Things I have learnt from using MP that might help others (1 Viewer)

[mm1352000]

I suggest you follow this guide:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/guide-perfect-playback-display-calibration.119610/

...and if you have further problems post log files:
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_MEDIAPORTAL_1/16_Support/3_Forums/2_Log_Files

 

[Neild7744]

Hello guys. It's really good to see people adding their experience to this thread!

Right here are some more things Ive been learning...

1) network performance is very important for streaming HD content. Yesterday I spent all day testing the performance of mediaportal on my network. I found transfer speeds of files at 10Mb/s on 100Mbit LAN could stream 1 HD channel to a client and struggle with much else. Locally with TV service on my TV server I had 14 channels recording at the same time, 6 of these HD and I could watch any recorded TV or movie I wanted with no buffering. This gave me some confidence of my hardware capability on the server side of things. Soon as I fired up the client and tried to watch anything whilst these 14 channels were being recorded...it was crap. Didn't work.

2) increasing my network to gigabit saw an increase in file transfer speed by 8x...which I would expect. I struggled to even stream 1 HD channel successfully without stuttering before...now gigabit LAN is in things seem much better.

3) I mapped all my channels and 'pre loaded' cards in the tv server edit settings. This has helped with performance.

4) I have created a ramdisk and used it for timeshift buffer.

5) I still think as per my above post that running MP tv series scans etc and anything else that is going to choke the network is better off being done when MP isn't being used.

A conclusion I have come to (not sure whether its right or not) is install a decent network, buy decent HDD's and store everything on dedicated drives.

For me I'm going to test my client with the gigabit LAN for a while and see how things perform! I may look into investing into fibre optic and a high quality network switch to try and improve things further.

 

[JJDoherty]

Hi all,

Here's an update on where I'm at. I have been using the calibration guide you linked to @mm1352000, but thanks anyway. I have followed it and it's proven to be extremely useful, by confirming in one location, all the bits and pieces I have picked up from around the MP forum.

So just to clarify, this is the current state of play:

• Intel HD graphic 3D: Vertical Sync has been set on
• Samsung TV set to 50Hz
• MP configuration DRR is enabled
• LAV codec is selected exclusively, with MP - Audio Renderer
• LAV video config , DXVA2 (native) has been selected as the hardware decoder, with RGB output levels set to PC
• LAV audio config, all the relevant audio settings have been disabled
• The timeshift buffer location is set to the SSD, while all TV recordings and existing movies/TV series reside on the 1TB HDD

I have an ASRock H61MV-ITX motherboard which enabled me to overclock the GPU to 1.3Mhz from 1.05Mhz, which I believe improved things further.

So while there has been some improvement in the main, the Irish DTT (Saorview) channels are still dropping frames when the OSD graph is examined (SHIFT+1), introducing varying degrees of stuttering, pixelation and freezing. I have attached an image of this for one DTT station. These DTT stations broadcast in a range of qualities, from SD to 1440 x 1080 and 1920 x 1080, for different content (some movies, TV and sporting events are HD, other programming is SD).



Strangely the UK Freesat HD channels are perfect, broadcasting in 1440 x 1080 or 1920 x 1080 (BBC HD, ITV HD, Channel 4 HD). It is this which confuses me. If the UK freesat channel are perfect then why are the Irish DTT channels not. I do realise they are using difterent encoding but surely the LAV codec can cope with this or am I missing something? Irish DTT is broadcast in DVB-T/MPEG-4. Saorview is also part of the NorDig group, using the NorDig Unified Requirement for integrated receiver decoders, specifications for which can be found here http://www.nordig.org/pdf/NorDig-Unified_ver_2.4.pdf if of interest.

I think what I've posted above is a little off topic at this stage but I may link to this post on another thread or even start a new thread to highlight the issue.

Thanks all...

 

[mm1352000]

I have been using the calibration guide you linked to @mm1352000, but thanks anyway.

...so maybe you could do as suggested in the second part of my post: log files?
It is really hard to help further without them.

 

[JJDoherty]

I have been using the calibration guide you linked to @mm1352000, but thanks anyway.

...so maybe you could do as suggested in the second part of my post: log files?
It is really hard to help further without them.

@mm1352000, sorry, my comment about the calibration guide wasn't meant as dismissively as it reads, a throwaway "but" can be a dangerous thing! ;-) I'll try and get the logs posted as soon as I can. Thanks for the continuing support...

 

[Pog]

@JJDoherty hey there, I've a similar setup to you using Saorview and Freesat and I use the PowerDVD codec from the SAF codec pack.

Using that for TV and LAV for videos. Also I've found my aerial/cable/tvcard can be sensitive to the boiler turning on/off for DTT while the Sat channels are fine.

 

[JJDoherty]

Just wanted to update everyone on what progress I've made. I am happy to report that all appears well with both the satellite and DTT TV channels, both SD and HD.

I continued to examine the setup mainly due to the fact that the satellite channels were all working well, having overcome some initial issues, while the DTT channels still remained an issue, as I outlined previously. I went to the TV Channels setup in the MP TV Server configuration and while re-examining the DTT channels I noticed that the frequency wasn't what I thought it should be. I double checked on line what it should be on the transmitter I was expecting it to be and discovered this was incorrect. When I had setup the channels and scanned for the DVB-T channels initially I had done so by selecting the Region/Provider from the preconfigured dropdown list. Using the advanced tuning options and entering the frequency manually I re-scanned the DVB-T channels and checked the TV channels at issue again and all appeared fine!

It appears that the root cause of my issues were, essentially, the quality of the signal. The Region/Provider in the dropdown list, while stating it was "Dublin - Three Rock" transmitter was, in fact, using the frequency for the "Kippure" transmitter, another transmitter much further away. There was also an additional factor which confused matters further with a new second mux being rolled out here and only fully switched on in the last few days.

Anyway, I have since submitted for evaluation a new set of tuning parameter files for Irish DTT (Saorview) which fixes the wrong frequencies, adds all the missing relay transmitters as well as the new second mux frequencies. The submitted files can be found here, https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/updated-dtt-frequencies-for-ireland.122916/.

Hopefully that brings and end to this little issue for me! Thanks to all who offered suggestions and advice, which were all most welcome...

 

[Pog]

Hey JJ nice find and fix for tuning problems, this is what makes community projects shine.

I'm on Kippure myself so never had an issue. For others: it is possible to do a full scan of all available frequencies from tv server config without relying on the presets if your having similar trouble.

Also thanks for the heads-up on the second mux being online, seems to have taken forever!

 

[JJDoherty]

Thanks @Pog, much appreciated.

Yep the second mux is up and I believe we'll also see some re-branding at some stage, possibly "RTE One HD and "RTE Two HD", which may mean changes to logo and some other settings but all minor.

...it is possible to do a full scan of all available frequencies from tv server config without relying on the presets...

If you are referring to the "All Regions" option in the dropdown list then, I believe, that that also relies on a tuning parameters file which is essentially all the predefined frequencies from the other files in one large file! I updated this "All Regions" file when I updated the others too...

 

[Pog]

Just did a scan on the second mux and it looks like 2 HD channels and 4 SD, one of them being RTE One broadcasting in HD but probably just upscaled from the SD channel at the moment.

I made a logo pack a while back HERE and I'll be updating it when the second mux has a bit more time to settle in with it's propper channel allocations.