Help playing .m2ts / AVCHD from Panasonic Camcorder

Hi,

I’d really appreceiate folks 2 cents on what my best bet is here. The reason I bought a WDTV is to stream home videos from my Panasonic HD Camcorder to my TV.

The result in all cases is (sadly)…

 - there’s a nice long pause before the video starts

 - it plays beautifully for about 10-15 seconds with audio

 - then it plays but stuttering, almost in slow motion - as if it’s only playing every 10th frame. Also, the audo cuts out.

 - once it starts stuttering it never goes back. Even if I pause the playback for a while, it never recovers

  • The media resides on a drive in my Windows 7 desktop - i7 quad core, pretty speedy

  • WDTV is on a wired 100 Mb connection. I’ve seen throughputs of up to ~ 60 Mb just copying files from a laptop to this PC over the same connection ( I borrowed the same cable…)

  • I’ve tried TVersity, PS3 Media Server (with and without VLC installed), and just a network share

  • I’ve tried the following firmwares 1.06.16 , 1.05.04_B, and 1.04.31_B

The twist is that when I first got the box, I plugged it in quick and dirty just to try things out - and things worked! I’d say I was hallucinating but my wife tells me she saw it too. I had upgraded the firware to 1.5 (I think), and things worked with TVersity (it could never connect to the Windows 7 media server). Then I took it all apart. After I got back from vacation I set it up in a more permanent fashion and now… bummer. I tried that original configuration… but no luck.

Any ideas? I think this should work! WDTV seemed like my best bet stream these without jumping through all kinds of hoops.

Thanks in advance…

Here’s the vitals on one of these files:

General
ID                               : 1 (0x1)
Complete name                    : Y:\Video\home movies\201105\20110509_201713.m2ts
Format                           : BDAV
Format/Info                      : Blu-ray Video
File size                        : 201 MiB
Duration                         : 1mn 48s
Overall bit rate                 : 15.6 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate         : 18.0 Mbps

Video
ID                               : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID                          : 1 (0x1)
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 4 frames
Format settings, GOP             : M=3, N=15
Codec ID                         : 27
Duration                         : 1mn 48s
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 14.7 Mbps
Maximum bit rate                 : 16.8 Mbps
Width                            : 1 920 pixels
Height                           : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate                       : 29.970 fps
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Interlaced
Scan order                       : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.236
Stream size                      : 189 MiB (94%)

Audio
ID                               : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID                          : 1 (0x1)
Format                           : AC-3
Format/Info                      : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                   : CM (complete main)
Codec ID                         : 129
Duration                         : 1mn 48s
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 256 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 2 channels
Channel positions                : Front: L R
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                        : 16 bits
Compression mode                 : Lossy
Delay relative to video          : -67ms
Stream size                      : 3.30 MiB (2%)

Text
ID                               : 4608 (0x1200)
Menu ID                          : 1 (0x1)
Format                           : PGS
Codec ID                         : 144
Duration                         : 1mn 47s
Delay relative to video          : -67ms

I think you’re in the wrong forum.

Since you say you’re playing over the network and using FW 1.5, I think you must have a Live or Live+,  not a Mini, Elements Play, or WDTV HD.

Try posting in the proper forum, and give information about how your network is set up.

My first guess is that you’re using wireless, and the bitrate of those files is too high for your WLAN to carry without dropping.

Oops - sorry for picking the wrong forum.

Anyways… I am wired (via a MoCa bridge)… but more to the point, I rebooted my router and *poof* everything streams beautifully. Bandwidth utilization on the PC jumped from ~ 2 Mbps to ~ 20.Go figure.

Thanks anyway…

Hi Dabramov

I have a couple of questions:-

  1. Do you think WD Live TV will play Panasonic HDC SD800 1080p/60 recordings?

  2. If it does, can I play direct from the SD card with the recording or I have to first convert the recording to Blu-ray format using the HD-Writer that Panasonic provides.

Thanks

DRoss

DRoss wrote:

  1. Do you think WD Live TV will play Panasonic HDC SD800 1080p/60 recordings?

Well… the specs for the chip say:

Video notes:

  1. MPEG-2 MP@HL up to 1920x1080p24 , 1920x1080i30, or 1280x720p60 resolution.

  2. MPEG4.2 ASP@L5 Rectangular shape video decoding up to 1280x720p30 resolution, support for B Pictures, data partitioning and error resiliency. No support for global motion compensation (GMC).

  3. WMV9/VC-1 MP@HL up to 1280x720p60 (<90% of the P-picture macroblocks have 4 motioin vectors) or 1920x1080p24 resolution. Up to 1280x720p30 or 1920x1080i25 resolution if unconstrained 4MV bitstream.

  4. VC-1 AP@L3 up to 1920x1080i30 (<60% of the B-picture macroblocks have 4 motion vectors), 1920x1080p24, or 1280x720p60 resolution. Up to 1920x1080i25, 1920x1080p24, or 1280x720p60 resolution if unconstrained 4MV bitstream.

  5. MPEG-4.10 (H.264) BP@L3 up to 720x480p30 or 720x576p25 resolution, including FMO and ASO.

  6. MPEG-4.10 (H.264) MP@L4.1 and HP@L4.1 up to 1920x1080p24, 1920x1080i30 , or 1280x720p60 resolution (constrained to match BD and HD-DVD specifications), 180 Mbin/s maximum for CABAC streams.

I don’t see 1080p60 supported by the chip in any codec.