Streaming HD on Amazon Fire TV 2

JohnAsh wrote on 7/29/2016, 4:49 AM
Several years ago I bought a WDTV Live HD to playback our edited travel videos. These are currently originated on my Panasonic HC-V500, recorded in HA1920 mode. I rendered as XDCAM EX MPEG-2 (MP4) which plays well from a USB stick on my WDTV to my Panasonic Plasma.

WDTV is now not getting full support from WD. Nor from the BBC for the iPlayer that comes with it (this was a bonus and we were using the box as much for iPlayer as for playing back video).

Looking for a replacement, I plumped for an Amazon Fire TV 2. I am so please with its capabilities for TV, such as BBC iPlayer as well as 4OD and ITV Hub (but not Sky Go which won't play on an HDMI device).

I digress. I found very quickly that both the microSD card and any USB stick has to be formatted as FAT. So my files of travel video, each of just over an hour playback time and around 20 & 30 Gb(!!) can never be played back from memory. (The size never worried me before as they play well).

I tried playing over the network but neither VLC or KODI will cope.

I have tried rendering to other formats as suggested on this forum and elsewhere to no avail.

I am thinking I will have to keep my WDTV box, to add to the clutter, unless someone has suggestions as to how I can achieve my aim of playing my edits on the Amazon Fire? Thank you.

Comments

Former user wrote on 7/29/2016, 7:38 AM
Seems like a lot of work but I found this

http://www.aftvnews.com/how-to-play-files-larger-than-4gb-off-the-fire-tvs-fat32-usb-storage-in-kodi/
musicvid10 wrote on 7/29/2016, 9:36 AM
There is no reason to use XDCAM EX as a playback format. It is cumbersome and inefficient compared to almost any program stream format, which are made for the job..

Your media players will love files from Handbrake. You should be able to get around an hour of 1080p on a 4 GB file, depending on your preferred CRF setting. Given a little more time to mature, you may get about 2 hrs using x265 instead of x264.

If by some chance your camera footage doesn't open in Handbrake, or you need to edit it first in Vegas, XDCAM mp4 should make a perfectly valid intermediate format for taking your project to Handbrake. It's the right tool for that job.




JohnAsh wrote on 7/29/2016, 1:03 PM
Thanks, DonaldT, I'll take a look.

I had found this tutorial video to use Handbrake, but got stuck when I found my version of VP (13) does not have a template for uncompressed Quicktime 7. (

musicvid10 I tried all sorts of renders, many would not play properly on my WDTV (often I could not control playback) so I guess I ended up with this when I found it worked!

I will certainly try your tips. thanks very much. I'll report back.
musicvid10 wrote on 7/29/2016, 1:58 PM
I have hundreds of movies and shows I have produced playing quite happily on my first gen WDTV Live, and keeping the file peak bitrate reasonably capped, have had no problems with playback.

RE the old tutorial, the default template in older versions of Vegas was a convenience. Set your project and render properties (framerate, resolution, aspect, field order, etc.) to match your source media, and you are good to go. Do not do deinterlacing or resizing in the Vegas render step. Those are what Handbrake is best at. I still use DNxHD as an intermediate, but several folks are getting great results with XDCAM mp4.



wwaag wrote on 7/29/2016, 9:01 PM
I've used a number of media players over the years and by far the best has been a Sony Bluray player, a 2013 model for less than $100 at the time. The main reason for me is that it is the only media player that handles 60P playback. Most others handle 60i or 30P, but not 60P. It also handles XAVC-S playback without issue. I can also stream directly from my PC or use a USB drive. Since I like chapter support, I found it also handles chapters in the MKV container which for me at least, is really convenient. It does not support MP4 chapters. Perhaps the newer ones do. Just another alternative.

wwaag

AKA the HappyOtter at https://tools4vegas.com/. System 1: Intel i7-8700k with HD 630 graphics plus an Nvidia RTX4070 graphics card. System 2: Intel i7-3770k with HD 4000 graphics plus an AMD RX550 graphics card. System 3: Laptop. Dell Inspiron Plus 16. Intel i7-11800H, Intel Graphics. Current cameras include Panasonic FZ2500, GoPro Hero11 and Hero8 Black plus a myriad of smartPhone, pocket cameras, video cameras and film cameras going back to the original Nikon S.

JohnAsh wrote on 8/5/2016, 1:40 AM
<<http://www.aftvnews.com/how-to-play-files-larger-than-4gb-off-the-fire-tvs-fat32-usb-storage-in-kodi/>>

That worked with one of my enormous original XDCAM MP4 files but playback using Kodi was what I can only describe as "wobbly", though picture quality (it was in HD) was good.

<<There is no reason to use XDCAM EX as a playback format. It is cumbersome and inefficient compared to almost any program stream format, which are made for the job..

Your media players will love files from Handbrake. You should be able to get around an hour of 1080p on a 4 GB file, depending on your preferred CRF setting. Given a little more time to mature, you may get about 2 hrs using x265 instead of x264...............>>

I then ran that file through Handbrake using whatever it presented as the default settings to produce an MP4 which was down to 11Gb from an original 22Gb but playback was exactly the same with an unwatchable degree of wobliness. (Of course, given the size, that file had to be split too for playback using WinRAR.)

I think I need to re-render in VP then run it through Handbrake. But what settings for both, please? It's all a bit of a mystery to me! But I do feel we're on the way to finding a successful solution to this little problem, thanks to you guys' help!! My system is PAL.

PS Just to clarify, the original render of my edit played perfectly on my WDTV so the wobliness is being added on the Amazon Fire by Kodi.