Can anyone play .WTV files?

[Min2]

I tried to play a .WTV file recorded on windows 7 media center and only get video. My understanding is that .WTV is a supported format.

[darcilicious]

Yes, it's supposed to be supported but is not currently working; I've filed a bug report. (When I last tried though --before the latest updated-- I got audio and no video...)

[biosci]

My windows computer is on the network wirelessly. I was able to locate the files but only audio plays for 5 sec / no video. Also, it seems to hang up the Boxee box as well.

[darcilicious]

@biosci are you talking about .wtv files specifically? Just want to make sure.

[dconti]

just a heads up - there are a bunch of fixes for wtv in the pipeline. this is bleeding edge stuff, but on the test clips i have most of the bells and whistles are working now.

[Darkfin]

This is werid and I hope someone can help. Just after the last update (13 Dec) I was able to play .WTV files with no problem. But suddenly I only get video and no sound on them. Also at the same time all my .dvr-ms files sharted to sutter but audio is okay. Did i get the freak box or are others have the same problem. If anyone knows a fix for this please let me know.

If this helps any...my files are stored on a Windows Home Server Ver 2, the Boxee Box is hooked up using Wireless N Dual Band router. The server is hooked up to the router by gigabit LAN.

[darcilicious]

Sounds like you a very similar set up as mine ;)

If you power cycle the box and then go straight to playing wtv or dvr-ms files, do you still have playback issues?

[Darkfin]

Yes, I have trying cycling the power, and still have the same problem. :(

[BUDSclass201]

I get video with .wtv files but no audio.

[Darkfin]

I turned off the Boxee Box and then removed the power cord. Now I can play wtv files with audio and video.

Now the kicker is that the file will play around the first 22 minutes of the file and then freeze for a few minutes showing that it is buffering. Then it goes back to the start of the file again. Tried different files and they all seem to fail at the same point 22 minutes.

The dvr-ms files still shutter on video but the audio plays fine.

Anyone have suggestions?

[dconti]

I turned off the Boxee Box and then removed the power cord. Now I can play wtv files with audio and video.

Now the kicker is that the file will play around the first 22 minutes of the file and then freeze for a few minutes showing that it is buffering. Then it goes back to the start of the file again. Tried different files and they all seem to fail at the same point 22 minutes.

The dvr-ms files still shutter on video but the audio plays fine.

Anyone have suggestions?

wtv is bleeding edge but this shouldn't be happening. nor should the 'no audio' stuff.

do me a solid here -

how many minutes is the overall recording ?
how big is the overall file?

p.s. a bunch of fixes for wtv should happen in the next update, including eac3 support, but i want to check on the 22 minute issue specifically

[Darkfin]

You asked

how many minutes is the overall recording ? 65 minutes, recorded with WMC in SD.

how big is the overall file? It is 3.7 Gigs

I also have the same problem with the HD episodes I have recored, those are also 65 minutes long and average 7 Gigs each.

Hope this helps.

[Darkfin]

Tried again lastnight and it stop playing and starts buffering at 22:52 minutes.

[darcilicious]

There haven't been any updates pushed out since your post on 12/21 so I wouldn't expect it to behave differently. The next update is supposed to be out before the end of the year...

[darko]

I have a similar issue. I have .wtv files served up from a Windows Home Server. Average size is 6 GB. I get video but no audio. This also happens for 3 GB files.

Note: I can successfully play a 9 MB demo .wtv file.

[darko]

It doesn't appear to be a file size issue. I just tested recording a small clip, which ended up being 167 MB. I still get video with no audio on the Boxee Box.

[cjmoreira]

Audio now works with SP3, wtv files are now working properly. However, the video is not properly sized by default.

[darcilicious]

Can you skip ahead/back, pause, and resume properly?

[cjmoreira]

Can you skip ahead/back, pause, and resume properly?

Pausing works, but cannot fast forward (crashed for me).

[darko]

On my Boxee Box, updated with the latest software now, .wtv file streaming from Windows Home Server, audio is now playing, but the video proportions are out of whack now. The video fills the screen horizontally, but it is squashed vertically, only taking up about 1/3 of the height. When I play this on my PC, the video is fine. Before the software update, the video resolution was fine, but I got no audio. I tried three different .wtv files and got the same results for each.

[darko]

Audio now works with SP3, wtv files are now working properly. However, the video is not properly sized by default.

Is there a way to get the proper size?

[PhatPhreddy]

Have you tried video settings advanced and doing a custom AR ??

[Ozpeter]

I got one wtv file to play using SP3, though I had to 'manually' alter the aspect ratio. The next one caused the box to reboot almost immediately. Both sourced from the same USB tuner on a PC in WMC but from different TV stations.

[cjmoreira]

Is there a way to get the proper size?

Yes, you have to manually change the video settings (from NORMAL, to 16x9).

[esten]

Just tried to play some dvr-ms files on my bb last night, video stutters but audio is fine. Video was recorded by Win Media Center Vista. Funny thing is I also have some video recorded by another PC running Win Media Center XP and it plays fine. Perplexed, but am hoping the bug fixes are coming soon.

[Node_Pony]

I loaded RC 1.0.3.17028 yesterday and .WTV playback is still broken:

* As others have mentioned the aspect ratio is screwed up, and must be manually adjusted on a per file basis. Very annoying.
* FF/Rewind does not work, and a show that I was watching last night bombed out after 20 minutes. I was forced to restart from the beginning (I tried to resume from where it stopped, but I just got the spinning wheel cusror ad infinitum). Very annoying.
* If I start going mad at the remote, and start pressing buttons left right and centre the box will lock up. Very Annoying (After a cold beer I was alright though.)
* The good news was that the various .WTV files that I tried worked fine with proper audio & video sync. So an improverment here. I will try more tonight and try all network channels (Australian DVB-T free to air recorded on Win 7 Media centre)

Anyway, hopefully these bugs will be fixed.

Cheers,

[Shawn3985]

I hope it does get fixed soon. I was debating between the Boxee Box or X-BOX 360 as an extender and media streamer to play the WTV files. The Boxee Box won out because it's smaller and not as noisy. However, I really hope they not only fix it but also that Boxee understands the naming convention of these files so it posts them as they should on the display.


Shawn

[darcilicious]

I believe it's in the plans (naming convention): http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-7509

I've also reported ".wtv files: fastforward, rewind, skip forward, skip back, and resume at xx:xx do not work" as a bug; unfortunately, it's not publicly viewable. They also have sample file from me. I'll see what I can do about getting the issue viewable by everyone.

[Darkfin]

Folks,

With the 17028 update the files play a little longer than the 22-23 minutes limit. What seems funny now is when I start to play a WTV it will display the time as 23 minutes, but will reach that limit and start to expand the time limit and finaly freeze and crash to menu shortly afterwards.

I can pause fine with WTVs but it will lock up if I fast forward or rewind.

I will try the 17065, later.

Keep up the good work I know you will get this fixed.

[Darkfin]

I installed the latest update and here are the results.

Older WTV files show proper length of show. Older being recoreded 6 months ago. Newer recoredings only show .33 of the shows length. So a 30 minute show shows 10 minutes and an hour show shows between 21 to 27 minutes. This makes me wonder if Microsoft is not changing the codex from time to time.

Still cannot fast forward or rewind.

Pause and resume work fine.

Having to change the aspect ratio as others are reporting does not bother me as much as not playing WTV files.

Any chance you can let me know what you need to help you guys out better with this...just reply and give me a list.

[Darkfin]

Seems, this is a dead issue even though it is still not working for me and lots of other people. So I have started the long task of converting my WTV files to MP4 files that that I can play them on my Boxee Box. This one issue is the only thing draging down my enjoyment of Boxee Box.

[darcilicious]

Seems, this is a dead issue even though it is still not working for me and lots of other people. So I have started the long task of converting my WTV files to MP4 files that that I can play them on my Boxee Box. This one issue is the only thing draging down my enjoyment of Boxee Box.

Only "closed" issues are dead issues; not sure what you mean it's not working for a lot of other people -- playback seems fine but transport controls beyond pause/play do not work (http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-7507). The last posts on this topic are from you, nothing else since latest releases...

If you're not able to play WTV files in Boxee Box or have other issues then register and file a bug here: http://jira.boxee.tv/

[Darkfin]

I took the suggestion and posted this problem and got this canned answer:

wtv format is a limitation, this is a Microsoft closed source format.
this format is experimental on boxee for now, once the sources will be available boxee will be able to support playback of wtv files.

Is it just me or does that sound like blame Microsoft.

I find this funny as the main pain people had with Boxee Box was no Netflix, for me it is the 200 shows sitting on my WHS that I want to watch on my big TV from the Boxee Box. They advertised it as being able to play WTV not just the first 22 minutes of any WTV file.

Do not get me wrong I am very happy with my Boxee Box, but fixing this one issue would make it perfect and bring peace to my world.

[Shawn3985]

What I don't understand is that a program like Remote Potato understands the naming convention of .WTV files and can play them via streaming on your PC, Mobile Device and/or Tablet. I realize that there may be some conversion going on but there is no need to fix the video settings or manually convert the show to another format and the show's title and synopsis appear fine. So if a program like Remote Potato can figure figure out how to play a .WTV file then I'm almost certain Boxee can as well. If not, maybe Boxee should get a hold of the Remote Potato programmer for some tips. Sorry, but this isn't rocket science or totally radical stuff and should be looked after in the next release.

Shawn

[darcilicious]

a program like Remote Potato understands the naming convention of .WTV files This is still in the works, I believe: http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-7509

I also know that SageTV (PVR / Media Center software) will play WTV files but similarly can not ffwd/rwd those files so I don't think it's a "canned response" from Boxee but a real limitation regarding native playback of WTV files by non-Microsoft players.

Also note that the issues in question were closed as "incomplete" and not as "won't fix" -- Boxee may choose to address this down the road.

If Remote Potato is transcoding files, then that's comparing apples to oranges, Boxee doesn't transcode, but plays all files in their native format.

I suspect DVR-MS has better third-party support in its native format but haven't tried it yet to confirm that. (You can convert .wtv files to .dvr-ms by right-clicking on the file and selecting the convert option).

Meanwhile, it seems my WTV files have started buffering every few minutes which wasn't happening earlier on... sigh.

[funk_dat69]

My dvr-ms files (recorded on Vista) play, but are choppy (they buffer every 10-15secs or so)

It's not really watchable so I've been transcoding as well. It would certainly be killer to have native support for the MS formats, but they fact that they're MS formats and now reading the above statements from Boxee, I'm losing hope for this..

oh well.

Too bad there are no good open source DVR apps that record in a normal format.

[darcilicious]

Well, it's not open source and it's not free but SageTV is pretty format friendly, depending on the hardware turner -- my SageTV recordings are in mpeg-ts format (via the HD-PVR) which work in Boxee...

[Blair123]

I finally was able to set the BB to access the Recorded TV folder on my VISTA PC to stream recorded OTA TV. I had the problem of choppy/stuttering play back of the recorded HD 1080i DVR-MS recordings. I tuned off the deinterlacing in the media - video settings and this stopped the choppy/stuttering play back. The BB firmware is 1.0.4.1743. The video did not look as smooth as a normal streaming video so I changed my general - display setting to 1080i and reset the deinterlacing back to auto. I now get smoother video since the TV is doing the deinterlacing but I get some buffering issues with the play back sometimes. So far the buffering is tolerable but I will let you know if I can improve on the play back buffering. I currently stream the video to the BB on a wireless n connection.

[Si_63]

Well after installing the latest update, I have to say I am very disappointed that there has been absolutely no progress at all in supporting WTV files.

I would think that a priority would be given to adding in support for formats that aren't properly supported. I would imagine that WTV would be an increasingly popular format these days. Therefore having proper support should be important, especially as there doesn't seem to be anything else on the market that supports it, having support would be quite a boon for Boxee in my opinion.

[darcilicious]

Well after installing the latest update, I have to say I am very disappointed that there has been absolutely no progress at all in supporting WTV files.

[...] especially as there doesn't seem to be anything else on the market that supports it, having support would be quite a boon for Boxee in my opinion.

It is a bummer but there's a very good reason why no one (but Microsoft) supports it -- hard to do when it's a closed-source format.

[Si_63]

It is a bummer but there's a very good reason why no one (but Microsoft) supports it -- hard to do when it's a closed-source format.

I understand that its a closed source format and that there isn't a lot of information about it, all I could come up with from a search was this (http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=WTV)

That being said, Windows Media Center from my experience is very easy to set up, and with the number of Windows 7 computers going up, more and more people will likely be using this format.

As WTV files do actually play on the Boxee Box (I got through about 20 mins of a 30 min file) It shouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that they would be able to get it to a state where it can at least play through a file completely, I can't speak for anyone else, but I would be happy with that, adding in things like file seeking and such to WTV files could be added later, just as long as it can play through a file without freezing

[Rustycar]

Unless I'm mistaken Boxee's WTV support is derived from ffmpeg's open source implementation so it's only as good as what ffmpeg team can reverse engineer.

WTV is not a priority for anyone in open source land so any major improvements will be slow coming.

Could it be improved quicker, probably but that would likely involving getting official licensing support from Microsoft and it's not worth paying money to MS for a niche format.

[BearHuntr]

I've kind of given up on wtv support and shifted to using the TV4Home add in for WHS (which is based on MediaPortal) to record TV from my HDHomerun. It records in .ts format and plays perfectly on the Boxee Box. I'm still hoping for proper wtv support, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Elis]

Unless I'm mistaken Boxee's WTV support is derived from ffmpeg's open source implementation so it's only as good as what ffmpeg team can reverse engineer.

WTV is not a priority for anyone in open source land so any major improvements will be slow coming.

Could it be improved quicker, probably but that would likely involving getting official licensing support from Microsoft and it's not worth paying money to MS for a niche format.

Yes you're right. We're entirely depending on ffmpeg for this issue

[growingemily]

I tried to play a .WTV file recorded on windows 7 media center and only get video. My understanding is that .WTV is a supported format.

Windows Media Center does have the advantage for recording live television, while the recorded video format is WTV which is only playable on Media Center PC with Windows Media Center installed. Unfortunately, it is impossible to play WTV files on Mac, Windows XP; let alone play WTV files on portable devices like iPad, iPhone, iPod, PS3, Android phones, BlackBerry...

The following will introduce a powerful WTV Converter (http://www.bigasoft.com/wtv-converter.html)and a step by step guide on how to convert WTV so as to play WTV on Android, iPhone, iPad, iPod, PS3, BlackBlerry or play WTV on XP, Mac, and more.

http://www.bigasoft.com/articles/how-to-play-wtv-files.html

[powerfuljackson]

thanks growingemily, it helps a lot for me

[jamiek03]

I would highly recommend MCEBuddy
http://mcebuddy.com/

It runs in the background and converts .wtv to .mp4 (as well as many other formats). It also removes commercials. With some minor tweaking it is working very well for the shows I record in WMC.

The mp4 files also take up way less space on hard drive.

[slimon007]

What are you guys using to rename the files using meta data?
I tried tvrename but it can't identify ota recordings.

[jamiek03]

Slimon007
I use the following and it works really well with a little setup and effort. As well, my recorded shows are under "Shows" on Boxee Box.

Windows Media Center as PVR (shows are recorded as .wtv)

MCEBuddy 1.1 is always running in background. It performs a commercial skip and compresses the large .wtv file to a tidy .mp4

At this point BB can play the files, but they are not named correctly to end up under "Shows". For this I use TV Rename.

Now for the part that pertains to you:
TV Rename requires adding your TV Shows (so it knows what you want to track). I have it set to scan a couple times a day. TV Rename recognizes the files and puts them in the correct show folder. Subsequently the file now has all the correct info for BB to recognize it.

It has an option to "Look for airdate in filenames" with this I have been able to get it to recognize my recordings pretty flawlessly. Here is an example of my tv show filenaming:
American Idol - Winner Announced - 2011-05-25-19-00-00.mp4

Note: had to do a registry edit to get WMC to name the files with Date/Time Stamp. I can try to find this hack for you if you want?

As you can see it includes Showname, episdoe name, and airdate with time (time is not needed but thats how WMC does it).

TV Rename uses theTVDB for its data (which I believe Boxee Box also uses for tv shows). As a nice added feature TV Rename will also download nfo files (if you want). They are working really well.

[slimon007]

thanks Jamiek, I'll take another look to find the rename based on air date option since I don't recall seeing that. If you can find the registry hack I would be interested or a link explaining it.

:)

[jamiek03]

Note: this is for windows media center.

You need to do a registry edit. All you are really interested in is adding the %Dt for Date/Time Stamp in filename.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\MediaCenter\Service\Recording

add or edit the String Value - 'filenaming'

%Ch - Channel Number
%Cn - Station Name
%T - Title of show
%Et - Episode Title
%Dt - Date and Time

eg - %T_%Et_%Cn


Forum post for this is here:
http://www.pcmediacenter.com.au/forum/topic/30084-changing-default-filename-for-recorded-tv-file/

Let me know if you have questions

[slimon007]

I will try this out asap and let you know.

thanks for the help.

[jamiek03]

One more thing worth noting. WMC uses _ (underscores) in the filenames. I have a script to replace the _ with a space or - because the filenames with _ were identifying only part of the time in TVRename.

Could have been me or a particular setting I missed. But with spaces and - I have 99% success.

[slimon007]

I'm ending up with a file named like this

Mantracker_Tommy and Steve_CITYDT (CITY-DT)_2011_06_10_21_00_21

TV Rename is not picking it up. Any ideas?

[jamiek03]

Well don't know if it matters but try removing %Cn (Station Name). But I think your problem may be the _. Try renaming file to:

Mantracker - Tommy and Steve - 2011-06-10-21-00-21

Then hit scan on TVRename and see if it picks it up?

If this works, then you just need to set a script or program to replace your "_" with "-" or " " or "."

Let me know

[slimon007]

renamed it to Mantracker Tommy and Steve - 2011-06-10-21-00-21

rename still ignores it when I scan :-( is there something in there I am missing perhaps?

[jamiek03]

TVRename uses thetvdb.com for info.

I think the reason is because on thetvdb.com there is not an original airdate for Tommy and Steve which looks like season 4 episode 7

http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid=83153&seasonid=340071&lid=7

Unfortunately the airdate recognition only works for the original airing of an episode.

In this case your only option would be to rename the file to

Mantracker - S04E07 - Tommy and Steve

You do have Mantracker added as one of your "My Shows" in TVRename right?

[slimon007]

a-ha fatal flaw...only orginal airdates work. Ok.

do I have to manually rename it then? Yes, I do have Mantracker set in My Shows.

[jamiek03]

Yes,

If you renamed it this
Mantracker - S04E07 - Tommy and Steve

I am 99% sure it would work.

In general more popular shows like American Idol, Modern Family, Family Guy etc work well. I myself have created a profile for theTVDB.com and I update a few shows for my own benefit (Today Show, Dateline). Otherwise I would be screwed as well.

Let me know if you need anything else.

[slimon007]

I guess manually renaming them kind of defeats the purpose :-)

I'll see if it works on first air dates of a show.

thanks for your help

[cgq521]

sorry, i can not play, is there anyone have good suggestion?

[darcilicious]

sorry, i can not play, is there anyone have good suggestion?

Yes, read the posts in this thread (especially the previous page) for a work-around. Other than that, wtv files are NOT supported on the Boxee currently.

[powerfuljackson]

i still prefer the solution from growing emily