Serviio

I'm wondering if one of you transcoding experts can look at the following text and see if there's an error. This was created by the developer of Chaneru, who is making a DLNA plugin for Roku. He is still having issues with browsing the movie lists, but it will browse my playlists just fine. Since Roku supports limited file types, transcoding seems to be necessary. Roku claims to support MKV h.264 format, but none of mine will play. Using Chaneru I can play MP4 with no issues, so that's what we need to transcode into.

Any suggestions would be helpful. I am not associated with Chaneru in any way, other than someone who has offered to assist him with testing/troubleshooting.

You cannot transcode to mp4 on the fly. Only mpegps/mpegts/asf.

Thanks Zip. I had a feeling. I don't think the Roku boxes will do any of those, but I'll check again.

I'm trying to enable transcoding for Roku using Chaneru by converting h.264 HTTP streams into HLS format. I have this working in a test environment using the Chaneru server. But now I ran into a problem with Serviio. The CHUNKED transfers. The Roku has very limited resources and the programing interface leaves a lot to be desired. I don't have an effective way to repackage the stream without looking at every byte in the block. On Roku this is a tremendous overhead.

I saw a post about turning OFF chunked transfers in the profiles. Has this been implemented ? If so, how ?

It has not been implemented yet.

Zip, any idea where it fits in your development schedule?

Thanks!

Dan

Zip:
On a related (but not too related) note, before I read this post I tried to add this profile to profiles.xml. When I tried to use it, serviio would not start. Was it for the reason you stated above, or is there something syntactically wrong? I am running an older version of serviio (0.6.0.1) in a jail on Freenas 8.3. In the attached file, Chaneru is the last one on the list (Profile ID ="21"). All the editing was done in vi.

Thanks

Fig

It should tell you in the log what the problem is.

The CHUNK transfer coding appears to work. A little slow for my liking.
I have this in the Chaneru profile for video.

When a .MPG is selected I get 3 protocols returned. If I select MPEG_TS_SD_NA_ISO-O, I'm able to load the stream and split in to 10 second increments for the HLS format. But on the Roku, I get NO video, the audio plays OK. I have a captured test stream of the same file transcoded with VLC and it plays fine. SO I'm assuming all my frame handling is functioning.

Where does Serviio save the output stream files ? Maybe I can run FFPROBE and see if it is decoding correctly or if I have the profile set correctly.

I had to replace FFMPEG with a newer copy before I got anything.

Found the stream.
Serviio Stream

VLC Stream

Question: How do I get h264 to be the transcoded output ?

HLS and h264 target format is implemented in 1.3.

Would it be possible to get in on the beta, so I can put this to rest ?
Still have other issues, picking the correct protocol, removal of processed segments, making it faster.

Are you going to provide a link to a m3u8 for HLS or just the stream ?

Added you to the group.

I'll serve m3u8 files. I mostly tested it for the CDS API but it should work via DLNA too.

Where do I download it from ?

Go to the Betatesters forum

Using the beta with this profile
<Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetVCodec="h264" targetACodec="aac"> OR
<Video targetContainer="hls" targetVCodec="h264" targetACodec="aac">

Gives protocol = AVC_TS_MP_SD_AAC_MULT5_ISO-0

Produces a h.264 stream BUT is there a way to produce a .M3U8 file to save me the overhead of converting the stream to a m3u8 file inside of the Roku ? Just processing the stream is too slow, lots of rebuffering.

try

Thanks !
It works, rebuffers a lot, changed max video down to 1500 and much better. I guess this would depend on your network. It wasn't Serviio, transcoding was done, Roku couldn't handle the rate across WIFI. Need to try it on a LAN connection.

No problem with my FLV or AVI files. HD MKV files don't appear to be selected for transcoding ?
Ran a AVI movie from the same Serviio server simultaneously from 4 different Roku boxes (HD, Roku XDS, Roku 2 XS and Roku 3) and all played fine.

Is there any way to throttle ffmpeg besides cutting down on the number of cores ?

Can this profile be improved ?

My Roku boxes are wired, so as soon as my wife if finished watching a movie I'll add this code and test it out. If it plays MKV files, I'll do a happy dance. Over 95% of my files are MKV, and there's about 1300 of them. Don't want to have to redo them all!

This may also resolve my problem with the few MP4 videos I have tried that were Blu-Ray rips. The Roku couldn't handle the bitrate.

On the transcoding tab, uncheck Best video quality.