I did this already for audio, and now am looking to do it for video as well.

What I want it to do is
- connect to the network with wifi
- have a web server whose interface with a laptop or a smartphone
becomes the 'remote'
- can play H264 /AAC encoded video at full frame rate up to HD
- can play webm/vorbis encoded live TV at full frame rate and possibly HD.

I am really looking for feedback on how powerful the thing needs to be
to do this - a pi zero W was well OK for just audio.

Also, how might one kill the process after a few hours so I don't wake
up at 3 a.m. to really loud adverts for mattresses that will eliminate sleepless nights :=-)


--
“A leader is best When people barely know he exists. Of a good leader,
who talks little,When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,They will say,
“We did this ourselves.”

― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 17/03/2021 16:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I did this already for audio, and now am looking to do it for video as
well.

What I  want it to do is
- connect to the network with wifi
- have a web server whose interface with a laptop or a smartphone
becomes the 'remote'
- can play H264 /AAC encoded video at full frame rate up to HD
- can play webm/vorbis encoded live TV at full frame rate and possibly HD.

I am really looking for feedback on how powerful the thing needs to be
to do this - a pi zero W was well OK for just audio.

I gave up on a rpi4. It should work but good HD video depends on
hardware acceleration and Raspbian distro software compatibility with acceleration was poor when I tried (i.e. Chrome and VLC didn't support
it fully)

If you just want media try KODI.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Pancho wrote:

I gave up on a rpi4. It should work but good HD video depends on
hardware acceleration and Raspbian distro software compatibility with acceleration was poor when I tried (i.e. Chrome and VLC didn't support
it fully)

This was the case after rpi4 was released.but later it was fixed. Firefox+ youtube, mplayer, kplayer works fine

If you just want media try KODI.

I was also after KODI (not for the RPI4, but for the PC, or VM), however it
was not possible to compile.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 17/03/2021 19:17, Deloptes wrote:

Pancho wrote:

I gave up on a rpi4. It should work but good HD video depends on
hardware acceleration and Raspbian distro software compatibility with
acceleration was poor when I tried (i.e. Chrome and VLC didn't support
it fully)

This was the case after rpi4 was released.but later it was fixed. Firefox+ youtube, mplayer, kplayer works fine

As I understand it, H264 decodes fine, but not webm/vorbis...
trying to get a feel for the support...


--
Labour - a bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich
people by telling poor people that "other" rich people are the reason
they are poor.

Peter Thompson

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 17/03/2021 07:17 pm, Deloptes wrote:

Pancho wrote:

I gave up on a rpi4. It should work but good HD video depends on
hardware acceleration and Raspbian distro software compatibility with
acceleration was poor when I tried (i.e. Chrome and VLC didn't support
it fully)

This was the case after rpi4 was released.but later it was fixed. Firefox+ youtube, mplayer, kplayer works fine

If you just want media try KODI.

I was also after KODI (not for the RPI4, but for the PC, or VM), however it was not possible to compile.

Try OSMC on Pi3

--
Chris Elvidge
England

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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"Pancho" <Pancho.Dontmaileme@outlook.com> wrote in message news:s2tdc0$abp$1@dont-email.me...

On 17/03/2021 16:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I did this already for audio, and now am looking to do it for video as
well.

What I want it to do is
- connect to the network with wifi
- have a web server whose interface with a laptop or a smartphone becomes
the 'remote'
- can play H264 /AAC encoded video at full frame rate up to HD
- can play webm/vorbis encoded live TV at full frame rate and possibly
HD.

I am really looking for feedback on how powerful the thing needs to be to
do this - a pi zero W was well OK for just audio.

I gave up on a rpi4. It should work but good HD video depends on hardware acceleration and Raspbian distro software compatibility with acceleration
was poor when I tried (i.e. Chrome and VLC didn't support it fully)

As a SMB file server (with the decoding and display on *another* PC) the Pi3
or Pi4 is fast enough. Likewise for recording to spinning HDD (not SD
because of the small size and heavy write activity) - I use TVHeadend to
record from one DVB-S2, one DVB-T2 and one DVB-T tuner: I've had all three recording at once (on one occasion, one tuner was being used for two HD programmes).

Using the Pi to decode and play HD videos is a bit more of a problem. The
Pi3 definitely wasn't up to the job - lots of stuttering even on SD. The Pi4 seems to be able to do SD and HD, but it uses a lot of CPU power and raises
the temperature from the normal 60 deg C to about 75 deg C, and I'm not sure what the maximum sustained temperature of an ARM CPU is.

Likewise, using a Pi4 as a Plex server is a bit of a non-starter. It's fine
for SD, but HD seems to require transcoding which puts the CPU and temp into the danger zone. I wish there was player hardware that could drive a TV over HDMI and which could read a file from an SMB server. But Plex seems to
require the server to transcode stuff, rather than handling native TS files
as MPEG-2, H264 or H265. I'd use the Pi4 running VLC if this didn't push the temp a bit high.


All this is with Raspbian Stretch on the Pi3, and RaspiOS Buster on the Pi4. Other distros of Linux may be better.

So the gist of what I'm saying is "the Pi is fine for recording to TS files
and then serving them by SMB to another playing device (Windows), but using
the Pi as the actual video player is a bit dicey".

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 17/03/2021 22:33, NY wrote:

So the gist of what I'm saying is "the Pi is fine for recording to TS files and then serving them by SMB to another playing device (Windows), but using the Pi as the actual video player is a bit dicey".

That's perfectly plain and a good answer and thank you


--
Karl Marx said religion is the opium of the people.
But Marxism is the crack cocaine.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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The Natural Philosopher wrote:

As I understand it, H264 decodes fine, but not webm/vorbis...
trying to get a feel for the support...

I am not sure what formats I have tested. The issue was definitely in
youtube video - could have been format related, but was solved at least somewhen beginning of last year

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 18-03-2021 11:37, Andy Burns wrote:

Deloptes wrote:

I am not sure what formats I have tested. The issue was definitely in
youtube video - could have been format related

It seems to default to VP8/VP9 codec whenever I take notice

Yes. However, it is still possible to request h.264 streams. For
browsers, you might need a plugin like "h.264ify". It could be that the
RPi modified version of Chromium has that built in. The next link in the
chain is if the browser will recognise the h.264 stream as such and
offload it to the hardware decoder. Probably not if it's not the RPi
amended Chromium...

The alternative is to use youtube-dl and pipe the output to omxplayer,
e.g. I have this saved which used to work but haven't tried it in years, really:

youtube-dl -f 96 -o - 'https://youtube-url-goes-here' | omxplayer -b -r --timeout 100 -I --no-keys pipe:0

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Deloptes wrote:

I am not sure what formats I have tested. The issue was definitely in
youtube video - could have been format related

It seems to default to VP8/VP9 codec whenever I take notice

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Deloptes wrote:

Pancho wrote:

I gave up on a rpi4. It should work but good HD video depends on
hardware acceleration

This was the case after rpi4 was released.but later it was fixed.
Firefox+
youtube, mplayer, kplayer works fine

As I understand it, H264 decodes fine, but not webm/vorbis...
trying to get a feel for the support...

Even on a 3B+ I had no issues with librelec/kodi/widevine/netflix/iplayer/tvheadend HD playback ...

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 17/03/2021 19:17, Deloptes wrote:

Pancho wrote:

I gave up on a rpi4. It should work but good HD video depends on
hardware acceleration and Raspbian distro software compatibility with
acceleration was poor when I tried (i.e. Chrome and VLC didn't support
it fully)

This was the case after rpi4 was released.but later it was fixed. Firefox+ youtube, mplayer, kplayer works fine

Yep, you are correct, I tried immediately after the Pi4 came out.
However, I seem to recall a thread a month or two complaining that
hardware acceleration had been turned off again in the recent distro
release.

I also have a fair bit of prejudice. About 10-15 years ago I tried to
run an underpowered AMD cpu based HTPC. It was supposed to work due to
hardware acceleration, but it was constantly getting glitches and
breaking. Hardware acceleration would fail, TV would stutter.

Since then I've used powerful chips and the headache goes away.

Something like a Pi that could do video (including x265) and remote
desktop would be ideal, *if* it worked reliably.

If you just want media try KODI.

I was also after KODI (not for the RPI4, but for the PC, or VM), however it was not possible to compile.

Yebbut, for the Pi4 you get prebuilt images. I've not played with VMs
recently but I would think you would want passthru video for KODI.

FWIW, I don't see the attraction, I like a proper PC desktop on my main
TV, I use a mouse and keyboard not a remote. The I can watch TV or do a
spot of programming from the comfy chair.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Pancho wrote:

Yebbut, for the Pi4 you get prebuilt images. I've not played with VMs recently but I would think you would want passthru video for KODI.

FWIW, I don't see the attraction, I like a proper PC desktop on my main
TV, I use a mouse and keyboard not a remote. The I can watch TV or do a
spot of programming from the comfy chair.

I was looking to replace the the Popcorn A100, but replacement is too
expensive latest model ~500
Remote is part of the entertainment.
May be I'll find time to compile the KODI software.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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A. Dumas wrote:

The alternative is to use youtube-dl and pipe the output to omxplayer,
e.g. I have this saved which used to work but haven't tried it in years, really:

I don't know - I configured the RPI4 to do a diskless boot PXI and put
debian. I kept the original kernel and I use Firefox. As desktop I put
Trinity (TDE) and everything seems just fine.
The only blocker I hit in replacing the PC is the scanner software that is coming with some x86 prebuild binary :/

The video however works flawlessly.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 18/03/2021 19:34, Deloptes wrote:

The only blocker I hit in replacing the PC is the scanner software that is coming with some x86 prebuild binary :/

I don't know your scan usecase, but you can run OCRmypdf on the pi.

I scan directly to a network share and then ocrmypdf watches the folder
and converts to searchable PDF.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Dana Fri, 19 Mar 2021 00:32:36 +0100, Deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> napis'o:

Pancho wrote:

I don't know your scan usecase, but you can run OCRmypdf on the pi.

I scan directly to a network share and then ocrmypdf watches the folder
and converts to searchable PDF.

I wanted to replace the PC with RPI4 as desktop. But on the PC I have the scanner attached, that I need very often, so for now I stick to the current setup.
I don't need OCRmypdf I need a scan of an invoice or a document - this means put the paper into the device and press the button.
When I have time, I'll have a look at the next version of the scanner software. It might be they have driver for aarch64.

Which scanner?
saned should support almost any...

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Pancho wrote:

I don't know your scan usecase, but you can run OCRmypdf on the pi.

I scan directly to a network share and then ocrmypdf watches the folder
and converts to searchable PDF.

I wanted to replace the PC with RPI4 as desktop. But on the PC I have the scanner attached, that I need very often, so for now I stick to the current setup.
I don't need OCRmypdf I need a scan of an invoice or a document - this means put the paper into the device and press the button.
When I have time, I'll have a look at the next version of the scanner
software. It might be they have driver for aarch64.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

Nikolaj Lazic wrote:

Which scanner?

EPSON Perfection V330 Photo scanner

saned should support almost any...

Never bothered to try that. I tried saned in 2003/4 last time :)
I have a process that works 100%. I do not put an effort to update the
process if not needed.
I could of course use something like USB to TCP converter and handle it on another machine that is i386, but there were few other issues, that I can
not recall exactly now.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 18/03/2021 23:50, Nikolaj Lazic wrote:

Dana Fri, 19 Mar 2021 00:32:36 +0100, Deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> napis'o:

Pancho wrote:

I don't know your scan usecase, but you can run OCRmypdf on the pi.

I scan directly to a network share and then ocrmypdf watches the folder
and converts to searchable PDF.

I wanted to replace the PC with RPI4 as desktop. But on the PC I have the
scanner attached, that I need very often, so for now I stick to the current >> setup.
I don't need OCRmypdf I need a scan of an invoice or a document - this means >> put the paper into the device and press the button.
When I have time, I'll have a look at the next version of the scanner
software. It might be they have driver for aarch64.

Which scanner?
saned should support almost any...

ROFLMAO!

Saned barely supports *any* properly.

I just hit the power switch in time to stop my expensive scanner (EPSON
v600) destroying itself trying to scan next doors garden.

Works ok with manufactures drivers


--
How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.

Adolf Hitler

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

On 19/03/2021 00:02, Deloptes wrote:

Nikolaj Lazic wrote:

Which scanner?

EPSON Perfection V330 Photo scanner

saned should support almost any...

Never bothered to try that. I tried saned in 2003/4 last time :)

Dont use saned if you have the epson drivers installed - they work way
better and dont destroy te scanner

I have a process that works 100%. I do not put an effort to update the process if not needed.

same here. Gimp now invokes the Epson code and that's all I need

I could of course use something like USB to TCP converter and handle it on another machine that is i386, but there were few other issues, that I can
not recall exactly now.

--
How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think.

Adolf Hitler

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

On 17/03/2021 22:33, NY wrote:

So the gist of what I'm saying is "the Pi is fine for recording to TS files >> and then serving them by SMB to another playing device (Windows), but using >> the Pi as the actual video player is a bit dicey".

That's perfectly plain and a good answer and thank you

NY seemed to cover only the case where HW acceleration is not used at
all. While I haven't tried to use a Pi as a media player recently, even
the original Pi worked fine as video player back almost a decade ago,
for SD MPEG2 and h.264 content. I remember the thing had trouble running
the XBMC (later KODI) GUI, but video and audio were fine. A quick Google
shows the acceleration even in the first model was good enough to handle
even 1080p content although only up to 1080p30.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 20/03/2021 13:12, Anssi Saari wrote:

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

On 17/03/2021 22:33, NY wrote:

So the gist of what I'm saying is "the Pi is fine for recording to TS files >>> and then serving them by SMB to another playing device (Windows), but using >>> the Pi as the actual video player is a bit dicey".

That's perfectly plain and a good answer and thank you

NY seemed to cover only the case where HW acceleration is not used at
all. While I haven't tried to use a Pi as a media player recently, even
the original Pi worked fine as video player back almost a decade ago,
for SD MPEG2 and h.264 content. I remember the thing had trouble running
the XBMC (later KODI) GUI, but video and audio were fine. A quick Google shows the acceleration even in the first model was good enough to handle
even 1080p content although only up to 1080p30.

The issue is whether or not Webm/Vorbis encoding can utilise hardware acceleration. I might just get one and try it out

I am sure H264 can, which is my other standard

--
“A leader is best When people barely know he exists. Of a good leader,
who talks little,When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,They will say,
“We did this ourselves.”

― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)

In article <s2tkl0$2vu$1@dont-email.me>, Deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> wrote: >Pancho wrote:

I gave up on a rpi4. It should work but good HD video depends on
hardware acceleration and Raspbian distro software compatibility with
acceleration was poor when I tried (i.e. Chrome and VLC didn't support
it fully)

This was the case after rpi4 was released.but later it was fixed. Firefox+ >youtube, mplayer, kplayer works fine

If you just want media try KODI.

I was also after KODI (not for the RPI4, but for the PC, or VM), however it >was not possible to compile.

If running on the Raspberry Pi, there's not much need to compile Kodi as
it's already available through any number of sources: Raspbian, OpenELEC,
OSMC, etc. The same mostly applies to ordinary PCs if you substitute other distros for Raspbian.

That said, I recently replaced a Raspberry Pi 3 that had been running Kodi (most recently on Raspbian, and on OpenELEC before that) with a Rock Pi X running Gentoo Linux, and the latest version of Kodi compiled without issue
on that. (Why the change? I wanted more streaming sources than just
YouTube. The LBRY desktop app (an AppImage built for AMD64 Linux) runs on
it, and unauthorized.tv works in Chromium.) The only remaining snag is that
I think video is still timing out when I leave it for a few hours, and when
I switch the TV back on it's running at 1080i with overscan, not 1366x768
(or whatever) without overscan.

_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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In article <s30skq$fpc$2@dont-email.me>,
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Saned barely supports *any* properly.

FWIW, it works pretty well with my Canon flatbed scanners: an LiDE 220 at
home and an ancient N670U at work that doesn't work with any version of
Windows newer than XP. Way back in the day, I was using it with HP SCSI flatbed scanners like the ScanJet 3c and 4p, and ISTR one of my newer HP all-in-ones worked for scanning as well as printing.

_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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In article <s2ud9j$53a$1@dont-email.me>, Deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> wrote: >The Natural Philosopher wrote:

As I understand it, H264 decodes fine, but not webm/vorbis...
trying to get a feel for the support...

I am not sure what formats I have tested. The issue was definitely in
youtube video - could have been format related, but was solved at least >somewhen beginning of last year

Out of the box, the Raspberry Pi (any model) only provides
hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding, and software needs to be written in a particular way to take advantage of it. Spending a few dollars on license
keys enables MPEG-2 and VC-1 (?), but software support for those is likely
to be even sketchier as I suspect few people go to the trouble. VP9 is
always going to be software-decoded, which will likely be iffy on anything
less than a Raspberry Pi 3. (A 64-bit OS might help...but last I checked, Raspbian is still a 32-bit userland.)

_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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On Wed, 24 Mar 2021 19:37:49 GMT, Scott Alfter
<scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> declaimed the following:

less than a Raspberry Pi 3. (A 64-bit OS might help...but last I checked, >Raspbian is still a 32-bit userland.)

https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_arm64/images/

They are basically for testing purposes, not production.


--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
wlfraed@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 24/03/2021 20:08, Scott Alfter wrote:

In article <s30skq$fpc$2@dont-email.me>,
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Saned barely supports *any* properly.

FWIW, it works pretty well with my Canon flatbed scanners: an LiDE 220 at home and an ancient N670U at work that doesn't work with any version of Windows newer than XP.

I too have had it work with ancient LIDE.

I have had trouble with HPO and Epson both.

Way back in the day, I was using it with HP SCSI
flatbed scanners like the ScanJet 3c and 4p, and ISTR one of my newer HP all-in-ones worked for scanning as well as printing.

FSVO 'worked'

_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

--
"Nature does not give up the winter because people dislike the cold."

― Confucius

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