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Extracted mpg files do not play nicely on Humax

Andy Hurley

Andy Hurley

Member
I've been using 'extract to mpg' for a while now as the files it produces play much nicer on my Nexus 7 over the network (I can actually jump to the right point to continue viewing), however, I recently noticed that the same .mpg files do not play nicely on the Humax itself. For some reason the FF and skip buttons do nothing on these files which makes playing any but the shortest programmes a bit of a nightmare. In fact, it is the exact same problem that prompted me to try 'extract to mpg' in the first place only in reverse.

Has anyone else noticed this? Anyone know why it happens?

At the moment I have taken to keeping both versions when I am unsure where I will be watching the recording, .ts for playback locally and .mpg for playback remotely. This is a bit of a waste of disk space though so if anyone knows a way round it I would love to hear it.

Thanks.
 
So now replies are being deleted without even telling anyone. How nice it is here.
 
Weird, but I saw your reply in my email inbox.

I'm not familiar with AV2HDR-T2 so I don't know what point you were making. Are you saying the mpg files are bad in some way? If that's the case it is odd that they play fine on the Nexus 7 which is a bit particular about what it plays well.
 
Andy Hurley said:
Weird, but I saw your reply in my email inbox.

I'm not familiar with AV2HDR-T2 so I don't know what point you were making. Are you saying the mpg files are bad in some way? If that's the case it is odd that they play fine on the Nexus 7 which is a bit particular about what it plays well.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't worry. The comment was rude, inflammatory and added nothing to this thread which is probably why it was removed.

In general the Humax isn't able to do trick play on non-native file formats. I have had some success with certain .mkv files but in general if you want to be able to skip and fast forward then you will need to keep the original native files around.
 
I've found h264 in an mp4 container to be reliable for trick play. The downside off course is you have to re-compress using an external program such as HandBrake.
 
This does not answer your question directly, but I have a Nexus 7 (2013) and can happily play decrypted native HDR-Fox '.TS' files on it over WiFi. I navigate to the files on the HDR-Fox using ES file explorer and can play them in both BS and MX players. High definition '.TS' files can occasionally have problems if there is heavy network traffic but are fine most of the time. The video players (BS and MX) have to be configured for software decoding: hardware decoding gives poor playback and can make the player crash. I have not tried this on the 2012 Nexus 7: this may not work as well as the processor is less powerful. I have tried it on a first gen. Kindle Fire HD: standard definition is fine, high definition playback struggles - probably due to the processor.
 
Thanks for that. I have found that the TS files do play with VLC, MX Player on my Nexus 7 (a 2012 model though) and some others but if you try to skip to the point you want to resume (e.g. you watched half a film and want to pick up where you left off) it jumps back to the start. Also, brushing the screen can sometimes give the same effect. Using a swipe gesture to move forward a little (e.g. for ads) sometimes works but often does the same thing and jumps back to the start. The decoded mpg files work fine though and you can jump to an exact point to start playing.

It's odd that the Humax doesn't like playing the very files that are embedded in it's own transport streams. I have yet to find a downloaded avi file that did not play just fine.

For reference, all these files are SD or lower. I never bother to record HD as they just don't play back without stuttering even with a hard-wired connection. Even loading them onto my PC or tablet they still don't play back reliably, the SD experience is much more satisfactory.
 
How are you acessing the files on the Humax?
I found with DLNA I couldn't jump ahead in a recording, but using Samba to access the Humax I could.
 
In MX player if you go to menu (the button with 3 lines in the top right hand corner) >settings>player>resume you can choose to restart a file from where it last stopped. This works even when the file is not on the device.

Edit. In the player menu in MX, under navigation, you can also enable additional rew and ff buttons and configure each press to skip between 10 and 60 seconds. I find this useful for skipping adbreaks as the slider is a bit clumsy for skipping small amounts of time: the sensitivity of the slider can also be adjusted in the same menu.
 
I'm using Samba - gave up with streaming to the Nexus ages ago. I'll have to try that feature in MX player to see if it helps although, since the file just to start an begins playing again surely the restart point would also be back near the start?

It could be because I am on 4.2.2 still as I have not allowed my Nexus to upgrade due to the slowdown issues people have experienced with 4.3 (and goodness knows about 4.4, far too early to tell yet).
 
Off topic, but my Nexus has just updated to 4.4. It is hard to tell the difference on the 2013 Nexus 7, but this new version is designed to run on low spec. devices with as little of 512MB of memory. The one negative I have found so far is that the stripped down OS does not support flash, even in browsers that worked with it in 4.3 (Firefox, Dolphin etc.) :(
 
For what it is worth, and maybe a way to close off this thread, I retried MX player yesterday and found that it now plays the ts files just fine (decoded ones, via samba and ES file explorer). I don't know why it didn't work for me before, maybe an update to MX player, maybe my network connection improved (I added a second WiFi router closer to where I mostly use the Nexus connected via a pair of homeplugs). I've also allowed the Nexus to upgrade to 4.4 but that's well off topic and MX player was working before I did that.

Thanks to everyone for their comments, I think I now have a better setup and certainly less wasted disk space. I shall stop mucking around with extracting mpg files now...
 
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