Serviio

Posted: **Sat May 12, 2012 11:42 am**

My Samsung D6200 claims to support Matroska as a container as well as h264 for video and aac for audio. Yet, Serviio transcodes the video and audio to mpeg2video and ac3 which causes high load on the serviio machine if multiple full HD streams are watched at the same time.

So the questions are:

Are there any known problems with keeping h264 and aac?
How can I change it to keep h264 and aac?
Are there any known problems with using Matroska as a container?
How can I try Matroska as a container?

When I dump the stream into a file using

Code:: ffmpeg -i "rtmp://[...]" -vcodec copy -acodec copy -f matroska stream_test_dump.mkv

and try to play it on the TV using miniDLNA (which has no transcoding support), the file plays fine.

Here is what ffmpeg outputs:

Code:: ffmpeg version 0.8.1-4:0.8.1-0ubuntu1, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the Libav developers built on Mar 22 2012 05:09:06 with gcc 4.6.3 This program is not developed anymore and is only provided for compatibility. Use avconv instead (see Changelog for the list of incompatible changes). Metadata: author copyright description keywords rating title presetname Custom creationdate Sat May 12 03:40:34 2012 videodevice [...] framerate 24.00 width 1920.00 height 1080.00 videocodecid avc1 avclevel 51.00 avcprofile 100.00 videodatarate 390.62 videokeyframe_frequency0.00 audiodevice VHAudioCustom audiosamplerate 44100.00 audiochannels 2.00 audioinputvolume 100.00 audiocodecid mp4a audiodatarate 312.50 bufferSize 1600k maxBitrate 1600k [...] [flv @ 0xe8f9a0] max_analyze_duration reached [flv @ 0xe8f9a0] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 2000.00 (2000/1) -> 1000.00 (2000/2) Input #0, flv, from 'rtmp://[...]': Duration: N/A, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A Stream #0.0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 1920x1080, 1k tbr, 1k tbn, 2k tbc Stream #0.1: Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16 Output #0, matroska, to 'stream_test_dump.mkv': Metadata: encoder : Lavf53.21.0 Stream #0.0: Video: libx264, yuv420p, 1920x1080, q=2-31, 1k tbn, 1k tbc Stream #0.1: Audio: libvo_aacenc, 44100 Hz, stereo Stream mapping: Stream #0.0 -> #0.0 Stream #0.1 -> #0.1 Press ctrl-c to stop encoding ^Cframe= 390 fps= 24 q=-1.0 Lsize= 3678kB time=24.27 bitrate=1241.3kbits/s video:3218kB audio:450kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.289243% Received signal 2: terminating.

Thanks

Posted: **Sat May 12, 2012 2:09 pm**

The file is flv not mkv so the profile transcodes it.

Posted: **Sat May 12, 2012 3:32 pm**

jhb50 wrote:The file is flv not mkv so the profile transcodes it.

You seem to be confusing a few things here. Please read my post again.

Posted: **Sat May 12, 2012 3:42 pm**

You should read your old ffmpeg output again. It is not an mkv file.

Posted: **Sat May 12, 2012 3:56 pm**

it's most likely transcoded because the H264 profile/level is higher than 4.2 (either in the header or based on ref frames). Normally such files don't play.

Can you post mediainfo output of the file?

You can either disable transcoding or update the profile and remove the matchers that match on level higher that 4.2

Posted: **Sat May 12, 2012 4:08 pm**

zip wrote:Can you post mediainfo output of the file?

Sure

Code:: General Unique ID : 119177493745636403246590363584756999638 (0x59A8C019920A25067B2CE1C021BC65D6) Complete name : [...].mkv Format : Matroska Format version : Version 2 File size : 145 MiB Duration : 11mn 47s Overall bit rate : 1 724 Kbps Writing application : Lavf53.21.0 Writing library : Lavf53.21.0 Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : High@L5.1 Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC Duration : 11mn 47s Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Variable Frame rate : 1 000.000 fps Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Language : English Default : Yes Forced : No Audio ID : 2 Format : AAC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Format profile : LC Codec ID : A_AAC Duration : 11mn 47s Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel positions : Front: L R Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz Compression mode : Lossy Delay relative to video : 1mn 5s Language : English Default : Yes Forced : No

This file was produced as described above:

Code:: ffmpeg -i "rtmp://[...]" -vcodec copy -acodec copy -f matroska stream_test_dump.mkv

zip wrote:You can either disable transcoding or update the profile and remove the matchers that match on level higher that 4.2

Thanks, I guess I'll give that a try.

Posted: **Sat May 12, 2012 11:24 pm**

the above file has High@5.1 profile. so it'll be transcoded. It's difficult to work out which is the right rule for transcoding, but maybe Samsungs don't care about the header value but only care about the ref frames.

Posted: **Sun May 13, 2012 2:45 pm**

zip wrote:the above file has High@5.1 profile. so it'll be transcoded. It's difficult to work out which is the right rule for transcoding, but maybe Samsungs don't care about the header value but only care about the ref frames.

Maybe the Samsungs D6 series needs its own profile. Is there a set of test files I could try to play in order to find out? Is there in general a difference between a file and a stream?

zip wrote:You can either disable transcoding[...]

Apparently more work is required here. Disabling transcoding does not seem to affect Live Streams. And since this is a live stream, OnlineTranscoding as well as Transcoding sections apply. I'll figure this out.

Posted: **Sun May 13, 2012 5:49 pm**

As I tried to tell you at the beginning of this thread you have an flv live stream that has nothing to do with mkv. It is an H264.flv stream which must transcode to mpeg2video because the Samsung if you read your manual states "up to H264 Level 4.1 supported" and you have a level 5.1.
The C/D profile works just fine for your model and will invoke the local flv h264>4.1 rule for that stream.

Posted: **Sun May 13, 2012 9:04 pm**

So what is it you're trying to do? Play the flv online stream? Or the downloaded and remuxed mkv version? The mkv will be transcoded because of the 5.1 profile. For online stream C/D profile only remuxes the flv stream to mpegts (there is not >4.1 rule for flv)

Posted: **Sun May 13, 2012 10:26 pm**

zip wrote:So what is it you're trying to do? Play the flv online stream? Or the downloaded and remuxed mkv version? The mkv will be transcoded because of the 5.1 profile. For online stream C/D profile only remuxes the flv stream to mpegts (there is not >4.1 rule for flv)

I am receiving a full HD live stream via RTMP. The video is h264, the audio is aac and the container seems to be FLV (as per viewtopic.php?p=44483#p44483).

Status Quo:

Live stream plays fine on the TV
Serviio remuxes FLV to mpegts (which is fine with me)
Serviio transcodes video from h264 to mpeg2video (this seems to be because the profile is too high)
Serviio transcodes audio from aac to ac3 (why is that even?)

Now if I take the same stream and dump it into a file (matroska container), audio and video plays fine on the TV without transcoding using MiniDLNA (as per viewtopic.php?p=44483#p44483). So in conclusion: my TV supports the video and audio the stream delivers and thus transcoding of video and audio is unnecessary.

Optimal solution:

Live stream plays fine on the TV
Serviio remuxes FLV to Matroska (or mpegts)
Serviio keeps the original video stream
Serviio keeps the original audio stream
Coming up with a profile for the D6 series that does no unnecessary transcoding

As a result, less CPU time is wasted, less network bandwidth is wasted and more HD streams can be watched on different devices at the same time.

Posted: **Sun May 13, 2012 11:01 pm**

can you enable detailed log and post the actual ffmpeg command it uses to transcode? I don't see anywhere that it should transcode video to mpeg2. ac3 audio yes (could probably extend the profile to avoid that but would make it difficult to maintain, and ac3 seems to be better supported than aac on the Samung devices).

Make sure you're using C/D Samsung profile.

Posted: **Mon May 14, 2012 12:42 am**

For online stream C/D profile only remuxes the flv stream to mpegts (there is not >4.1 rule for flv)

I never even thought to look. I've always assumed there was, so what happens if a level 5.1 is streamed as he claims? Why not transcode it like h263 and VP6.

And PS: Samsung only plays up to 4.1 so the current >4.2 rule needs to be changed to >4.1

Posted: **Mon May 14, 2012 11:00 am**

I never assumed online content can be level 5.1 :-)

I think we will have to distinguish between ref frames based level and header level and match on those separately. It looks like the TV actually doesn't care about the header value (as it can play this 5.1 content natively).

Posted: **Mon May 14, 2012 11:36 am**

I never assumed online content can be level 5.1

I doubt that any are, and I doubt that this one is without knowing the URL. The fact that he claims it is transcoded to MPEG2VIDEO indicates that some of the information is incorrect, and I have no idea what miniDLNA is doing to the file to allow it to play natively. He should be reporting what Serviio is doing with it. AFAIC Samsung cannot play 5.1 natively but if it is really a 4.1 with a bad header value it may.

I'll wait for him to disclose the URL before spending more time on this because we are just shooting in the dark here.

Posted: **Mon May 14, 2012 4:36 pm**

zip wrote:can you enable detailed log and post the actual ffmpeg command it uses to transcode?

ps aux | grep ffmpeg says

ffmpeg -i rtmp://199.9.255.180/app/jtv_qGqcYEtxU8X8__9x pageUrl=http://www.twitch.tv/whitera swfUrl=http://www-cdn.jtvnw.net/widgets/live_embed_player.r05fd775dce9336fd78d07346bd7e131bc2aa6342.swf?channel=whitera&referer=&userAgent=&channel=whitera swfVfy=1 jtv=e6213bfc91247b17c843e495ad59f0513534b672:{\22swfDomains\22:\20[\22justin.tv\22,\20\22jtvx.com\22,\20\22xarth.com\22,\20\22twitchtv.com\22,\20\22twitch.tv\22,\20\22newjtv.com\22,\20\22jtvnw.net\22,\20\22wdtinc.com\22,\20\22imapweather.com\22,\20\22facebook.com\22,\20\22starcrafting.com\22],\20\22streamName\22:\20\22jtv_qGqcYEtxU8X8__9x\22,\20\22expiration\22:\201337014645.2511461,\20\22server\22:\20\22ams01-video8-2\22} live=1 -y -threads 4 -async 1 -vcodec mpeg2video -b 20000k -maxrate 20000k -bufsize 20000k -r 24000/1001 -g 15 -copyts -acodec ac3 -ab 192k -ac 2 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -sn -f mpegts pipe:

Please note: The URL can be invalid at some point.

zip wrote:Make sure you're using C/D Samsung profile.

Yes, this is the case.

zip wrote:I don't see anywhere that it should transcode video to mpeg2.

This seems to be caused by me removing the "<Matches container="flv" vCodec="h264" />" line as per the comment "" because I thought removing it was an improvement for my TV, since it is a D series (or if it fails, I'd just change it back).

However, after removal, the following case seems to match and also explains the mpeg2video.

<Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetACodec="ac3" targetVCodec="mpeg2video" maxVBitrate="20000">
<Matches container="matroska" vCodec="mpeg2video" />
<Matches container="matroska" vCodec="vp8" />
<Matches container="avi" vCodec="h264" />
<Matches container="avi" vCodec="mjpeg" />
<Matches container="avi" vCodec="dvvideo" />
<Matches container="flv" />
<Matches container="ogg" />
</Video>

After putting that line back in, the following is executed:

ffmpeg -i rtmp://199.9.255.241/app/jtv_o5181r1wYJLt5urF pageUrl=http://www.twitch.tv/whitera swfUrl=http://www-cdn.jtvnw.net/widgets/live_embed_player.r05fd775dce9336fd78d07346bd7e131bc2aa6342.swf?channel=whitera&referer=&userAgent=&channel=whitera swfVfy=1 jtv=a6c48125c9a9a8e3a50a8ad9c42ab8fdd2897b95:{\22swfDomains\22:\20[\22justin.tv\22,\20\22jtvx.com\22,\20\22xarth.com\22,\20\22twitchtv.com\22,\20\22twitch.tv\22,\20\22newjtv.com\22,\20\22jtvnw.net\22,\20\22wdtinc.com\22,\20\22imapweather.com\22,\20\22facebook.com\22,\20\22starcrafting.com\22],\20\22streamName\22:\20\22jtv_o5181r1wYJLt5urF\22,\20\22expiration\22:\201337015800.8844621,\20\22server\22:\20\22fra01-video5-2\22} live=1 -y -async 1 -vcodec copy -vbsf h264_mp4toannexb -copyts -acodec ac3 -ab 192k -ac 2 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -sn -f mpegts pipe:

which seems okay to me and the load dropped drastically.

Bottom line: The mentioned statement cannot be removed on its own because that just makes it worse (contrary to what I think the comment implies).

zip wrote:ac3 audio yes (could probably extend the profile to avoid that but would make it difficult to maintain, and ac3 seems to be better supported than aac on the Samung devices).

I guess this is not a problem as audio encoding doesn't cost as much CPU as video encoding does.

jhb50 wrote:AFAIC Samsung cannot play 5.1 natively but if it is really a 4.1 with a bad header value it may.

zip wrote:I never assumed online content can be level 5.1

I don't know whether it really is. Maybe the header is indeed lying. How would I find out?

jhb50 wrote:[...]the fact that he claims it is transcoded to MPEG2VIDEO indicates that some of the information is incorrect[...]

As per above: This seems to be partially my fault, sorry.

jhb50 wrote:[...], and I have no idea what miniDLNA is doing to the file to allow it to play natively.

MiniDLNA is free and open source and the source code is available on e.g. SourceForge.

Some more info:

Code:: ffmpeg -i "rtmp://199.9.254.242/app/jtv_na9fJvn3itXVIk5O pageUrl=http://www.twitch.tv/whitera swfUrl=http://www-cdn.jtvnw.net/widgets/live_embed_player.r05fd775dce9336fd78d07346bd7e131bc2aa6342.swf?channel=whitera&referer=&userAgent=&channel=whitera swfVfy=1 jtv=a83dc8849ba5441092780c76416758cc39b1cec1:{\22swfDomains\22:\20[\22justin.tv\22,\20\22jtvx.com\22,\20\22xarth.com\22,\20\22twitchtv.com\22,\20\22twitch.tv\22,\20\22newjtv.com\22,\20\22jtvnw.net\22,\20\22wdtinc.com\22,\20\22imapweather.com\22,\20\22facebook.com\22,\20\22starcrafting.com\22],\20\22streamName\22:\20\22jtv_na9fJvn3itXVIk5O\22,\20\22expiration\22:\201337011009.12748,\20\22server\22:\20\22fra01-video14-2\22} live=1" -y -async 1 -vcodec copy -vbsf h264_mp4toannexb -copyts -acodec ac3 -ab 192k -ac 2 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -sn -f mpegts whitera_dump.mpegts ffmpeg version 0.8.1-4:0.8.1-0ubuntu1, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the Libav developers built on Mar 22 2012 05:09:06 with gcc 4.6.3 This program is not developed anymore and is only provided for compatibility. Use avconv instead (see Changelog for the list of incompatible changes). Metadata: author copyright description keywords rating title presetname Custom creationdate Mon May 14 17:47:45 2012 videodevice XSplitBroadcaster framerate 25.00 width 1920.00 height 1080.00 videocodecid avc1 avclevel 51.00 avcprofile 100.00 videodatarate 390.62 videokeyframe_frequency0.00 audiodevice VHAudioCustom audiosamplerate 44100.00 audiochannels 2.00 audioinputvolume 100.00 audiocodecid mp4a audiodatarate 125.00 bufferSize 1900k maxBitrate 1900k xsplitBroadcasterVersion1.3.0.10 xsplitCoreVersion 1.0.1204.1301 Version 1.0 xsplitGameSourceVersion1.1.0.21 xsplitMediaLibVersion 2.0.0.102 [flv @ 0x211e9a0] max_analyze_duration reached [flv @ 0x211e9a0] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 2000.00 (2000/1) -> 1000.00 (2000/2) Input #0, flv, from 'rtmp://199.9.254.242/app/jtv_na9fJvn3itXVIk5O pageUrl=http://www.twitch.tv/whitera swfUrl=http://www-cdn.jtvnw.net/widgets/live_embed_player.r05fd775dce9336fd78d07346bd7e131bc2aa6342.swf?channel=whitera&referer=&userAgent=&channel=whitera swfVfy=1 jtv=a83dc8849ba5441092780c76416758cc39b1cec1:{\22swfDomains\22:\20[\22justin.tv\22,\20\22jtvx.com\22,\20\22xarth.com\22,\20\22twitchtv.com\22,\20\22twitch.tv\22,\20\22newjtv.com\22,\20\22jtvnw.net\22,\20\22wdtinc.com\22,\20\22imapweather.com\22,\20\22facebook.com\22,\20\22starcrafting.com\22],\20\22streamName\22:\20\22jtv_na9fJvn3itXVIk5O\22,\20\22expiration\22:\201337011009.12748,\20\22server\22:\20\22fra01-video14-2\22} live=1': Duration: N/A, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A Stream #0.0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 1920x1080, 1k tbr, 1k tbn, 2k tbc Stream #0.1: Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16 Incompatible sample format 's16' for codec 'ac3', auto-selecting format 'flt' [mpegts @ 0x2132860] muxrate VBR, pcr every 100 pkts, sdt every 200, pat/pmt every 40 pkts Output #0, mpegts, to 'whitera_dump.mpegts': Metadata: encoder : Lavf53.21.0 Stream #0.0: Video: libx264, yuv420p, 1920x1080, q=2-31, 90k tbn, 1k tbc Stream #0.1: Audio: ac3, 44100 Hz, stereo, flt, 192 kb/s Stream mapping: Stream #0.0 -> #0.0 Stream #0.1 -> #0.1 Press ctrl-c to stop encoding ^Cframe= 2938 fps= 25 q=-1.0 Lsize= 32651kB time=126.54 bitrate=2113.8kbits/s video:26911kB audio:2966kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 9.285373% Received signal 2: terminating.

Code:: mediainfo whitera_dump.mpegts General ID : 1 (0x1) Complete name : whitera_dump.mpegts Format : MPEG-TS File size : 31.9 MiB Duration : 2mn 5s Overall bit rate : 2 116 Kbps Video ID : 256 (0x100) Menu ID : 1 (0x1) Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : High@L5.1 Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames Codec ID : 27 Duration : 2mn 6s Bit rate : 1 818 Kbps Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Variable Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Stream size : 27.4 MiB (86%) Audio ID : 257 (0x101) Menu ID : 1 (0x1) Format : AC-3 Format/Info : Audio Coding 3 Mode extension : CM (complete main) Codec ID : 129 Duration : 2mn 6s Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 192 Kbps Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel positions : Front: L R Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz Bit depth : 16 bits Compression mode : Lossy Delay relative to video : -80ms Stream size : 2.90 MiB (9%) Menu ID : 4096 (0x1000) Menu ID : 1 (0x1) Duration : 2mn 5s List : 256 (0x100) (AVC) / 257 (0x101) (AC-3) Service name : Service01 Service provider : Libav Service type : digital television

Thanks everyone.

Posted: **Mon May 14, 2012 5:50 pm**

you're right about the comment and we should probably remove it, jhb50 do you remember why it was added? if not it's probably something I picked up on the forum and added not really thinking it through

Posted: **Mon May 14, 2012 10:55 pm**

Yes it was added because some Samsungs (maybe all?) will play H.264 natively but this is undocumented in the manual. Problem is that if you do remove it the following rule kicks in and transcodes all flv's so you need to add vcodec=vp6 and vcodec=h263 to the flv option so that h264 does not transcode. This is an example of where an exclude option would be the best solution ie: flv exclude=h.264 so that everything but h264 transcodes, but in lieu of that I would just remove the comment and let H264.flv remux.

Also note the comment for the first rule says >4.1 which is correct but the rules themselves say >4.2 and need to be changed.

Posted: **Mon May 14, 2012 11:30 pm**

jhb50 wrote:Also note the comment for the first rule says >4.1 which is correct but the rules themselves say >4.2 and need to be changed.

Yes, but it's not really working properly anyway, so don't want to transcode even more than necessary. Will try to find some files and do it properly after 1.0.

Serviio

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