New Feature
All Tablo Apps
Playback Speed
Playback speed controls. For example: 1/4, 1/2, 1 1/4, 1 1/2, and 2 times.
Slow motion playback great for sporting events as well as action movies. High speed play back to scan through sections without missing events that are missed when skipping.
Adding slow motion should not be a problem on most platforms/devices.
Speeding up may get inconsistent results. DVD players do 2x playback by performing MPEG-2 video decoding in hardware. Majority of platforms supported by Tablo are doing MPEG-2 decoding only in software. The video format is based on deltas in movement that apply changes to a “key frame.” Each video frame is recreated by apply every single delta. If some delta frames are skipped, the video will look very weird/incorrect. Hence, every single video frame must be decoded but done at twice the speed. There is also an issue needing to post process (pitch bend) audio when speeding it up or slowing it down. Otherwise doing 2x may turn audio into Alvin and the Chipmunks.
For high speed scanning, it should be possible to show a slide of the video key frames without the deltas. But there might be noticeable differences between different TV stations. One station may be encoding a key frame every half second. A “2x” playback would show each key frame for 0.25 seconds. However, another station trying to get better compression may only do key frames every 2 seconds in which case the 2x playback would show only one frame per second.
To get variable speed to work doesn’t the video player being used have to support the OP’s definition of variable speed. If the tablo apps use the built in video player that comes on various STB’s such as Roku and Fire TV Stick it has to support variable speed.. Do these STB’s support variable speed. playback?
I think that Tablo has the answer to your question.
This type of request has been bumping around various DVR forums for over 10-15 years. So I might know.
But VLC supports real time speed control via the playback menu. There is a gen 4 ripper/tool that pumps input into VLC. But since I don’t use the tool I don’t know if that would work.
I have used the tool and it works great. However, VLC has access to DXVA2/DirectX API which can then leverage the AMD Radeon (or nvidia) drivers to perform MPEG2 decoding in hardware.
Majority of budget media players have decided to focus mostly on H.264 and H.265. They don’t include a full spectrum of legacy codecs like a $200+ discrete GPU/video card does.
We could see several interesting features specific to desktop operating systems IF Tablo decided “TV your way” required also providing an official desktop apps.