Serviio

When using Serviio with their default DirecTV profile I almost always get the error "Video rate exceeds the maximum supported" sometime during the playback. It can happen 1 minute into it to anywhere to just before the end.

I am new to Serviio and media servers/transcoding in general. I assume this is something that is tweakable in a file somewhere. I know its possible to do since Mezzmo out of the box works with DirecTV. I don't want to use them for a number of reasons though.

So has anyone else experienced this and if so have you resolved it?

Edit:

I tried changing its maxVBitrate in half from 8192 to 4096 and this didn't make any difference, it still eventually gets the error.

The maxVBitrate should do it. Did you restart your PC (or the Serviio service) after editing the profiles.xml file?

If you did, I think we need more information.

• Turn on detailed logging and watch a movie that has the problem. Post the log back to the forum. Turn off detailed logging.
• Can you please post MediaInfo for one of the files that has the problem (see here for details). When watching the movie, Serviio will create a temporary file (an .stf file) in your temporary folder (windows\temp\serviio on a windows based system). Copy this file somewhere, rename it to an ".mpeg" file and then post the MediaInfo for that file.

Yes I restarted the service after making the change.

I will turn on detailed logging. This issue happens with just about every video and it happens at random places within the same video. I can watch the same video over and over and it will get the error at different spots so shouldn't be difficult to collect the data you are asking for.

When it occurs I will follow your instructions.

Okay what I did.

1. Stopped Serviio Service in Windows
2. Set the maxVBitrate back to orignal setting 8192
3. Cleared log file
4. Set logging to DEBUG
5. Started Serviio Service in Windows
6. Played I new movie that I haven't played yet so never received this issue yet
7. While the intro credits where running the issue occured.

I have attached a 7z file that contains 3 files.

1. The Serviio debug log file
2. The Media Info text file for the transcoded SRT MPEG file that was being streamed
3. The Media Info text file for the original MKV file that was being streamed

I hope this helps. I also realized while going through this process and reading the forum and wiki pages you lead me to when I changed the maxVBitrate before I didn't restart the Service, as I misunderstood the "Start Server" and "Stop Server" buttons in the console. It states that the actual Serviio process is not affected, but I assumed that was this Console process which wouldn't be. It didn't' say it didn't affect the Serviio "SERVICE". May want to make that more clear in the future, or provide a way to stop and start the service from the console.

I went and looked at the Mezzmo profile that was being used and never had an issue with to see what its settings where. It was using their DirecTV HR22 profile on all the boxes even if they where a higher model for some reason.

I am going to try to match the settings they use in the Serviio one and see what happens on my HR24-500. I will update with the results of testing with new settings.

Their settings in you are interested:

MaxBitRate=6000000
MinBitRate=6000000
GOP=18
BitRate=5000000
BufSize=2000000

Changes I making to yours:

maxVBitrate=60000

Question, is there a minVBitrate or a way to disable variable bit rates in a profile?
I read somewhere that DirecTV may not like variable bit rates.

Sorry, me bad - needed those three files for when the maxVBitrate was set to 4096.

I was attempting to check the ffmpeg command from your log to see whether it was invoking it properly with the 4096k limit (and also the old and new media info files to see that the bit rate was changed). Anyway, for what its worth, I can see is that the ffmpeg gets invoked properly (for 8192k) and that there was a slight reduction in bit rate in the resultant transcoded file compared to the original.

Once you make the changes and restart the Serviio service, see if it works (it should unless this is masking another problem - if not try lower rates first and then come back to us).

I am unaware of any means to set the minimum bit rate via Serviio, but we can do it manually if we need to test whether that is the problem. Lastly, agree that the Stop and Start Server button would be better deployed to stop and start the windows service (has been requested already with zip I believe).

Well setting it to 6000 seems to have worked so far I have played 3 videos 1 hour videos without any issues. It may be worth getting Zip to update the default profile for DirecTV to max out at 6000. I guess DirecTV has a max rate between 6000 and 8192. Not sure what the real ceiling is but 6000 still locks very good. Thanks for working with me on this.

A Min video bit rate or ability to set CBR over VBR or both would be nice feature hope it makes it if has already been requested.

Cool. I wonder if the rate varies dependant on different models though? I saw a Mezzmo profile that had it set as 90000....

Just one last hint: what I normally do is add a comment to profiles.xml to indicate any edits (something like <!-- Creepy Gnome: changed maxVBitrate from 8192 to 6000 in the next line -->). When you do a Serviio update profiles.xml is overwritten with the new version (the old version is backed up) - commenting like this helps you search for any changes you made in the backed up version so you can do the same in the new.

I saw them too, however they are not used. It doesn't detect anything higher than a 22 as anything but a 22. I have an HR24-500 and I know its settings wouldn't work since it didn't like Serviio's 8192. I think all the ones higher than 22 are wrong which is why they are not used by default. Either than or the issue is VBR over a certain rate and my box can do 9000 if it is CBR, but can't test that with Serviio yet.

Good idea with the comments. I hope the next update will have this change in it though since its a simple XML one I would think it could make it.