OMXPlayer and ts video files

stormtracknole · 12-19-2017, 12:15 PM

Greetings!

I know that omxplayer can play mp4 files with no issues. However, any other types of video format (specifically ts and mkv), it will not play. them. Looking inside the omxplayer sources, I see a Makefile.ffmpeg that does indeed dictate which decoder are enabled/disabled. I don't see an option for mpegts in there. So my question is, would it even be possible for omxplayer to play this file format at all? I have a tv tunner which works fine on the pi, but the signals are in mpegts and thus unwatchable. Thank you for your time!

abga · 12-19-2017, 07:24 PM

I'm using OMXPlayer under Kodi and I'm able to play all the common media formats & containers. MKV is a container, TS is the whole transport stream (direct dump from DVB) and both may contain different video encoding formats - MPEG2/MPEG4...etc
I'm not sure what OMXPlayer is good for as standalone player and also not sure why it's usually not compiled to use the FFMPEG libs.

To check the type of media (video format/encoding) you can follow this guide:
https://superuser.com/questions/5951...ne-under-linux
- on stock Slackware you only have mplayer to play with.

Since you are using your DVB adapter connected to the Pi, you can compile FFMPEG, then Kodi & tveadend and run them both on the same host, have your own Multimedia Station (Smart TV) playing everything (all common formats & streams) by still using OMXPlayer (Kodi compiles it internally and uses it).

stormtracknole · 12-19-2017, 09:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abga

I'm using OMXPlayer under Kodi and I'm able to play all the common media formats & containers. MKV is a container, TS is the whole transport stream (direct dump from DVB) and both may contain different video encoding formats - MPEG2/MPEG4...etc
I'm not sure what OMXPlayer is good for as standalone player and also not sure why it's usually not compiled to use the FFMPEG libs.

To check the type of media (video format/encoding) you can follow this guide:
https://superuser.com/questions/5951...ne-under-linux
- on stock Slackware you only have mplayer to play with.

Since you are using your DVB adapter connected to the Pi, you can compile FFMPEG, then Kodi & tveadend and run them both on the same host, have your own Multimedia Station (Smart TV) playing everything (all common formats & streams) by still using OMXPlayer (Kodi compiles it internally and uses it).

I've seen people say that they had better success using kodi. I'm going to go that route and see. Thank you for the link also. I did not know about the mediainfo command line app. Very nifty!

abga · 12-20-2017, 01:24 PM

I'm playing ts files that are recorded by tvheadend without any issues in Kodi 17.x, FFMPEG & Kodi being built by following the guides I posted here in the Slackware ARM forum. However, as reported here, some do have issues playing ts files (no clue about how they've built their FFMPEG&Kodi):
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=288002

Alternatively, since you already have OMXPlayer available, you could try to use the following switch for playing ts files:
--live Set for live tv or vod type stream
More info on OMXPlayer capabilities/switches:
https://github.com/popcornmix/omxplayer

On running both tvheadend&Kodi on the same system (Pi), I'd like to point out that I've only tested this successfully on a Pi Zero / Pi2. Pi3 should work (enough computing power) and I'm not sure if a Pi1 can handle the load. On a Pi Zero playing 1080p 25fps DVB stream Kodi eats up around 65% of the CPU and tvheadend another 22%, playing 1080p 50-60fps DVB stream on a Pi Zero is also possible but the CPU load will go over 70-80% and tvheadend will not get enough resources. I've mentioned all these details because I don't know what Pi you're using, please try to be a little more specific about your HW/SW.

Quote:

I have a tv tunner which works fine on the pi

stormtracknole · 12-20-2017, 08:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abga

I'm playing ts files that are recorded by tvheadend without any issues in Kodi 17.x, FFMPEG & Kodi being built by following the guides I posted here in the Slackware ARM forum. However, as reported here, some do have issues playing ts files (no clue about how they've built their FFMPEG&Kodi):
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=288002

Alternatively, since you already have OMXPlayer available, you could try to use the following switch for playing ts files:
--live Set for live tv or vod type stream
More info on OMXPlayer capabilities/switches:
https://github.com/popcornmix/omxplayer

On running both tvheadend&Kodi on the same system (Pi), I'd like to point out that I've only tested this successfully on a Pi Zero / Pi2. Pi3 should work (enough computing power) and I'm not sure if a Pi1 can handle the load. On a Pi Zero playing 1080p 25fps DVB stream Kodi eats up around 65% of the CPU and tvheadend another 22%, playing 1080p 50-60fps DVB stream on a Pi Zero is also possible but the CPU load will go over 70-80% and tvheadend will not get enough resources. I've mentioned all these details because I don't know what Pi you're using, please try to be a little more specific about your HW/SW.

It's a Pi3.