SvtPlay

[ottomatic]

This may only partly apply to the SVTplay plugin, but I'll give it a go anyway! My problem is stuttering/jerky playback. The standard LG-profile doesn't online-transcode H264, only remuxes. Now, I can play high profile H264 videos from file with no problem at all up to 8Mbit/s bitrate. The remuxed video is only 2,1 Mbit/s and my CPU-load is not an issue. I tried forcing trancoding into mpeg2video, but my poor old cpu can't keep up and I get buffering (although quality is good). I tried to uncheck the "high quality" checkbox in the Console - Transcoding tab; no difference. Also tried lowering the quality setting in Console - Online sources, even to Low; no difference at all. Should it be necessary to restart Serviio after changing the mentioned quality settings? I hate restarting the Serviio service cause it has to rebuild the online resources every time

As I recall, It worked quite well with the old plugin + Serviio 6.x

Any ideas of what to try next? I refuse to throw in the towel yet

As usual, seeing your logs would be good.

I don't think you need to restart Serviio after changing the quality settings, but you could try right-clicking on an online feed definition and forcing an update, and it should re-read the feed items. I assume quality matching is done when you start the playback.

Those high-profile h264 videos, are they on your local network already or do you stream them from the Internet? Perhaps you have poor bandwidth to the Internet, but good bandwith internally? How are you connected to the Internet?

During the days of the old plugin, SvtPlay streams were delivered in the rtpm format. These days, SvtPlay streams are in the hls (Apple Http Dynamic streams) format. Perhaps your serviio setup / network equipment is better suited for rtmp?

[Illico]

Not sure to understand the problem...I'm working on next version of pluzz plugin and ffmpeg support m3u8 streams.

I parse the first m3u8 that list all bitrate streams, like this example :
https://developer.apple.com/resources/h ... /examples/


<video src="https://devimages.apple.com.edgekey.net/resources/http-streaming/examples/bipbop_4x3/bipbop_4x3_variant.m3u8" controls autoplay ></video>

  Code:

#EXTM3U


#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=232370,CODECS="mp4a.40.2, avc1.4d4015"
gear1/prog_index.m3u8

#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=649879,CODECS="mp4a.40.2, avc1.4d401e"
gear2/prog_index.m3u8

#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=991714,CODECS="mp4a.40.2, avc1.4d401e"
gear3/prog_index.m3u8

#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=1927833,CODECS="mp4a.40.2, avc1.4d401f"
gear4/prog_index.m3u8

#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:PROGRAM-ID=1,BANDWIDTH=41457,CODECS="mp4a.40.2"
gear0/prog_index.m3u8


Then you use the best bitrate stream and provide the url to ffmpeg and serviio could stream it.
https://devimages.apple.com.edgekey.net ... index.m3u8

  Code:

#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-TARGETDURATION:11
#EXT-X-VERSION:3
#EXT-X-MEDIA-SEQUENCE:0
#EXT-X-PLAYLIST-TYPE:VOD
#EXTINF:9.9767,   
fileSequence0.ts
#EXTINF:9.9433,   
fileSequence1.ts
#EXTINF:10.01,   
fileSequence2.ts
#EXTINF:9.9433,   
fileSequence3.ts
#EXTINF:10.01,   
fileSequence4.ts
#EXTINF:9.9433,   
fileSequence5.ts
#EXTINF:10.01,   
fileSequence6.ts
#EXTINF:9.9433,   
fileSequence7.ts
....

[ottomatic]

Not sure to understand the problem...I'm working on pluzz plugin and ffmpeg support m3u8 streams.

Illico, I'm not sure if you are asking for help or trying to provide help?

Are you commenting on any particular message?

The SvtPlay plugin works fine, but one user has stuttering playback.
We are also discussing why some clients are not able to skip back / forward during playback.

[Illico]

Illico, I'm not sure if you are asking for help or trying to provide help?

provide help...

The SvtPlay plugin works fine, but one user has stuttering playback.
We are also discussing why some clients are not able to skip back / forward during playback.

Sorry, I thought you had problems with m3u8 streams. But I did not notice it was only for back/forward problem.

[ottomatic]

Sorry, I thought you had problems with m3u8 streams. But I did not notice it was only for back/forward problem.

OK, thanks for trying

As usual, seeing your logs would be good.

I don't think you need to restart Serviio after changing the quality settings, but you could try right-clicking on an online feed definition and forcing an update, and it should re-read the feed items. I assume quality matching is done when you start the playback.

Those high-profile h264 videos, are they on your local network already or do you stream them from the Internet? Perhaps you have poor bandwidth to the Internet, but good bandwith internally? How are you connected to the Internet?

During the days of the old plugin, SvtPlay streams were delivered in the rtpm format. These days, SvtPlay streams are in the hls (Apple Http Dynamic streams) format. Perhaps your serviio setup / network equipment is better suited for rtmp?

My fileserver and serviio are on the same machine. 25Mbit internet cable connection. 100Mbit wired to server, wifi /n to player. I can play a h264 high profile < 8Mbit bitrate mkv video from disk without any stuttering, from which I conclude that it's neither the player nor the network that is the problem (am I right..?). I've just reset the profile.xml to the original LG remux-only and restarted serviio service. As I already set the preferred quality to "low" yesterday with no difference in playback, I'm gonna see now if there's a difference after a restart!

BTW, the SVTplayer on the web has 3 quality settings: High, Auto and Limited. Do you know how they match the High, Medium and Low quality settings in Serviio? I'll be back with results and logfiles...

[ottomatic]

My fileserver and serviio are on the same machine. 25Mbit internet cable connection. 100Mbit wired to server, wifi /n to player. I can play a h264 high profile < 8Mbit bitrate mkv video from disk without any stuttering, from which I conclude that it's neither the player nor the network that is the problem (am I right..?). I've just reset the profile.xml to the original LG remux-only and restarted serviio service. As I already set the preferred quality to "low" yesterday with no difference in playback, I'm gonna see now if there's a difference after a restart!

Well, I am no expert... but I do know that only certain combinations of container, bitrate and encoding are allowed in the DLNA specs. Thus, if the h264 high profile format is one of those "DLNA certified" formats, your computer does not need to transcode and then your playback will hardly put any load on your server. When you play a HLS file from SvtPlay, your server will most certainly transcode, so that may be a bottleneck.

Your INTERNAL network does not seem to be the problem. But your 25 Mbit connection to the Internet might be, in case it doesn't deliver the proper throughput in communication with the SvtPlay server.

You may have a problem with the network card interfacing with the Internet?

A good way to troubleshoot is to search your logs for the ffmpeg command used for transcoding, and run that from the command line and look at the output.

BTW, the SVTplayer on the web has 3 quality settings: High, Auto and Limited. Do you know how they match the High, Medium and Low quality settings in Serviio? I'll be back with results and logfiles...

No I don't. But I could check with fiddler (network traffic sniffer) and see which streams are selected at different quality settings.

I'll post my findings shortly.

/ O

[ottomatic]

BTW, the SVTplayer on the web has 3 quality settings: High, Auto and Limited. Do you know how they match the High, Medium and Low quality settings in Serviio? I'll be back with results and logfiles...

No I don't. But I could check with fiddler (network traffic sniffer) and see which streams are selected at different quality settings.

I'll post my findings shortly.

SvtPlay settings correspond to:
High --> Bandwidth=2755, RESOLUTION=1280x720
Auto --> Bandwidth=1655, RESOLUTION=1024x576
Low --> Bandwidth=615, RESOLUTION=576x324

Serviio quality settings are interpreted by the plugin to correspond to:
High --> Bandwidth=2755, RESOLUTION=1280x720
Medium --> Bandwidth=955, RESOLUTION=704x396
Low --> Bandwidth=315, RESOLUTION=320x180

The SvtPlay "Auto" setting might actually be automatic in the sense that it adaptively selects the best quality according to current throughput. The HLS and HDS protocols are designed to support that kind of dynamics.

If you, the users would prefer the plugin to use the same quality mapping as SvtPlay it can easily be achieved by altering six lines of code. I myself use the highest setting, and that will obviously not be changed. Perhaps I should create a poll?

First maybe I should explain what I mean by "jerky playback". It's extremely obvious in a scene where the camera pans smoothly or when an object moves smoothly, like a car passing by. The rate at which it occurs is about 3-4 Hz.

I have done some further testing:
- Played a newsclip
- copied the transcoded (i.e remuxed) file to a shared folder and changed extension to m2ts.
- Opened the file in MediaInfo to verify that it was indeed remuxed and not transcoded (see attachement).
- Played the file through dlna-Serviio. Still jerky!
- played the file using cifs. Still jerky!
- Copied the file to my laptop and played it using Media player classic (CCCP codec pack). Still jerky! Also tried VLC, but playback was like fast fwd.

I also tried the different quality settings in Serviio, but even using Low quality, the playback is still jerky! Also tried transcoding to mpeg2, but my server cpu can't keep up, although playing the copied+renamed transcoded file works like charm, giving smooth playback. Furthermore I'm able to smoothly play the same newsclip in SVTplay in the browser of my laptop over wifi.

From this a draw the conclusion that the problem is not my internet connection nor my wireless lan. Could be my player, but in that case my laptop suffers from the same problem and MediaInfo diplays nothing unusual, at least from what I can tell. Maybe ffmpeg screws up the video during remuxing (dunno if that's even possible...)? Maybe I should try upgrading ffmpeg?

I'm really annoyed by this since I like Serviio so much and SVTplay is a great plugin!

[ottomatic]

First maybe I should explain what I mean by "jerky playback". It's extremely obvious in a scene where the camera pans smoothly or when an object moves smoothly, like a car passing by. The rate at which it occurs is about 3-4 Hz.

I have done some further testing:
- Played a newsclip
- copied the transcoded (i.e remuxed) file to a shared folder and changed extension to m2ts.
- Opened the file in MediaInfo to verify that it was indeed remuxed and not transcoded (see attachement).
- Played the file through dlna-Serviio. Still jerky!
- played the file using cifs. Still jerky!
- Copied the file to my laptop and played it using Media player classic (CCCP codec pack). Still jerky! Also tried VLC, but playback was like fast fwd.

I also tried the different quality settings in Serviio, but even using Low quality, the playback is still jerky! Also tried transcoding to mpeg2, but my server cpu can't keep up, although playing the copied+renamed transcoded file works like charm, giving smooth playback. Furthermore I'm able to smoothly play the same newsclip in SVTplay in the browser of my laptop over wifi.

From this a draw the conclusion that the problem is not my internet connection nor my wireless lan. Could be my player, but in that case my laptop suffers from the same problem and MediaInfo diplays nothing unusual, at least from what I can tell. Maybe ffmpeg screws up the video during remuxing (dunno if that's even possible...)? Maybe I should try upgrading ffmpeg?

I'm really annoyed by this since I like Serviio so much and SVTplay is a great plugin!

Well, it might have to do with timestamps inside the stream.

Having looked at some source code of demuxing software I know that different servers encode video streams differently and so some demuxers look for invalid timestamps and "fix" them on the fly. So, the flash player which is obviously tailored to SvtPlay's specific encodings is fully prepared for such tweaks, whereas your clients / ffmpeg might not.

I am not familiar with MediaInfo, so I don't know how you can tell that the stream was only remuxed? But it makes sense, because that would explain why the playback is still choppy even in the local file (timestamps would be fixed by the transcode but not the remux?)

Upgrading ffmpeg is still always a good idea. There may be an older flaw in the way the frames are ordered, in which case even just a newer demuxer might fix the problem.

Either way, it sounds like your server might use a faster cpu. What if you want to introduce another client in your network which does indeed call for transcoding of the content?

Regards

/ O

Thanks Otto for your, as always, quick response!
I'll give upgrading ffmpeg a shot, but you are right, I do need a faster CPU I have an old P4 1,7MHz as server now, but theyr'e planning to upgrade all pc's at work this year so hopefully I get to take my "old" one home which will make a performance boost! On another note, I'm very tempted to get myself a Raspberry Pi and turn it into a mediaextender w xbmc which would mean giving up on Serviio.... But an open platform media extender is very tempting compared to the locked down LG ST-600 I have now!

[n3mmr]

Today I had a repeat lockout behaviour from serviio+SVTPlay.

I clicked on "Refresh" for one online source, and serviio just gets nowhere and there's no indication of any kind of activity. Several hours later, that part of the svtplay online (Film&Drama) is not even there any more...

[ottomatic]

Today I had a repeat lockout behaviour from serviio+SVTPlay.

I clicked on "Refresh" for one online source, and serviio just gets nowhere and there's no indication of any kind of activity. Several hours later, that part of the svtplay online (Film&Drama) is not even there any more...

Which version of the plugin?

Does SvtPlay work in the browser?

Anyone else with the same problem? I'm not in a position to test at the moment...

[n3mmr]

Today I had a repeat lockout behaviour from serviio+SVTPlay.

I clicked on "Refresh" for one online source, and serviio just gets nowhere and there's no indication of any kind of activity. Several hours later, that part of the svtplay online (Film&Drama) is not even there any more...

Which version of the plugin?

Does SvtPlay work in the browser?

Anyone else with the same problem? I'm not in a position to test at the moment...

1.1.6
SVTPlay works from browsers, and the pirateplayer windows program can download shows.

The story continues....
Installed Pirateplay and downloaded the same news show as I tested with yesterday. Pirateplay set the file extension to "mp4" as default. To my surprise my LG-player plays this file smoothly.... This gives me some hope since Pirateplay AFAIK also uses ffmpeg and remuxes, just like Serviio. Would it be possible to have Serviio do the same thing? I tried setting <video targetContainer="mp4"> in profiles.xml, but serviio service won't run so I guess this option is not supported.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Maybe I should continue the discussion in the Transcoding forum section since it's become OT here?

[ottomatic]

The story continues....
Installed Pirateplay and downloaded the same news show as I tested with yesterday. Pirateplay set the file extension to "mp4" as default. To my surprise my LG-player plays this file smoothly.... This gives me some hope since Pirateplay AFAIK also uses ffmpeg and remuxes, just like Serviio. Would it be possible to have Serviio do the same thing? I tried setting <video targetContainer="mp4"> in profiles.xml, but serviio service won't run so I guess this option is not supported.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Maybe I should continue the discussion in the Transcoding forum section since it's become OT here?

Swehawk, that sounds like a good idea. Please report back if you reach any conclusions.

[ottomatic]

Folks,

Somehow a bug managed to slip in unnoticed in version 1.1.6, perhaps because I was so focused on the live shows that I didn't test the clips.

A typo in that version caused the parsing to crash when clips where included using the serviioclips request parameter.

This may have been the cause of n3mmr's problems reported a couple of days ago.

If you are using version 1.1.6 / VERSION 6, please download the latest version!

Regards

/ O

[n3mmr]

Today I had a repeat lockout behaviour from serviio+SVTPlay.

I clicked on "Refresh" for one online source, and serviio just gets nowhere and there's no indication of any kind of activity. Several hours later, that part of the svtplay online (Film&Drama) is not even there any more...

Which version of the plugin?

Does SvtPlay work in the browser?

Anyone else with the same problem? I'm not in a position to test at the moment...

1.1.6
SVTPlay works from browsers, and the pirateplayer windows program can download shows.

It turned out there was some kind of problem in serviio itself where it would decide not to bother with online resources.
Since this only happens after a week of uninterrupted running I don't see how I could try and hunt it down by simply maxing out the log detail, the logs would grow like weed, so please advise me on how to track down this problem/bug.

For now I have a twice-a-week scheduled restart of serviio (and console if running) in root's crontab.

[ottomatic]

It turned out there was some kind of problem in serviio itself where it would decide not to bother with online resources.
Since this only happens after a week of uninterrupted running I don't see how I could try and hunt it down by simply maxing out the log detail, the logs would grow like weed, so please advise me on how to track down this problem/bug.

For now I have a twice-a-week scheduled restart of serviio (and console if running) in root's crontab.

I have no advice other than to post your bug report in the Serviio Support & Help forum.

The story continues....
Installed Pirateplay and downloaded the same news show as I tested with yesterday. Pirateplay set the file extension to "mp4" as default. To my surprise my LG-player plays this file smoothly.... This gives me some hope since Pirateplay AFAIK also uses ffmpeg and remuxes, just like Serviio. Would it be possible to have Serviio do the same thing? I tried setting <video targetContainer="mp4"> in profiles.xml, but serviio service won't run so I guess this option is not supported.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Maybe I should continue the discussion in the Transcoding forum section since it's become OT here?

I have the exact same problem as you Swehawk. The picture looks good but stutter i.e not smoothly. I have a 100mbit broadband(tested to 112!) and a very fast i7 processor which has almost no load at all when I transcode. So I don't think this is a CPU-issue. If it's CPU-issue, is there a way to give Serviio more attention regarding transcoding, so it at least uses 70-90% of available CPU-resources instead of 3%. I have tested with 4-8 CPU's in the transcoding tab of serviio.

Anyway many thanks for a great and free product!