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Looping MPG HD1010 3.1.46 2009

atprf

August 27, 2009 07:30

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This is a frequent subject on the forum, but some of the discussions date back five years or apply to legacy product, so I am asking the question afresh because some of the older advice may no longer be applicable and thus be a waste of time.

I have a single MPG file which I want to loop. I have placed the file by itself on a memory card (letting built-in autorun.brs loop it), AND I have also tried looping it by setting in autorun.brs on the memory card,
videoPlayer = CreateObject("roVideoPlayer")
videoPlayer.SetLoopMode(true)

and in both cases, the freeze/noaudio at end of loop provides the same experience of roughly 3 seconds. I do not have access to the post-house to fix it; the mpg is all I'm getting.

1) Is there a cleaner way to loop such a video?
2) What are the conditions for clean video looping?

Thank you.

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3 comments

• 0
  
  RokuLyndon August 27, 2009 07:38

  
  
  On the compact models, a transport stream will play more efficiently than a program stream. So, any mpeg2 or h.264 transport stream.
  
  
  
  While you can loop a transport stream with no audio seamlessly, you can't currently loop a video with audio seamlessly. You can't currently loop a program stream with no audio seamlessly.
  
  
  
  To recap, you can only loop seamlessly a transport stream with no audio. And, transport streams will play more efficiently than program streams.
  
  
  
  Your transport stream extension must be .ts. Some programs use .m2t for the transport streams they create. For those file, you just need to change the extension from .m2t to .ts.
  
• 0
  
  atprf August 28, 2009 02:41

  
  
  Thank you, Lyndon, for the concise answer.  A few followup questions:
  
  
  
  - Will a transport stream with audio *ever* be seamlessly loopable, say with changes to firmware, or is this an absolute limitation of the Compact model STB chipset?
  
  
  
  - Likewise, will a program stream file (.mpg) *ever* be seamlessly loopable?
  
  
  
  - Do you have a favorite file format converter to extract transport streams from program stream files?  Granted there are many, many such products out there on the market and available as shareware.  
  
  
  
  If one is involved before post production it's easy enough to get a transport stream file, but more often than not all you get was what post was contracted for, and if you want another file format, reopening post comes out of the integration (read: MY) budget, not the media or post budgets, so inexpensive, reliable post-post conversion tools are rather important.  
  
  
  
  Thanks again.
  
• 0
  
  RokuLyndon August 28, 2009 03:36

  
  
  mpeg2vcr is $30, I think, and does a good job going from mpeg2 program streams to mpeg2 transport streams.
  
  
  
  
  
  If you have mov or mp4 files, that are h.264, I've been use vlc media player to change the encapsulation to TS, and unchecking the option to encode. That seems to work well, but the audio has to be correct since you're not changing it. The audio, for h.264, should be AAC.  I've had more luck with AAC LC Fixed rate. Those seem to always work using this method.
  
  
  
  The first two are hardware to answer.
  
  
  
  We have done some initial investigation into seamless looping with audio and the solution doesn't appear to be a trivial one. So, I can't say for sure that this will happen.
  
  
  
  For seamless looping of program streams, that's more likely to happen. I believe there's testing occurring with this feature.