transcoding BBC has streams

[Peregrino]

I'm successfully streaming the BBC radio streams via Minimserver/Minimstreamer on a QNAP TS-453 Mini to a new exaSound Playpoint streamer, following the instructions on the Minimserver site.

I can live with this as it is, but I wanted to try transcoding the streams with something aac:wav24 or *:wav24 in stream.transcode, and to experiment with feeding the streamer/DAC different sampling rates. This does not work. Nothing is played when I enter these settings, whether or not I identify the stream as aac in the Playlist.

Maybe it's a problem with the streamer. Transcoding flac files and mp3 files to wav24 at all sorts of sampling rate works fine. But not the BBC streams.

Has anybody got any suggestions?

[simoncn]

(17-12-2015 21:40)Peregrino Wrote:  I'm successfully streaming the BBC radio streams via Minimserver/Minimstreamer on a QNAP TS-453 Mini to a new exaSound Playpoint streamer, following the instructions on the Minimserver site.

Are you using the instructions for an internet radio (this page) or the instructions for a UPnP renderer (this page)?

[Peregrino]

(18-12-2015 10:34)simoncn Wrote:  

(17-12-2015 21:40)Peregrino Wrote:  I'm successfully streaming the BBC radio streams via Minimserver/Minimstreamer on a QNAP TS-453 Mini to a new exaSound Playpoint streamer, following the instructions on the Minimserver site.

Are you using the instructions for an internet radio (this page) or the instructions for a UPnP renderer (this page)?

The UPnP renderer page. I've installed the latest ffmpeg with the path in stream.converter. Settings on this picture:

   

[simoncn]

I'm not sure why adding transcoding for the BBC streams would cause them not to play. There are many possible reasons. The best way to find out what is going wrong would be to enable debug logging before you attempt to play the transcoded stream. After the stream has failed to start, capture the log output by clicking 'Save as' in the log window, then zip the log file and attach it to a post here.

[Peregrino]

  Minim log when playing BBC stream with transcode.zip (Size: 6.32 KB / Downloads: 3)

(18-12-2015 13:59)simoncn Wrote:  I'm not sure why adding transcoding for the BBC streams would cause them not to play. There are many possible reasons. The best way to find out what is going wrong would be to enable debug logging before you attempt to play the transcoded stream. After the stream has failed to start, capture the log output by clicking 'Save as' in the log window, then zip the log file and attach it to a post here.

Thanks. Here is the log of trying to play BBC Radio 3 with 'aac:wav' in stream.transcode.

[simoncn]

(18-12-2015 14:32)Peregrino Wrote:  Thanks. Here is the log of trying to play BBC Radio 3 with 'aac:wav' in stream.transcode.

Thanks for this. Everything looks OK up to and including the entry at 13:23:31.977 where MinimServer sends the WAV header and the first part of the WAV stream to the renderer. In the next line, the renderer closes the connection, presumably because there is something in the WAV header that it doesn't like.

The only possibility I can think of is that the renderer doesn't like the stream length in the WAV header (default 4GB). You could try reducing this length to 2GB to see if this helps. To do this, change aac:wav to aac:wav-2GB.

[Peregrino]

[/quote]

Thanks for this. Everything looks OK up to and including the entry at 13:23:31.977 where MinimServer sends the WAV header and the first part of the WAV stream to the renderer. In the next line, the renderer closes the connection, presumably because there is something in the WAV header that it doesn't like.

The only possibility I can think of is that the renderer doesn't like the stream length in the WAV header (default 4GB). You could try reducing this length to 2GB to see if this helps. To do this, change aac:wav to aac:wav-2GB.
[/quote]

Thanks for looking at this. Unfortunately aac:wav-2GB doesn't work either. I tried a couple of variants - -1GB and -0KB - and they don't work either. Is it worth me sending the logs of these or is there anything else I can try?

[simoncn]

(18-12-2015 18:17)Peregrino Wrote:  Thanks for looking at this. Unfortunately aac:wav-2GB doesn't work either. I tried a couple of variants - -1GB and -0KB - and they don't work either. Is it worth me sending the logs of these or is there anything else I can try?

This is quite a puzzle. Perhaps there is something wrong with how your version of ffmpeg has transcoded the stream data.

To check this, you could try playing the stream URL using VLC (Media > Open Network Stream):

http://10.0.1.2:9790/minimstreamer/*/R3

Does this work OK?

[Peregrino]

(18-12-2015 18:44)simoncn Wrote:  

(18-12-2015 18:17)Peregrino Wrote:  Thanks for looking at this. Unfortunately aac:wav-2GB doesn't work either. I tried a couple of variants - -1GB and -0KB - and they don't work either. Is it worth me sending the logs of these or is there anything else I can try?

This is quite a puzzle. Perhaps there is something wrong with how your version of ffmpeg has transcoded the stream data.

To check this, you could try playing the stream URL using VLC (Media > Open Network Stream):

http://10.0.1.2:9790/minimstreamer/*/R3

Does this work OK?

I'm very grateful for your suggestion but I haven't investigated VLC yet, and a Google search leaves me confused about exactly where it fits in. Sorry, this is probably very basic but I'm a novice at networked audio.

[simoncn]

(18-12-2015 19:42)Peregrino Wrote:  I'm very grateful for your suggestion but I haven't investigated VLC yet, and a Google search leaves me confused about exactly where it fits in. Sorry, this is probably very basic but I'm a novice at networked audio.

VLC is a media player. It is very good at playing network streams and local files in many different formats. It is simple to install and use. I haven't had much success with its UPnP capabilities and I wouldn't recommend using it as a UPnP control point or renderer (the next version is reputed to be a big improvement).

I suggest you try changing the stream.converter setting to /mnt/ext/opt/medialibrary/bin/ffmpeg. This is a fairly recent version that is bundled with the QNAP firmware and is known to work well.