x264 encodings playing on TivoHD

[txporter]

I am not sure where the best place to post this question, so I thought I would just throw it in General. Please move if you feel it should be somewhere else.

For about 6 months now, I have been able to push x264 encoded material to my TivoHD using pyTivo. Since the beginning, I have had an issue where the first 1-2s of video (x264 video) is garbled. It usually looks like ~8 bands of color that are frozen in place. The colors are mostly white and green with some red bleeding in. After those 1-2s of video, everything plays fine.

I am trying to figure out what is causing the issues with playback in those 1-2s. The videos play fine on my computer. I am assuming that the tivo doesn't like something about how I encoded it. The tivo receives H.264 content from youtube and Netflix and I think even from Amazon. Those video do not show the issues with the video at the beginning of the playback.

I saw a post on the Handbrake forums about someone seeing gray video at the beginning of their playback on their computer. The folks at Handbrake said it was like that the software could not read the mp4 edit list so they needed to disable b-frames. I tried this with my encodes as well, but it did not fix the garbled video issue (although it greatly improved seek performance on the tivo).

I generally do all of my encodes from DVD rips using Handbrake 0.9.3, but I do some encodes with XVID4PSP 5.0.36 as well. I have the same problem with either software.

This is the basic encoding profile that I use for Handbrake:

handbrakeCLI -i inputFile.mpg -f mp4 -p -e x264 -b 2000 -a 1 -E ac3 -x ref=3:mixed-refs=1:bframes=3:b-pyramid=1:weightb=1:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:me=umh:subq=9:direct=auto:keyint=24:min-keyint=2:no-fast-pskip=1:no-dct-decimate=1 -v -o outputFile.mp4

Things I have tried without success:
1. With/without trellis
2. With/without b-frames
3. With/without Pfast skip
4. With/without DCT decimate
5. Varying GOP lengths
6. AC3 vs AAC (yes, audio shouldn't matter)

Does anyone have any ideas for me to try? Or does anyone know what the problem is and can just tell me the answer?

[poisondeathray]

Most youtube HD, Vimeo etc.. videos are encoded with x264 now

What does pyTivo do? Does it transcode "on the fly"?

If anything , it might be b-pyramid, and > 2 b-frames - that can cause problems with some hardware players, but you already tried without b-frames

Try re-wrapping with a different version of mp4box (yamb) , it might be a container issue. You might try mp4muxer as well. There are slight differences, and some devices prefer one over the other

[txporter]

pyTivo was started as a transcoder to get all sorts of various formats up to the Series2 tivos (which could only support MPEG2 video). However, functionality was added in the March/April timeframe of this year to allow pushing h.264 content in mp4 containers up to the TivoHD/Series3/XL which can play that natively. So what I am outputing from Handbrake or XVID4PSP is being pushed up to the Tivo as-is, no transcoding. Unfortunately, other h.264 containers will be transcoded because the Tivo doesn't accept them.

edit: I guess I didn't actually answer your question. Yes, pytivo will transcode not compatible video formats on the fly using ffmpeg. And the x264/H.264 mix-up is my fault. I use them interchangably in my head.

[poisondeathray]

Does it support other containers? e.g. transport streams? .m2ts or .ts ?

[txporter]

This is what is known about container support on TivoHD/Series3/XL based on empirical testing.
http://code.google.com/p/streambaby/wiki/video_compatibility

I know that .m2ts is not accepted. I don't think that .ts is either.

[txporter]

I exchange a few emails with another user that has done a lot of work with x264 and series3 tivos. He also gets the choppy opening with x264 but was able to get clear playback with VC-1 encodes. It is likely just an issue on the Tivo side of things and baring any change there, I will not be able to improve the garbled opening with settings changes. Thanks for your thoughts, pdr.