Surely it shouldn't be this hard

[heyho]

I have a PC that runs as a media server using Plex and several devices that connect to it to stream video. I have a VU+ Uno box with latest Openvix on it. I've managed to setup a network share from a hard disk connected to my Netgear router and the idea is to set this as my recording area so that Plex can pick it up and I can watch whatever is recorded from the Vu+ box.

So (minor) issue number one. I also have a Windows share setup. When I run Network browser it picks up both the Netgear attached drive and the Windows share without any problems and I can mount them and it quickly says they are successfully mounted. BUT - when I go into the location option when I am setting a program timer and then press the Menu button to display my devices and setup a bookmark only the Netgear attached drive is showing. This is NFS and the Windows is CIFS. That is the only difference (and Samba is installed and I have tried setting the Windows share to NFS). Not a big irritant but more of an annoyance

Anyway the other annoyance is that any recordings are saved as .TS files. Now I can get Plex to read these and display them in its menu system but Plex will not play them. So I am faced with having to manually convert them. Is there anyway the default file format can be changed?

Basically I just want to be able to record programs from Satellite and let Plex automatically catalog them so I can watch them on any number of devices in the house (or away from the house I suppose)

[imish]

i have heard that the new version of Plex doesn't have a transcoder hence why i haven't bothered upgrading my PMS. You will need to use an older version of Plex.

[DaMacFunkin]

Would you not be better using something like sickbeard to collect your programs rather than recording them?

[birdman]

Anyway the other annoyance is that any recordings are saved as .TS files. Now I can get Plex to read these and display them in its menu system but Plex will not play them. So I am faced with having to manually convert them. Is there anyway the default file format can be changed?

There are two parts to the format of a movie file. The container format, and the actual encoding format.
The *.ts bit is the container format. It's a transmission stream. That's a format which is used for broadcast transmissions as it is more tolerant of odd bits being lost.
The internal encoding will either be mpeg-2 or h.264 ("mp4"). That's how the broadcaster has encoded things,
Neither is going to change and there wouldn't be any point in getting the receiver to spend time and effort changing any of this, given that it can play what is sent.
I'm surprised that any recent, decent video-playing system can't handle these common formats.

[heyho]

.
I'm surprised that any recent, decent video-playing system can't handle these common formats.

I can see that birdman and I suppose the argument is - you record it from an enigma2/openvix device then you must be wanting to play it from the same device.

But the most common video formats are avi, flv, mov, wmv, mp4 so surely an option in a product such as openvix which is so feature rich in other things wouldn't be too much of a hardship

And thanks for the sickbeard reply damacfunkin - not come across that one before.

[Larry-G]

I can see that birdman and I suppose the argument is - you record it from an enigma2/openvix device then you must be wanting to play it from the same device.

But the most common video formats are avi, flv, mov, wmv, mp4 so surely an option in a product such as openvix which is so feature rich in other things wouldn't be too much of a hardship

And thanks for the sickbeard reply damacfunkin - not come across that one before.

There is no way for the image to choose what format a recording is saved as. It is determined by the hardware / drivers etc. The manufacturer would have to invent a process to do that such as transcoding the stream to another format and that would require new hardware and drivers, so would not be backward compatible with existing receivers.

[birdman]

The manufacturer would have to invent a process to do that such as transcoding the stream to another format and that would require new hardware and drivers

Wouldn't need to transcode anything.
An HD broadcast is h.264. Vix puts this into a *.ts file.
A *.mp4 file, which heyho notes as a common video format, also contains an h.264 encoded stream.
The issue here seems to be around the container, not the encoding.

As I noted, in my opinion any decent video player would handle a *.ts file. The problem here seems to be with Plex (but note that it doesn't need a transcoder - it just needs to be able to demux a *.ts file).

[imish]

The problem here seems to be with Plex (but note that it doesn't need a transcoder - it just needs to be able to demux a *.ts file).

I have a Plex setup and it does this perfectly well.

[ccs]

.... but using an older version of Plex.

[birdman]

.... but using an older version of Plex.

So you think that they might have removed the ability to handle a TS container?!?

[Rob van der Does]

I'm surprised that any recent, decent video-playing system can't handle these common formats.

Most do, but don't recognize the ts as type; most of the time a simple renaming to mpeg or so does the trick.

[birdman]

Most do, but don't recognize the ts as type; most of the time a simple renaming to mpeg or so does the trick.

They could do with a little Linux "magic" then....

[ccs]

So you think that they might have removed the ability to handle a TS container?!?

No idea, just highlighting that the op had mentioned earlier in the thread that an older release of Plex was ok.