stream process for VoD?

[Dave Stenhouse]

I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that using the Stream Process configuration in the stream definition is not supported for VoD streams. Is this correct?

I have a number of VoD files I have stored using hevc (to save space) and would like to be able to stream them on demand using h264 or vp9, but configuring the stream process seems to not do anything. Will I need to use a trigger to transcode the stream on the fly?

[Dave Stenhouse]

Any thoughts?

[Balder Vietor]

Hey Dave,

Stream processes are meant for live streams only, if you want to add additional qualities to a VoD I would just recommend adding the qualities to the streams outside of MistServer. Since encoding is usually quite demanding on the CPU we haven't really considered using this on a VoD in an "as you go" sort of sense. It wouldn't be capable of seeking to a specific point in the VoD and transcode from there on when a viewer tries to seek in the video. It could be an interesting thing to explore, but I would have to add that it feels quite wasteful to process a video every time when a viewer wants to watch vs just once. I'll double-check with some of my colleagues though as we have a few development branches where we do experiment with these things, chances are someone made something close enough. Should have an answer on this by Monday.

There's a way to cheat though, you could ingest it as live, that would allow MistServer to use the stream process on a VoD, but it has the downside of losing seeking and such. As it's now a live stream going through the VoD file.

Another method of cheating here would be abusing ts-exec or mkv-exec. Which you could use to feed the stream into MistServer and transcode it as you go, but effectively this would be the same as having MistServer ingest it as a live stream, you'd lose the capability of seeking in the VoD. 

With kind regards,

Balder Viëtor
Head of Testing

MistServer

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[Michel Hageman]

Hi Dave,

I might be mistaken and have no experience with configuring stream processes, but HEVC is not h264, but h265. I don't think it's easily streamed in this format, or rather impossible maybe. The option of using a trigger and transcoding to h264 might be a good solution. But again, I have no experience in this. I just wanted to point out that HEVC is not using h264. 

Good luck, hope you'll find a solution that works for you!

Greetz,

Michel

Op di 21 mei 2024 om 22:40 schreef Dave Stenhouse <hou...@gmail.com>:

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[Balder Vietor]

Heya, 

That is correct, HEVC is h265. The big benefit to storing in HEVC vs H264 is that there's a good amount of storage saved. The downside to on the fly transcoding is that it'll require CPU/RAM when it is transcoding. Though if storage is the main concern, storing in a better format is definitely a good method. Streamwise they're both good, though H264 just has more support over playback devices, but that doesn't mean that HEVC/H265 isn't good or viable, it all depends on your target playback device.

I've also checked around with my colleagues, there's no branch that can do VoD properly (as in work with seeking + transcoding) as of right now. There are plans, but to give a estimate on them would be a bit hard and very unlikely true. Two other things did come to mind however:

- You could use Thorium, which should have support for HEVC in the browser. The playback devices might need some more CPU depending on the device, but it "should" work.

- You could switch to AV1 instead, which will end up getting better support and should be even better for your storage. Even better AV1 support is very high on our list and other devices/hardware are supporting it more and more as well.

With kind regards,

Balder Viëtor
Head of Testing

MistServer

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[Dave Stenhouse]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. My question came from my own testing, and noticing that watching HEVC (x265) VoD streams fail to play. I was testing with Firefox. Hitting the same URL in Chrome results in perfect playback, so obviously there's something specific with hevc and firefox. not a huge surprise.

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[Balder Vietor]

Hey Dave,

Does not surprise me, I haven't checked the most recent builds of Firefox, but I know that they previously did not support it. There's a whole story behind how HEVC failed to replace H265 due to a patent pool and I wouldn't be surprised if Mozilla just figured to steer clear of it. Even for H264 there always were a few flavours that just wouldn't work in Firefox and would in Chrome and the other way around as well. 

I would guess that the only way to get it to play in Firefox right now is by cheating and using the VLC plugin.

Balder Viëtor
Head of Testing

MistServer

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