Transcoding HLS streams to MP3 output

[simoncn]

(26-02-2015 19:00)Tell Wrote:  Simon

Thank you for your detailed reply and please find attached MinimServer log when playing an MP3. I note it's sprinkled with 0-0 requests. It does play MP3s fine.

Thanks for sending this. I will take a look at the log but I don't think it's likely that I can support this with a live radio stream.

Quote:Yes so if you could adjust MinimStreamer for a future release or next release to play on the Humax I would be overjoyed. Happy to test it for you.

The other thing that the Humax HDR does is that it will play an MP4 file if it's renamed to MP3. I think that's because it's all supported on the chip set. I might have to take a reality check here but doesn't that mean that if it's fed with the AAC radio stream calling it MP3 it has the advantage of not down converting it to MP3. Obviously as the developer you could implement that which would be rather great since one would be hearing them in the original AAC. I know this trick from a Humax board and Dinkypumpkin of Get iPlayer fame also gave a get iPlayer trick that just take a copy of the download and produces a second identical copy with the MP3 filename to save renaming it yourself. So that's what you do with the get iPlayer files on the Humax and you hear them in the original form.

So if I was using all my charm what would be nice would be the 0-0 fix and also the ability to write out the AAC stream into the MP3 container which the Humax should happily play in it's native form. I suppose you would have the *.mp3 parameter with the 0-0 byte request and some other option parameter option that put the AAC (this is MP4 isn't it) into the mp3 container. The latter is the one to use if it works on a Humax. *.mp3humax perhaps ?. Happy to test.

The radio stream is AAC ADTS which is a different container type than AAC MP4. In any case, I don't think it's a good idea to send an incorrect container MIME type to the renderer.

Quote:I note that MinimServer does not transcode FLAC to MP3. Serviio does this but it was more problematic till the January 2015 release (1.5), now it works without and problems. If it's an FFMPEG issue you may glean from the web site what steps were taken to bypass the issue which fixed the problem. It was plagued with long delays and wouldn't handle large FLAC files beyong 5 minutes say. This was all put down to the parameters that FFMPEG was using. I don't know whether this is the issue that you have which is why it's not supported on MinimServer.

The main issue is that it's very difficult to support seeking correctly (via byte-range requests) when transcoding a file (of any type) to MP3. This is why transcoding to MP3 is supported for network streams but not for files. I might look into this further at some point but it's unlikely to be any time soon.

Quote:If you got the RSS podcast feeds onto MinimServer - I don't think it does these yet, plus the FLAC transcoding, the playing of HLS streams and the enhancement above, I would be over the moon.

Realistically, I think you need to look for other solutions for these requirements.

Quote:Lastly my issue with attachments appears to be that it didn't like the extension that I had on the file, I didn't have one, changing to TXT it seems fine.

Thanks for letting me know.