Video Standards.

[golgoj4]

So, maybe this is a personal problem, maybe its more than just me.

Being able to play Audio/Video consistently across multiple platforms is...tricky at best. Moreso video than audio, but both can be challenging. But, its still something i would like to have. yet, one thing ive come across is something that is still present in 2014. The codec problem. Some devices support this, some support that, some like one container over others when the stream contains the same content. I could go on. What I have learned is that, MKV is king. It has such great support for many of the features we like, such as multiple video streams, wider choice of audio streams, subtitle support, etc. However, MP4 (m4v) seems to be the widely accepted standard for non htpc solutions like phones and tablets across the big players in those markets.

I have pretty much doubled down on mkv, which, to my dismay i have learned is a non starter with an ipad and a hit and miss situation on my Nexus 7. Sooooo. What to do? Well a lot of time has been spent so far, with actual practical results coming out of it. We now have an html5 capable audio/video streamer (sorry no dvd or live tv folks, though possible). But the main question is this.  Am I the only person who cares about this? If so, i should likely direct my efforts elsewhere in the qOrbiter eco-system as now, audio seems to work pretty well.

Golgoj4

[Esperanto]

I'd love to be able to play mythtv live tv&recordings on a rpi and occasionally on an android device.

Personally I don't care much about apple: android is getting most of the market share and since they are much more affordable anyone able to buy an apple should be able to get a simple android device.

That said being able to play everything on every device is the best of course but probably not worth the efforts.

[Marie.O]

I don't care about video playback on a remote. So, if you ask me, invest your precious time in other qOrbiter endeavors.

[phenigma]

Being able to play Audio/Video consistently across multiple platforms is...tricky at best. Moreso video than audio, but both can be challenging. But, its still

VLC is available for android/ios/win/linux... pretty much everything.  And it plays pretty much everything.  Can you leverage it somehow?  Just my 2 cents. 

A/V on the qorbiter has one purpose for me: show the main TV screen A&V on the kitchen and bathroom qorbiter screens so you don't miss anything.    It's a super feature I've seen in a few smart homes put together near here by a company called Digital Interiors.  Very slick.  It's only a display, not a controller though.

Anyways, very low on my priority list compared to other qorbiter related bits, but still on my list. 

J.

[golgoj4]

All good points.

I think something else that needs to be discussed and maybe got lost in the qorbiter part of the discussion is:

*What are the optimal formats
 *Flac, Ogg, Mp3, AAC, WAV, MKV, MP4, AVI, WMV?

*What are the optimal ways of achieving a well archived media library and what can we improve?
 *Media Tagging Tools - Linuxmce and otherwise
 *Ripping methods - LinuxMCE  and otherse
 
-golgoj4
 

[Marie.O]

imho for ripping audio stuff, nothing beats flac as a storage format. Unfortunately, mobile playback of flac hasn't been to good in the past. For Windows Phone this might change with the next release of WP, as, afaik, Microsoft has included flac support into their media player.

For videos there is, imho, no single way. If you have a DVD, use the build in ripper to store the whole DVD. For Blu-Rays, mkv seems to the container format to go to with various different codecs included. All the rest? I keep them in whatever format I receive them.

Tagging? I leave that to others

[phenigma]

I agree with posde for audio, flac is all I use.

For video there are a few options and it depends on intended use.  For DVD I also agree with posde, rip in lmce.

BDs - cannot be ripped and played back like DVDs can.  The best to me is mkv container format.  h264 video (this depends on the intended playback device for the profile that works properly) and AAC multichannel audio if possible, AC3 if you want compatibility with lost of other devices and AAC stereo for compatibility with most portable devices.  24G BD movies can be brought down to ~8GB with good quality, and smaller file sizes are possible with greater quality loss (but perhaps not perceptable depending on the device used for playback.

I don't watch video on portable devices, pain in the neck.

Tagging is an issue, out External Media Identifier is closed source and we don't have it.  So we need a new/better/alternate way of detecting media when inserted. 

J.  (data dump ^^)

[totallymaxed]

I'd love to be able to play mythtv live tv&recordings on a rpi and occasionally on an android device.

Personally I don't care much about apple: android is getting most of the market share and since they are much more affordable anyone able to buy an apple should be able to get a simple android device.

That said being able to play everything on every device is the best of course but probably not worth the efforts.

If you stream in a UPnP/DLNA compliant format then you can access that stream on iOS or Android, Rpi/XBMC devices without any problems (well a few now and then...but thats being picky!). You can also access MythTV's recordings using UPnP and it works very nicely too...I don't think it supports live streams though (but who watches live TV any more?).

All the best

Andy

[Marie.O]

Andrew,

as you are the person doing DLNA a lot of times, I'd like to verify the statement of yours. Are you sure, that DLNA specifies what codecs and container formats the sending and receiving end need to have? Do you have a link?

Oh, and re live TV: I still watch live TV, and so do a lot of people I know

[phenigma]

Andrew,

You're UPnP suggestion is an interesting one.  I have been long awaiting the UPnP integration that you promised to be pushed into LinuxMCE in this message here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=8880.msg76346#msg76346 and here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=8880.msg78810#msg78810

Your suggestion may actually be useful to LMCEers if that code were pushed into LinuxMCE. 

I know alot of us would appreciate your publishing the code for inclusion into LinuxMCE, as you have promised.

J.

[totallymaxed]

Andrew,

as you are the person doing DLNA a lot of times, I'd like to verify the statement of yours. Are you sure, that DLNA specifies what codecs and container formats the sending and receiving end need to have? Do you have a link?

Oh, and re live TV: I still watch live TV, and so do a lot of people I know

I'm not aware that DLNA specifies that as such but pretty much all UPnP/DLNA servers will do format conversion if needed and usually do that through Media Renderer profiles which describe what formats the Media Renderer supports and therefore which format conversion the server needs to use to stream to that Media Renderer.

Everyone is different in their LiveTV viewing habits - but I know from personal experience and also from feedback from customers that LiveTV viewing of broadcast channels is on a distinctly downward trend. In my case LiveTV from a over the air or satellite broadcast is only about <15% of our TV viewing - and often even LiveTV is viewed via a Media Player.

All the best

Andy

[totallymaxed]

Andrew,

You're UPnP suggestion is an interesting one.  I have been long awaiting the UPnP integration that you promised to be pushed into LinuxMCE in this message here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=8880.msg76346#msg76346 and here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=8880.msg78810#msg78810

Your suggestion may actually be useful to LMCEers if that code were pushed into LinuxMCE. 

I know alot of us would appreciate your publishing the code for inclusion into LinuxMCE, as you have promised.

J.

I haven't checked but from memory I think we did push some of our early UPnP code. But since then we've dug a lot deeper than we originally expected to need to do to integrate UPnP into Dianemo, so much so that now our underlying media system is quite different to that in LinuxMCE. One example of this is our internal UPnP server that converts an .iso or .dvd and extracts and streams on the-fly its content repackaged to UPnP media renders like SmartTV's or RaspBMC etc. This is only possible with our underlying media system.

If we do open source this code it will happen as part of us releasing the overall Dianemo code base under an Open Source License. We are still assessing if/whe/how we might do this.

All the best

Andy

[phenigma]

Thanks for the info Andrew!  I will disagree with you on one statement though:

This is only possible with our underlying media system.

This is *very* possible in LinuxMCE, with a built in UPnP server.  I understand that your implementation will only work with your Dianemo systems though.

Thanks again!

J.

[totallymaxed]

Thanks for the info Andrew!  I will disagree with you on one statement though:

This is *very* possible in LinuxMCE, with a built in UPnP server.  I understand that your implementation will only work with your Dianemo systems though.

Thanks again!

J.

I wasn't saying it wasn't possible in LinuxMCE - of course you could implement something similar. What I meant was it would not be possible to integrate our UPnP code without also integrating all of our other underlying changes to the media system - which would definitely break a lot of existing code.

All the best

Andy

[phenigma]

Yes, of course.  Thanks Andrew!