

So what would be the best way of determining whether ffmpg could be changed to address this? I'm not familiar with it at all. It appears to be a media converter i.e. so I'm wondering how I could test it directly to find any errors.

ffmpeg is a library provided as source code, and we compile the code into XBMC. There is no easy way for a user to try a later version of ffmpeg.

There are some experimental builds around (compiled by unusually determined users ;-) that have a newer ffmpeg compiled in. Try a forum search e.g. for "ffmpeg".

JR

[mr-b]

Tx. I found a later Windows build at http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=924...tcount=170.

For these interested and crazy enough to test it I compiled (for Windows) lastest XBMC head with FFmpeg n0.7.6 tag (iirc 1 month old -> contains Hi10P support).
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9P0EDUAH

I downloaded it and so far it's playing the problem files fine! So I'm guessing that this has a later ffmpeg which has fixed the issue.

As you said before, I realise that updated libs aren't just going to be included overnight, but are there any expectations on when a later version of ffmpeg might go into a mainstream XBMC build? Is there any point me digging to see which ffmpeg build actually fixed the issue, or is the above enough info?