[linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[Pásztor Szilárd]

Hi,

I recently got the USB DVB-C tuner mentioned in the subject.
Everything seems to work fine, except that the MPEG-4 HD channels have no
video, only sound. Regular SD channels broadcasted in MPEG-2 are flawless.

The tuner can receive MPEG-4 streams; decoder is not built in but Mplayer
would do the job if it could get the data. I have also tried in Window$ and HD
channels are working properly.

I used w_scan to scan through the channels and it found almost everything that
the Win scanner did (one block is missing in linux though, probably due to
different scanning parameters needed but the win one is dumb and won't tell me
any useful information).

My kernel: 2.6.30.5

Excerpt from dmesg:
dvb-usb: found a 'Anysee DVB USB2.0' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (Anysee DVB USB2.0)
anysee: firmware version:0.1.2 hardware id:15
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Philips TDA10023 DVB-C)...
input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /class/input/input3
dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 200 msecs.
dvb-usb: Anysee DVB USB2.0 successfully initialized and connected.

Any ideas on how I could start with my investigations? I took a quick peek
into the driver source but no story of mpeg 2/4 differences there.

regards,
s.

        ---------------------------------------------------------------
        |  Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.  |
        ---------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: [linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[Christophe Thommeret]

Le Tuesday 18 August 2009 17:08:20 Pásztor Szilárd, vous avez écrit :
> Hi,
>
> I recently got the USB DVB-C tuner mentioned in the subject.
> Everything seems to work fine, except that the MPEG-4 HD channels have no
> video, only sound. Regular SD channels broadcasted in MPEG-2 are flawless.
>
> The tuner can receive MPEG-4 streams; decoder is not built in but Mplayer
> would do the job if it could get the data. I have also tried in Window$ and
> HD channels are working properly.
>
> I used w_scan to scan through the channels and it found almost everything
> that the Win scanner did (one block is missing in linux though, probably
> due to different scanning parameters needed but the win one is dumb and
> won't tell me any useful information).
>
> My kernel: 2.6.30.5
>
> Excerpt from dmesg:
> dvb-usb: found a 'Anysee DVB USB2.0' in warm state.
> dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software
> demuxer. DVB: registering new adapter (Anysee DVB USB2.0)
> anysee: firmware version:0.1.2 hardware id:15
> DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Philips TDA10023 DVB-C)...
> input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /class/input/input3
> dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 200 msecs.
> dvb-usb: Anysee DVB USB2.0 successfully initialized and connected.
>
> Any ideas on how I could start with my investigations? I took a quick peek
> into the driver source but no story of mpeg 2/4 differences there.

Not a driver issue.
Maybe mplayer doesn't autodetect h264, or maybe the h264 stream's pid is 
missing in your channels.conf


-- 
Christophe Thommeret

Re: [linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[BOUWSMA Barry]

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, Pásztor Szilárd wrote:

> I recently got the USB DVB-C tuner mentioned in the subject.
> Everything seems to work fine, except that the MPEG-4 HD channels have no
> video, only sound. Regular SD channels broadcasted in MPEG-2 are flawless.
> 
> The tuner can receive MPEG-4 streams; decoder is not built in but Mplayer
> would do the job if it could get the data. I have also tried in Window$ and HD

You don't say whether you are trying to watch the streams live, or
making a recording which you watch at a later time.  
Nonetheless...

`mplayer' assumes a MPEG-2 video stream by default unless it is
told otherwise by the additional metadata carried outside the
video PID stream.  That means you need to feed mplayer with not
only the video and audio streams, but also the PMT stream which
identifies the video as H.264.

If you're recording to a file, you'll need to tell your recording
utility to capture more than two streams.  If you are trying to
use `mplayer' to view live, the last I knew, it would only grab
the video and audio PIDs -- at least with the file format I used.
I haven't tried keeping up with later developments  :-)



As I don't know the details of the cable system you use in Hungary
(guessing from your domain) I can't give you any tips you can use.
However, I can give you a -- possibly outdated -- example of the
PIDs I grab from BBC-HD over DVB-S:

TUNING=" -s 22000  -p v  -f 10847  -I 2  -D 3   0  258  5500  5502  5503  5504  5501 "

The extra PIDs are `0' and `258' which describe the stream and
programme number.  Following are the video and multiple audio
PIDs as well as teletext and subtitles and such.

If you are familiar with the DVB specification, a useful tool to
use is `dvbsnoop', starting with PID 0 and the results of your
`scan' utility.  If you are not familiar, it is a great way to
learn  :-)


In the worst case, you should be able to write the entire
Transport Stream (pseudo-PID 8192) to a file, and `mplayer'
should be able to extract all the info it needs out of that,
until you can filter out all but the particular PIDs which you
need for a particular service.


barry bouwsma

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For V4L/DVB development, please use instead linux-media@vger.kernel.org
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Re: [linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[Pásztor Szilárd]

Thanks for the comprehensive answer.
Mr. Thommeret's hint about the missing video PID pushed me into the right
direction so I'm a step further now. With scan -vv I could find the video PIDs
for the HD channels and indeed they were missing in my channels.conf (values
were 0) as scan detected them as "OTHER", but with a "type 0x1b" addition with
which I don't know what to do for the time being...

After adding the correct PID values, mplayer still can't demux the incoming
stream but the video is there, and with -dumpvideo a h264 elementary stream
gets produced in the file that can be played back if I specify -demuxer
h264es on the command line. What are beyond me now are:
1) how can mplayer not demux the stream if it can dump the video out
(shouldn't a video dump involve a demux operation before all?)
2) is it a missing feature of mplayer that no metastream is processed that
would carry the necessary information about the muxed streams? It would be
adequate for me if I could specify a demuxer to use but it seems impossible in
just one step - which I currently don't understand because an elementary
stream is dumped as video.

s.

BOUWSMA Barry:
> `mplayer' assumes a MPEG-2 video stream by default unless it is
> told otherwise by the additional metadata carried outside the
> video PID stream.  That means you need to feed mplayer with not
> only the video and audio streams, but also the PMT stream which
> identifies the video as H.264.

             -----------------------------------------------------
             |  Friends may come and go but enemies accumulate.  |
             -----------------------------------------------------

Re: [linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[Markus Rechberger]

2009/8/18 Pásztor Szilárd <don@tricon.hu>:
> Thanks for the comprehensive answer.
> Mr. Thommeret's hint about the missing video PID pushed me into the right
> direction so I'm a step further now. With scan -vv I could find the video PIDs
> for the HD channels and indeed they were missing in my channels.conf (values
> were 0) as scan detected them as "OTHER", but with a "type 0x1b" addition with
> which I don't know what to do for the time being...
>
> After adding the correct PID values, mplayer still can't demux the incoming
> stream but the video is there, and with -dumpvideo a h264 elementary stream
> gets produced in the file that can be played back if I specify -demuxer
> h264es on the command line. What are beyond me now are:
> 1) how can mplayer not demux the stream if it can dump the video out
> (shouldn't a video dump involve a demux operation before all?)
> 2) is it a missing feature of mplayer that no metastream is processed that
> would carry the necessary information about the muxed streams? It would be
> adequate for me if I could specify a demuxer to use but it seems impossible in
> just one step - which I currently don't understand because an elementary
> stream is dumped as video.
>

You might try: dvbstream -o 8192 | mplayer -cache 10240 -

this forwards the entire stream to mplayer, you can switch the
channels with [tab]

Regards,
Markus

Re: [linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[BOUWSMA Barry]

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, Pásztor Szilárd wrote:

> direction so I'm a step further now. With scan -vv I could find the video PIDs
> for the HD channels and indeed they were missing in my channels.conf (values
> were 0) as scan detected them as "OTHER", but with a "type 0x1b" addition with
> which I don't know what to do for the time being...

Okay, so you are using a `channels.conf' file, which is used for
tuning directly by `mplayer' into a particular service.

The `scan' utility you use does not recognise the H.264 video 
service as a video stream, which is why you don't get that as
your video PID.  A common problem, I would guess.


> After adding the correct PID values, mplayer still can't demux the incoming
> stream but the video is there, and with -dumpvideo a h264 elementary stream
> gets produced in the file that can be played back if I specify -demuxer
> h264es on the command line. What are beyond me now are:
> 1) how can mplayer not demux the stream if it can dump the video out
> (shouldn't a video dump involve a demux operation before all?)

`mplayer' does not (yet?) understand native H.264 video.  Whether
this is purely an `mplayer' limitation, or something which also
will affect other players, I cannot say -- I haven't looked into
this.

As a result, even if you have both the video and audio PIDs in
your stream, you still need the additional PID from which 
`mplayer' can get the needed identification of the video as H.264.
This is found in the PMT PID (for BBC-HD in my example, 258 or
whatever 3-digit PID was there -- my memory is going...)

I said it before and I'll say it again, what `mplayer' needs is
 -- I mean, I don't know if it would be possible for `mplayer' to
identify the video as H.264, but for me, it needs this additional
PID stream to do that.  That is something for the `mplayer' 
developers or for someone more familiar with H.264 in DVB to
answer.

I'm guessing your `channels.conf' file is simple with one field
for video and one for audio, but no extra fields.  If this is the
case, then what you will need to do as a test would be to write
more of the stream to a file; the example I gave in my earlier
reply for BBC-HD is what I pass to `dvbstream'.  Then `mplayer'
should be able to play this file with no problems.



> 2) is it a missing feature of mplayer that no metastream is processed that
> would carry the necessary information about the muxed streams? It would be

Like I say, I don't know if the video stream alone contains the
needed info that in theory `mplayer' could identify it as H.264.
Although it is outside of your reception as is BBC-HD via 
satellite, the british ITV HD service is broadcast as H.264 but
without a stream identifying it as such.  As a result, I've had
to hack `mplayer' to treat the video as such in order to be able
to watch the recordings I've made.

Note that my observations are made about `mplayer' from almost a
year ago, and if there have been changes made since, such as a 
more comprehensive `channels.conf' file, I'm not aware of them.


Hope this helps to understand your problem a bit better...

barry bouwsma

Re: [linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[Luis Silva]

> Hi,
>
> I recently got the USB DVB-C tuner mentioned in the subject.
> Everything seems to work fine, except that the MPEG-4 HD channels have no
> video, only sound. Regular SD channels broadcasted in MPEG-2 are flawless.
>
> The tuner can receive MPEG-4 streams; decoder is not built in but Mplayer
> would do the job if it could get the data. I have also tried in Window$ and
> HD channels are working properly.
>
> I used w_scan to scan through the channels and it found almost everything
> that the Win scanner did (one block is missing in linux though, probably
> due to different scanning parameters needed but the win one is dumb and
> won't tell me any useful information).
>
> My kernel: 2.6.30.5
>
> Excerpt from dmesg:
> dvb-usb: found a 'Anysee DVB USB2.0' in warm state.
> dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software
> demuxer. DVB: registering new adapter (Anysee DVB USB2.0)
> anysee: firmware version:0.1.2 hardware id:15
> DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Philips TDA10023 DVB-C)...
> input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /class/input/input3
> dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 200 msecs.
> dvb-usb: Anysee DVB USB2.0 successfully initialized and connected.
>
> Any ideas on how I could start with my investigations? I took a quick peek
> into the driver source but no story of mpeg 2/4 differences there.
>
> regards,
> s.
>
>         ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
>         |  Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.  |
>
>         ---------------------------------------------------------------


I don't know if this helps but from my experience xine or any xine based 
player always did a better job with respect to dvb. Maybe you want to give it 
a try.
Good luck,
-- 
Luís Silva

RE: [linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[Thierry Lelegard]

> Pásztor Szilárd:
> With scan -vv I could find the video PIDs
> for the HD channels and indeed they were missing in my channels.conf (values
> were 0) as scan detected them as "OTHER", but with a "type 0x1b" addition with
> which I don't know what to do for the time being...

Stream type 0x1B precisely means AVC / H.264 video stream (cf. ISO 138181-1:2000/FDAM 3)

Try VLC instead of mplayer. VLC does render H.264 HD video, provided you have a (very) good CPU.

-Thierry

Re: [linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[Pásztor Szilárd]

Thierry Lelegard:
> Stream type 0x1B precisely means AVC / H.264 video stream (cf. ISO
> 138181-1:2000/FDAM 3)
> 
> Try VLC instead of mplayer. VLC does render H.264 HD video, provided you
> have a (very) good CPU.

Thanks for the info. Anyway, mplayer also does render H.264 of course, it's
the stream that's not very cleverly muxed, it seems. And with mplayer I have
vdpau acceleration on my nvidia card that can render 1920x1080@50 fps in real
time.

s.

   -------------------------------------------------------------------------
   |  After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.  |
   -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[Antti Palosaari]

On 08/19/2009 10:42 AM, Pásztor Szilárd wrote:
> Thierry Lelegard:
>> Stream type 0x1B precisely means AVC / H.264 video stream (cf. ISO
>> 138181-1:2000/FDAM 3)
>>
>> Try VLC instead of mplayer. VLC does render H.264 HD video, provided you
>> have a (very) good CPU.
>
> Thanks for the info. Anyway, mplayer also does render H.264 of course, it's
> the stream that's not very cleverly muxed, it seems. And with mplayer I have
> vdpau acceleration on my nvidia card that can render 1920x1080@50 fps in real
> time.

Actually I met just similar case some months ago (I have also Anysee 
E30C and fi-3ktv cable). Only audio no video. HD-video PIDs were 
missing. I zapped to the channel and looked correct PIDs from dvbtraffic 
traffic output and added those to the channels.conf. Mplayer and Totem 
still resists to show video, but VLC does!

After that I looked transmission parameters by using dvbsnoop and there 
was H.262 (MPEG2) set those H.264 (MPEG4-AVC) channels. I think that was 
reason for my problems.

Antti
-- 
http://palosaari.fi/

Re: [linux-dvb] Anysee E30 C Plus + MPEG-4?

[Pásztor Szilárd]

Thanks for the advice, it worked! mplayer -identify dvb://<channel name>
produced the following result:

PROGRAM_ID=0 (0x00), PMT_PID: 16(0x10)
PROGRAM_ID=109 (0x6D), PMT_PID: 7029(0x1B75)
PROGRAM_ID=1001 (0x3E9), PMT_PID: 59(0x3B)
PROGRAM_ID=1930 (0x78A), PMT_PID: 1930(0x78A)
PROGRAM_ID=15551 (0x3CBF), PMT_PID: 8021(0x1F55)

I was searching for the HD channel with program id 15551, so I added +8021 to
the video identifier in channels.conf and it works.

regards
s.

BOUWSMA Barry:
> I said it before and I'll say it again, what `mplayer' needs is
>  -- I mean, I don't know if it would be possible for `mplayer' to
> identify the video as H.264, but for me, it needs this additional
> PID stream to do that.  That is something for the `mplayer' 
> developers or for someone more familiar with H.264 in DVB to
> answer.
> 
> I'm guessing your `channels.conf' file is simple with one field
> for video and one for audio, but no extra fields.  If this is the
> case, then what you will need to do as a test would be to write
> more of the stream to a file; the example I gave in my earlier
> reply for BBC-HD is what I pass to `dvbstream'.  Then `mplayer'
> should be able to play this file with no problems.

        ---------------------------------------------------------------
        |  Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.  |
        ---------------------------------------------------------------