Serviio

I have an android tablet and a phone which I am wanting to stream from my pc at home. I am in Korea and I am subscribing to LTE connection which offers up to tens of mega bps speed. However, I would like to stream right around at 2~3 mbps (which offers good quality when transcoding to h.264 while maintaining the original resolution for both video and audio. Air video and Qloud allows choosing the streaming bitrate and they work very well).

The current options on the serviio has following problems for me:
1. Original - Alot of my video files are at 8 mbps (too high).
2. Medium - The resolution is scaled down which there is a noticeable deterioation.
3. Low - The video quality is not acceptable at all.

Also, I would like to ask that the audio bit rate to be not compromised when selecting the bit rate (audio is very important for the viewing experience IMO) and offer volume boost when down coding from AC3/DTS to stereo.

Thank you for your work and I look forward to your reply.

What player are you using? MediaBrowser or ServiiGo?

In any case you can edit application-profiles.xml and change the settings used for medium/low qualities (MediaBrowser uses flv_player profile)

Thank you for your reply.

I am using ServiiGo...
I am not aware of how to edit application-profiles.xml and furthermore
I don't know what the settings should be.

Sorry for asking but can you:
1. Tell me or point to a place where I can learn how to edit...
2. Give me a syntax for the following settings:
a. transcode to Video: h.264 at 2.0 mbps (2.5/3.0 etc.)
Audio: Stereo at 192 kbps (256 kpbs etc.)
(This would be a really great feature...and in fact a must have for
android/ios devices away from home using LTE)

Some further questions:
1. Is there a way to have more number of options than the current 3?
2. Way to boost volume when down mixing ac3/dts?
3. Can I use the Xbmc client on my Android device to be served directly
by the Serviio server? (Galaxy note 3 on LTE and note 10.1 wifi
using note 3 as a hotspot).
Maybe the Seviio server can be added as a web server source or other
source in the Xbmc client in my android device.

Working out these issue would make the Serviio server very attractive
alternative to the Xbmc IMO.

Thanks again for your attention...

Assuming you are on Windows.

1) Open C:\Program Files\Serviio\config\application-profiles.xml
2) Scroll down to the profile with id="serviigo_hls" name="ServiiGo (HLS)"
3) Go to the section AlternativeQualities and under MEDIUM rule, change maxVBitrate="800" to maxVBitrate="2000" and aBitrate="128" to aBitrate="196".
4) Save the file (you might need to save it to your desktop then copy it over, else change the ownership to you)
5) Restart the windows service (from the Windows Services management), or just restart the computer
6) Make sure ServiiGo is using the 'Enhanced' profile (Menu->Settings->Profile from within the app)

You may also want to increase the resolution, by increasing the maxHeight value, but remember than transcoding to H.264 on the fly is very CPU intensive, so you will need something powerful to run Serviio at the higher bitrate.

There isn't a way to have more options than 3 at the moment, although you are free to adjust the pre-sets to better match your home and mobile connection.

Audio volume shouldn't be lowered, is it a significant difference?

XMBC isn't compatiable with Serviio's CDS API (which is what ServiiGo uses) however, if you have any other ServiiGo related feature requests, please let me know via the ServiiGo thread viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6803

Wow....
Thank you very much for your answer. Instruction is very clear and to the point.
You answered or solved the problems that I have been struggling with for over a 3 weeks now.
One quest. though, is there way to leave the res. to original ratio because I want the original screen ratio of the encoded file?

Also, I would just request that in the future version, there would be flexible option to choose both res. & bit rate.

I think I will settle with the Serviio...out of the many lan/wan streamers out there the Serviio offers the best choice in terms of ease of use, features and actually working stably. The transcoding and metadata scraping is a very attractive feature to me.

Regarding the ac3/dts down mix to stereo, the level of the voice seems to be too low in many cases when down mixed to stereo. That is why some players offer the option of boosting audio (probably just the center channel i.e. voice portion) .

Thank you again for your help....

I will report back on the result.

The ratio should not be effected when transcoding to a lower resolution. What was the original aspect ratio and what it the ratio you end up with?

Ok that will be something to investigate, I've never noticed the voices to be too low.

I am happy to report that the changes to the transcoding profile works beautifully...
I can now stream all of my files at the quality I want.

One last thing though.
1. The donate option in the Serviigo does not work because the Playstore says that the app. is not available for Korea where I live when I choose the donate option in the app. Thus I cannot donate.
And yes I have already bought the pro server version.

OK I'll double check a few things and get back to you.