noggin's posts, page 209

Playing .mkv files on my TV

ffmpeg is an amazingly useful command line utility for Windows, Linux and Mac OS - and there are GUIs for it too.

You can re-wrap MKV content into MP4 - and transcode audio and/or video content if the codecs used are not compatible with your TV. It really is worth learning how to use it. (The BBC have contributed some of their research into it - including a nice implementation of their previously-patented Weston 3-field deinterlacer)

London Live

Yep - BBC London was formed when BBC Oxford and BBC South East were split away from the previous Newsroom South East operation.

However BBC London covers an area far larger than London - including lots of home counties areas - not that you'd know by watching the show...

Winter Olympics 2018

Not quite the case. There are 960x540/50p 'SD' (i.e. quarter 1920x1080/50p HD) channels on DVB-T2 (QVC for instance). Germany decided against allowing 720x576/50i on their T2 platform, but had to accommodate an SD-equivalent resolution - which is 540p.

http://digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?liste=1&live=18&lang=en&mux=FREENET-TV-3 shows QVC, HSE24 and Bibel TV are all 'SD')

However I think the switchover means all T is being shutdown, and all broadcasts will be T2. As a result all the SD FTA / HD Pay-TV stations end up being pay-TV only on terrestrial once the SD version on the T muxes have gone.

if you look at digitalbitrate.com for Munich you can see all but one mux is now T2. The services that don't have listed resolutions are encrypted.

Playing .mkv files on my TV

MKV is a wrapper, like AVI or MP4. It can contain any number of different audio and video codecs. To play MKVs you need something that is compatible with the MKV wrapper format AND compatible with the audio and video codec within the file. (You can easily end up with solutions that play one MKV file, but not another)

VLC is a Swiss Army Knife of a media player for PCs - and it includes MKV wrapper support and a lot of video codecs (it leverages ffmpeg internally I believe)- but it won't hardware accelerate all formats (H264 usually does well though) so you may find it judders and drops frames on high-end stuff (4K HEVC for instance)

If you are on a PC - MPC-HC is a good shout, particularly if you use it with the lavfilters which it comes with usually (LAV includes MKV wrapper support and audio and video decoders). The LAV Video decoder gives you a lot of flexibility in hardware acceleration config too.

Kodi also works brilliantly on Mac, Linux and Windows - and includes lots of hardware acceleration and built in Kodi support. It also has a great 'TV' UI. It isn't just for dodgy uses...

If you want a standalone player solution - then Kodi using LibreElec installed on a Raspberry Pi will do HD stuff up to H264 (and has zero problems with MKV wrappers). If your MKV contains H265 then look at something more like an AMLogic S905 or S905X device - but running LibreElec (which is Kodi + a cut-down Linux OS) is also a very good fit. If you like Pi-type devices then an ODroid C2 is a good fit, or otherwise there are any number of £30-40 S905X boxes (Sold as Android - but you can boot them into LibreElec from a uSD card in most cases)

Some smart TVs have built in MKV support - but beware they may not be an optimal solution. (My Sony TV runs at a fixed 60Hz when playing files back - so 50Hz stuff looks like junk on it)

The Sport Thread

Yes - the agreed opt post is always when the draw presenter says words to the effect of that concludes the draw, and when the matches will be played.

Eurosport Player

Almost all 'proper' cameras sold these days will do both 1080/50i and 1080/25p (though it is sometimes a licensed option to enable 25p). That said - not all cameras do 25p, the cheaper models are sometimes 1080i/720p only - like the HSC 300s used in NBH (but I believe the HSC 300RF has 25p an option...)

AIUI Antiques Roadshow switched from shooting 1080/50i on 2/3" sensor cameras (like HDC2500/PMW500s) to 1080/25p on large sensor cameras (like the F5/F55).

There is no reason you have to shoot 25p on these cameras (it's perfectly possible to shoot 50i on most of them - I've certainly done it with F55s) - but the 25p decision is a production one.

Eurosport Player

C300s are single-sensor cameras - but they are pretty high quality ones that hit EBU tiering for both sensor and codec performance (and you can shoot 50Hz as well as 25Hz on them...)

They are a big step-up in quality from most DSLRs and generate very decent pictures if operated well.

BBC News Channel Presentation - 21/03/16 onwards

Almost the same tech.

The rendering for both is Viz derived I believe.

On MOTD they are using a manual jib with additional motion sensors added to it to capture position and PTZ data (I think the jib base has to work in a fixed position for this - as I don't think base position is captured and is, instead, pre-set).

For the News Channel Papers AR - they are just using data from the Furio that already exists (as the camera's position on the track, pan, tilt, zoom and focus is remotely controlled).

Eurosport Player

In a word no... Those are produced by PSC directors/producers, or a VT producer - not the directors who cut the match usually.

Personally I don't find those objectionable - as they are trying to make a clear delineation between live coverage and retrospective 'narrative' stuff (25p and some grading really make that clear), but the sport director responsible for the match probably wouldn't have anything to do with those sequences, no...

I think that some of the elements of BBC Sport (and C4 Sport these days) "produced sequences" mean they are incredibly polished and visually creative, and so much better than if everything were shot 50i on a 2/3" camera and left ungraded in straight 709...

Eurosport Player

You don't find many sports directors who like 25p for action... There's a reason 4K UHD is 2160/50p not 2160/25p... They aren't switching the host broadcast feeds of any. major sporting events to 25p either...

25p often works well for the nicely shot features stuff, and I don't mind it being used to treat highlights in a similar manner...

Eurosport Player

Yep - but with some content (like the Winter Olympics) now moving from BBC Red Button and BBC iPlayer (high quality 720p50) streaming to Eurosport (which appears to be stuck at p25) - it's a real pain...

Feeds to Irish Channels

Just to be clear I meant the visual quality of the bitstream - not the file size. Bitrate doesn't tell you the whole story unless you are comparing the same encoders with the same configurations (and running the same firmware)

Is the BBC News HD recording from DSat or DTT?