problems with tv & mkvs

[varacas]

my tv has problems playing back losslessly edited/cut screencasts on i-frame basis (error: unsupported format). i have already tested with avidemux, losslesscut and vidcutter, unfortunately without success.

tv specs: mkv h.264 bp/mp/hp 1920x1080 6-30 fps 25 mbit/s
simplescreenrecorder specs: mkv, 1920x1080, 30fps, h.264, crf20, ultrafast, uncompressed audio
avidemux 2.7.6

the curious part: the tv accepts the original/uncut screencasts.

what can be the reason for this?

[eumagga0x2a]

Please retest either with the latest available official Avidemux nightly

https://avidemux.org/nightly/appImage4/

or build Avidemux yourself from the current git master.

If the issue persists, please provide a short original screencast working on your TV and that very screencast edited in copy mode with Avidemux which your TV refuses to play as a sample via WeTransfer, Mega, Dropbox, Google Drive or a similar service (but please if and only if none of the four are available at your location).

[varacas]

i have a small progress to report. the error message "unsupported format" is gone in favour of choppy played back audio with edited/cut mkvs by changing the h.264 preset from ultrafast to veryfast.

obiously my tv does not like the former preset, for whatever reason.

ssr setup as follows: mkv h.264 1920x1080 30fps crf20 veryfast audio uncompressed

again there is zero problems with the original test recording, only the losslessly cut mkvs come up with this issue.

Code Select Expand

[b]original[/b]:

Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 7.14 MiB
Duration : 28 s 672 ms
Overall bit rate : 2 088 kb/s
Writing application : Lavf58.45.100
Writing library : Lavf58.45.100
ErrorDetectionType : Per level 1

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 28 s 668 ms
Bit rate : 511 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 30.068 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.008
Stream size : 1.75 MiB (24%)
Writing library : x264 core 160 r3011 cde9a93
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=1 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=2 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1,00:0,00 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=0 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=4 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=10 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=20,0 / qcomp=0,60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1,40 / aq=1:1,00
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
DURATION : 00:00:28,600000000

Audio
ID : 2
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration : 28 s 672 ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Delay relative to video : 21 ms
Stream size : 5.25 MiB (74%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
DURATION : 00:00:28,672000000

[b]cut[/b]:

Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 6.11 MiB
Duration : 24 s 490 ms
Overall bit rate : 2 094 kb/s
Writing application : Lavf58.29.100
Writing library : Lavf58.29.100
ErrorDetectionType : Per level 1

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 24 s 484 ms
Bit rate : 517 kb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 30.060 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.008
Stream size : 1.51 MiB (25%)
Writing library : x264 core 160 r3011 cde9a93
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=1 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=2 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1,00:0,00 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=0 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=4 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=10 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=20,0 / qcomp=0,60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1,40 / aq=1:1,00
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
DURATION : 00:00:24,474000000

Audio
ID : 2
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration : 24 s 490 ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Delay relative to video : 18 ms
Stream size : 4.48 MiB (73%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
DURATION : 00:00:24,490000000`

[eumagga0x2a]

Does leaving out audio allow to produce (video-only) MKV acceptable for that TV set? The case of a huge size of audio relative to a tiny size of video data might be somewhat unusual.

Why not using the MOV muxer? Can't imagine QuickTime container being unsupported.

edit: Another possible problem is FPS being slightly above the specified upper bound. The console output of Avidemux from loading the original file might be really helpful.

[varacas]

Does leaving out audio allow to produce (video-only) MKV acceptable for that TV set?

i guess so, but i would like to stick with these settings, if possible.

with a different setup i used to create 1600x900 mkvs at 60fps, which the tv gladly accepted even after trimming the videos. this does not necessarily mean that these values were reproduced in the same way by the tv (see 30fps limit), but makes me curious why the new recordings "within range" are refused or badly replayed.

anything i can do to keep the 30fps value truely within its limits either during the process of recording or when cutting? have i missed something?

the terminal output of avidemux3_qt is HUGE, any way to just output the necessary video details?

[eumagga0x2a]

Does leaving out audio allow to produce (video-only) MKV acceptable for that TV set?

i guess so, but i would like to stick with these settings, if possible.

As we know that "these settings" don't work with that device once processed by Avidemux, we could just leave at that, satisfied with the status quo. I can troubleshoot only as much as you are ready to try out things.

with a different setup i used to create 1600x900 mkvs at 60fps, which the tv gladly accepted even after trimming the videos.

...which points again to the huge audio bitrate, maybe in relation to low video bitrate as a possible reason for incompatibility...

this does not necessarily mean that these values were reproduced in the same way by the tv (see 30fps limit), but makes me curious why the new recordings "within range" are refused or badly replayed.

There was a recent topic where a TV refused to play a video with fps a tiny little bit above the specified maximum of 60fps, so it depends. 1600x900 at 60fps = 342000 mb/s (macroblocks per second) which is higher than 1920x1080 at 60fps = 244800 mb/s, so that in principle the decoder should be capable of handling fps > 30 at FullHD resolution.

anything i can do to keep the 30fps value truely within its limits either during the process of recording or when cutting? have i missed something?

Once the H.264 stream has been created, usually nothing can be done anymore except of re-encoding it with the "Resample" filter, unless fps exceeding 30fps is an artifact of the limitations of the MKV format (no dts, timestamps are expressed in milliseconds compared to the infinite precision of fractions used by MP4 format). At the current stage I doubt that the problem is related to the video part.

the terminal output of avidemux3_qt is HUGE, any way to just output the necessary video details?

No, but what are gzip, bzip2, 7z and friends for? You probably should replace all occurences of your user name in paths with a uniform placeholder string before compressing the file.

[varacas]

thanks a lot for trying to get this working.

I can troubleshoot only as much as you are ready to try out things.

i misinterpreted your words, please excuse me. sure i can do some tests, no problem.

...which points again to the huge audio bitrate, maybe in relation to low video bitrate as a possible reason for incompatibility...

if i find a little bit more time, i will also test with a lossy codec and report back.

There was a recent topic where a TV refused to play a video with fps a tiny little bit above the specified maximum of 60fps, so it depends. 1600x900 at 60fps = 342000 mb/s (macroblocks per second) which is higher than 1920x1080 at 60fps = 244800 mb/s, so that in principle the decoder should be capable of handling fps > 30 at FullHD resolution.

i have done a video rashly at 1920x1080 60fps before knowing about the tv limits, but playback was not possible.

You probably should replace all occurences of your user name in paths with a uniform placeholder string before compressing the file.

now that is excactly my point i see what i can do, with or without the help of 'friends'...

[eumagga0x2a]

You probably should replace all occurences of your user name in paths with a uniform placeholder string before compressing the file.

now that is excactly my point i see what i can do, with or without the help of 'friends'...

Regarding replacing:

Code Select Expand

sed -i 's/StringToBeReplaced/Replacement/g' /path/to/admlog.txt
Please don't shorten or modify any other parts of the log. And please use at least gzip or rather 7z.