PS3 problem playing get_iplayer h.264 videos

[dinkypumpkin]

On 29/12/2011 16:15, Jon Davies wrote:
> which convinces me that the problem is in ffmpeg, and isn't really
> anything to do with get_iplayer.  Interestingly ffprobe reports a
> 48khz sample rate for both broken and working files, whereas the PS3
> reports 48khz for the broken ones, and 24khz for the working ones.
>
> Next step is to see if the latest builds of ffmpeg and/or libav still
> exhibit this behaviour.

That still seems to be the case with ffmpeg 0.9, though I've encountered 
this problem in a different context (no PS3 here).  I used Elgato 
Turbo.264 HD to encode video for an Apple TV 1, and it was also foxed by 
the audio sample rate in the headers of files remuxed by ffmpeg.  The 
result was trashed audio in the output files.  I could work around the 
problem by remuxing with mp4box and then running Turbo.264, but I 
generally chose to drive the Turbo.264 encoding via QuickTime 7 in order 
to preserve metadata tags.

The 0.5 branch of ffmpeg is the only version that takes the audio sample 
rate from the FLV metadata.  That bit of code was subsequently removed 
in 0.6 and later branches, but I was never energetic enough to track 
down the problem with whatever replaced it.  AFAICT, the FLV metadata is 
written correctly by rtmpdump, and any QuickTime-based tool (or ffmpeg 
itself) has no problem converting the remuxed MP4 file, regardless of 
what is in the header.

A bit of esoterica here.  The audio sample rate is written in two places 
in the MP4 header (media header and sample table descriptor for audio 
track). I noticed a slight difference in the results depending on how I 
employed mp4box.  If I used the simple version:

mp4box -add broken.mp4 -new fixed.mp4

only one of the audio sample rate values (in sample table descriptor) 
was changed in the output file header. The mp4info utility (from 
libmp4v2) reported 48 kHz, though the file was still usable with 
Turbo.264.  However, if I fully disassembled the tracks and reassembled 
a new file, e.g.:

mp4box -raw 1 broken.mp4 -out broken.h264
mp4box -raw 2 broken.mp4 -out broken.aac
mp4box -add broken.h264 -add broken.aac -new fixed.mp4

both audio sample rate values were changed and mp4info reported 24 kHz. 
  I doubt it makes any difference, but if one method doesn't work for a 
particular application, perhaps the other will.