VMA Stream Reader

After countless hours to start to understand how to use CrazyScan's StreamReader.dll, I finally have some success!

The very early development allows me to do two things at this moment:

1) Tune to a transponder, providing Frequency, Symbol Rate and Polarity and then stream the locked Transponder over UDP

2) Do a frequency sweep to render the spectrum

The transmitted TS can be received with VMA Transport Stream Analyser (or any other software):

And of course render it in VMA Mosaic:

Next on my list is to figure out how the blind scan works, so that it is not required to enter the Symbol Rate.

Then I need to improve the spectrum functionality to allow double clicking it and use the frequency for a signal lock.

Then I would like to be able to render the constellation diagram - it always made me sad that EBSpro did not implement this.

But what I would really like to do is to combine my VMA Simple Spectrum Analyser for either TinySA or SMA/NWT/D6/LTDZ to render a fast spectrum ("almost realtime") and allow to click on that spectrum to start the blindscan.

There is much left to do (not to mention the GUI), but I am thrilled to finally be able to use StreamReader to directly use the TBS card.

Regards,

Vitor

Some progress:

The way it is implemented, you do a SPECTRUM SCAN and then you double click any frequency. It will run a blind scan and render the Constellation Monitor. You can then double click on a different transponder and it updates. The red line is only drawn for the currently analyzed transponder.
I never liked the way EBSpro and CrazyScan work by leaving previous lines, since it clutters the graph and makes it unsuitable to post a finding (just my opinion).

Once the signal is locked, the START STREAMING can be clicked to stream the locked transponder over UDP (to any application like VMA Transport Stream Analyser, VLC, TSReader, etc.).

Another alternative is to manually enter the Freq and Pol and then click BLINDSCAN FREQ. This will directly run the blindscan and constellation diagram on the entered frequency. This is useful when you know a frequency and its polarity, but you don't know the tuning parameters. Instead of having to wait for a spectrum scan, you just enter both and analyze them directly. This was done with my VMA Simple Spectrum Analyser in mind: now I could add a button to go from live spectrum (using the versions for R&S CMU200/CRTU, HP859x, Siglent SSA3000X/XP/XR, TinySA/TinySA Ultra, SMA/NWT/D6/LTDZ) to directly blind scan and process a satellite transponder... (will take time to implement, though).

Still a lot missing, but I am pretty happy about the current state. I find it quicker and more direct to use.

Todo:

- Add DiSEqC support
- Add Satellite selector (and the respective DiSEqC configuration handling)
- Add signal level/quality indication
- Report output? I am wondering if it would make sense to have a button to output a complete report, properly formatted
- ...

I don't want to replicate CrazyScan or EBSpro - they are great tools and have their own strengths. What I want to achieve is to have a good TS input solution for VMA Transport Stream, which is quick and easy to use, yet provides all relevant information.

The current beta version can be downloaded here: https://vma-broadcast.com/wp-content/upl…am%20Reader.zip

Make sure to read the included "VMA Stream Reader - Readme.txt" to understand the current limitations.

Any feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Regards,
Vitor

Oh, I forgot that the card selection is missing, too.

Right now the software always picks card 0.

I am not at home and tomorrow won't have time for sure to work on this. But card selection will be the first item in the Settings tab.

LibVLC doesn't support h265.

New version: improved Constellation Diagram rendering and added Tuner selection in Settings (temporary fix, setting is not stored).

Replace the existing *.exe with this one.

Edit: Removed obsolete file.

Many new features:

New download link: https://vma-broadcast.com/wp-content/upl…er_20250714.zip

First time I see a 16APSK constellation diagram...

Added a heuristic blindscan. After doing a spectrum scan, if you select the BLINDSCAN button, it will do a pattern recognition and apply blindscan on all peaks. Seems to work well and takes about 20 seconds for a whole spectrum.

Now visually a bit nicer.

It does not find tricky transponders like the BOM transponder at 10914 H, but there is some tuning to improve it with some parameters I need to give the user access to in the GUI.

New version: https://vma-broadcast.com/wp-content/upl…er_20250715.zip

Some info:

1) After doing a spectrum scan, you can double click in the chart to run the blind scan on the respective frequency.

2) With the Constellation Diagram checkbox set, a constellation diagram will be rendered, which takes time (depending on the settings configured in the Settings tab). You may want to uncheck this, for fast result.

3) At any time any of the buttons can be clicked and it normally works, as long as it makes sense. I have not yet decided which buttons have to be disabled, while a different function is running. I do like the fact that you can double click the spectrum while it is still being scanned and you get the blind scan results. But there are some issues, for instance if you have streaming going on, it might break it (you then need to stop the streaming, click blind scan and start streaming again).

4) After doing a spectrum scan, you can do a blind scan on the blind scan tab. When it finishes, you can double click any entry in the list-box to open that frequency in the Stream Reader tab and start the blind scan. It will automatically switch tab and press the Blindscan Freq button.

5) The results of the blind scan can be exported as an *.ini file in DVBViewer format.