QO-100 Beacon TS - Can't Play with Linux VLC - Solved

[G8GKQ]

It has always frustrated me that I am unable to view the video from the QO-100 Beacon on VLC on Linux on a Raspberry Pi. Not that I want to see it, just that I know that I should be able to and can't!

I had assumed that it was because the RPi 3 would not handle the bitrate and video size, but the problem is still apparent on the RPi 4. The RPi 4 does, just about, play the video using mplayer, and also plays other high bitrate full-HD streams from QO-100 without a problem.

I know that the Beacon program and ES ID structure is a little unusual, and I think that this may be the cause. I have observed similar problems with other signals from SR Systems encoders.

So my question is: I can play the beacon video and audio perfectly on VLC on Windows 10; I can play the audio and see the video PID (in Tools, Codec Information) on VLC on Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi 4. Has anybody succeeded in getting VLC to play the current beacon TS video on Linux? And if so, how?

Dave, G8GKQ

[MW0RUD]

Hi Dave,
I don't think its a linux problem, I have had it playing on my Ubuntu laptop:

Screenshot from 2020-06-22 15-20-06.png (259.4 KiB) Viewed 1966 times

Possibly a comparability problem between VLC and the hardware H264 decoder?
Has anybody tried VLC running on Windows on the Pi?
Tim MW0RUD

[G8GKQ]

Thanks Tim

I forced it to use FFmpeg rather than the RPi's hardware H264 decoder and it now works. Next step is to work out how to do that as a Command Line switch....

Dave

[MW0RUD]

Hi Dave,
Internet suggests --demux ffmpeg but when I try it I get a different set of errors, possibly because my ryde test pi is very old and not up to software decoding.
I'll have to investigate how to do the same via the python API for my ryde code at some point after its initial release.
Tim

[G8GKQ]

Thanks Tim

Code: Select all

--codec ffmpeg

worked.

Dave