Transcoding on the fly 720p/1080p through Serviio and NAS

Hi all,

I have several video files, saved through the years, in different formats, from standard low res avi to 1080p files.

Most of them are on tape (yeah...some of you will remember what that is) and I want to put them all on a repository and see them in my devices (TV, PS3, IPAD and also an android tablet).

Problem : I would prefer to use a "machine" that would allow me to transcode those files on the fly for those devices and keep the original format. From a lot of readings, I noticed that most NAS devices don't have enough CPU "power" to allow transcode on the fly specially for the high formats 720p/1080p...at least at decent prices. The cheapest I found was a Netgear Pro 6 for up 1.000 USD


I was decided to mount my own PC Media Center when a friend directed me here with a note that serviio would be able to do that on specific NAS.

Althoug I read some threads with people saying they are able to use those formats without any problems (even with ac 5.1 ?!!), I wonder if I would be allowed to create a thread to receive feedback from people with real experience with it, and the NAS brand/model and client reader they are using.

Thx in advance,

Hi, I have installed Serviio, onto my Synology DS212j. I have tried this on my Samsung 40C650.
This is over a Homeplug network.

I tried a HD (22GB) movie with m2ts. This was on a USB drive attached to the NAS. It stuttered, & wasn't watchable. Perhaps this isn't really a good test.
But as no one else has replied, I thought I would.
I have a Himedia network media player, which I haven't tried to play this movie over. I might try this some time.

I have been looking at various options, & I want a player to do everything. PVR, FULL webpages, with XBMC etc

In my opinion, get a small pc, or HTPC. Revo, Zotac,

[will]

It really depends on what device you want to play the video on. Say you have a 1080p mkv that uses h264, if your device supports this, serviio will send it natively (almost no cpu time requires), or at most wrap it into an mpegts container by copying the video and audio, or copying the video and transcoding just the audio (a small, but not large amount of cpu required, fine for a cheep NAS). So first question is what is your tv? I'm not sure about your IPad, but PS3 and android tablet should be fine. So this may be a non issue for you.

As for what personal experience, I have a low powered home server I built using an Intel Atom D525 (total cost excluding drives was about £130 a year or so ago). For all of my videos it is more than enough to stream to my BDP-370 (720p/1080p) where it has to transcode the audio and repackage the video, but cannot quite keep up with transcoding to 720p on the fly. It can however happily transcode from 720p to 480p (Serviio 1.0 which will be comming soonish supports transcoding to lower resolutions). The only reason I have that rather than a simple NAS is because I use it for a bit more than you could (easily) do on a NAS and it was a fun little project. Anyway, if your devices don't actually require that the video stream be transcoded, then it won't be a problem.

It seems, after further reading, that there's still no affordable solution for this problem.

Even 720p with high bit rate has problems transcoding to an iPad/iPhone .


So, to clarify the problem, unless you have your videos trancoded to mp4, the iOS devices dont have enough stamina on the CPU to digest a 1080 video on another format. You have to use another CPU to transcode it remotely and then stream it to the device.

The current home nas solutions, with single core CPUs, don't do it.

The solution I'm looking now is to have the nas and assemble a simple disk less media server with an i3, on a fan less case.
I'm looking into pricings and, if anyone interested, I will share the findings.

[patters]

iOS is quite an edge case though. It's the fault of Apple using silly proprietary tech, and severely limiting playback behaviour to try and railroad you into buying an Apple TV. Frankly, in the age of DLNA-enabled TVs, the Apple TV is the one thing nobody actually needs.

Once FFmpeg gets an AppleHTTP muxer I guess these clips could be remuxed without being transcoded, though the audio will have to be downmixed to 2 channel AAC, which an ARM CPU NAS cannot do in realtime unfortunately.