I have various home produced movies on a NAS that I play with the WDTV Live streaming. The connection works, I can play ISO’s, MPEG’s, etc. I store DVD and Blu-Ray images along with just raw captured SD and HD footage.
However I recently captured from DV tape (using Pr Pro) just some basic SD footage. It is 720X480 and of the SD “widescreen” format (although of course SD) generated by DV cameras like the Sony HC90 of the day. Even windows media player plays it fine in the SD widescreen format. However the WDTV Live streaming say it cannot play that file format, check the manual. Of course .AVI is supported. What could it not like about this very basic file? Can filename length make a difference or something? I suspect it might have something to do with the widescreen thing but that was a standard of the DV format.
Now I don’t think this should matter…I got to the file via folder browsing because as I add videos, WDTV seems to take forever to “compile”, almost like it is starting over every time, so I did not find it via “videos”. Anyway, I don’t think that should make a difference.
After installing on your PC … (On your video file right click and open with Mediainfo select View > Tree then File > Export >Text > Save then open the *.txt file and copy and paste the info here)
Thanks, I am familiar with containers and codecs and that makes sense. I did all kinds of research on streamers and made sure the WDTV unit played ISO’s, and HD MKV’s, etc. etc…Ironically it even plays my HD MiniDV MPEG captures just fine. Wow, I never even thought to check if it would play an AVI DV file that even windows media player with no added codecs plays. But the links you provided pretty much say it all. Puts quite a crimp in my plans…
The clip is DV since of course Premiere Pro will capture footage in the highest quality native format. So to have the WDTV streamer play this back I would have to convert it to something like an MKV and store 2 copies? With the Adobe Media encoder I can transcode to whatever I want to but not ideal to have to do that for each clip. I was really hoping to just capture and play it.
Do any streamers play DV along with HD Mpeg, SD ISO and HD Mkv? For footage I do not need to edit I certainly don’t want to have to create a DVD ISO or MKV just to play it on my streaming device but it looks like I may have to. Any suggestions?
Here is the meidainfo output below. BTW, that is a cool program!
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Commercial name : DVCPRO
Format profile : OpenDML
File size : 3.80 GiB
Duration : 17mn 56s
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 30.3 Mbps
Recorded date : 2007-02-03 20:21:26.000
Video
ID : 0
Format : DV
Commercial name : DVCPRO
Codec ID : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint : Sony
Duration : 17mn 56s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 24.4 Mbps
Encoded bit rate : 28.8 Mbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:1:1
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Bottom Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.357
Time code of first frame : 00:00:03;06
Time code source : Subcode time code
Stream size : 3.60 GiB (95%)
Encoding settings : ae mode=full automatic / wb mode=automatic / white balance= / fcm=manual focus
Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings, Endianness : Little
Format settings, Sign : Signed
Codec ID : 1
Duration : 17mn 56s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 197 MiB (5%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 967 ms (28.98 video frames)
the only thing i think ‘may’ work without re-encoding … is using a DLNA Media Server on your PC eg. Twonky, Serviio
and Streaming with “Transcoding” enabled on the fly… to the WDTV in a format it supports.
Don’t know if it will work with DV … but i have successfully streamed (with Transcoding enabled) a WMV (Windows Media Video 8 ( WMV2 ) Codec [Which No WDTV supports]… to the WDTV, and it worked fine.
Tried encoding the SD AVI-DV file to H.264 with various bitrates in Adobe Media Encoder.
When played back through Windows Media Player, the AVI-DV is SD of course but smooth if there is camera motion.
The H.264 encoded file has “jaggies” or whatever the correct term is when there is camera movement, of which there is a lot on old home videos.
My research tells me that this is due to the fact that some playback software does not recognize H.264 interlaced video as such.
For testing purposes I encoded with MPEG-2 (essentially SD-DVD encoding to a file) and no jaggies, all smooth. But I understand that H.264 is a more current codec. Just don’t want to have jaggies. If it is just WMP that does not play H.264 interlaced back correctly I don’t care that much…
Anyway, will the WDTV appropriately recognize this footage as interlaced and scale appropriately?
can’t say i have any “Interlaced” content (i know from testing on the WDTV 1080i@50hz works ok for PAL interlaced content … but yours in NTSC, so i don’t know how that will look)
Have you considered trying Handbrakes “Deinterlace” option for H.264 ? Video Filters > Deinterlace
For an explanation of the Fast, Slow, Slower settings click this link
