New to Serviio, Streams not seekable when using Windows

I just found Serviio, while looking for an option to revive an old QNAP TS-853A.
And yes! with Serviio I am able to use transcoding in case the Bandwidth of the remote Device or the Local Network is not sufficent for streaming in orignal format. Only for one user, but much better then with the qnap supplied options or Plex - where transcoding even for one user will not be possible the with the ancient CPU in this device. Great.
But, there is always a but: If I use a PC to connect to the server, it looks like nearly everything is not seekable.This is painful.
Is there an way to overcome this problem?

[atc98092]

I'm not certain what you mean by "seekable". What exactly are you trying to do from the Windows computer?

With Windows, I use the "mediabrowser" to connect to the serviio server.
click the button to playback a video-file, I choose either original format or medium.
Playback starts.
Then I try to seek forward to some point in time of the video by dragging the slider.
it takes a litte while, playback resumes, but not at the time I moved the slider to, instead it continues from the point it already was before.
Media I tried were mkv containers with h264 video codec.

If I use the android app seeking works.

[atc98092]

OK, gotcha. You are referring to fast forwarding.

I just tried it (MediaBrowser) and was able to both drag the timeline and advance the video and simply click further down the timeline and advance the movie to that point. I tested it using Chrome and Edge.

However, there's a caveat to this. Serviio transcodes virtually everything for the MediaBrowser player. If you try to advance past where the transcoding has reached, it will only advance to the point the transcoding has reached and no further. So, the longer you wait to move the video forward, the further you move the timeline. If you really need to advance forward within a video immediately after playback begins, MediaBrowser isn't your best player choice.

My recommendation would be an Android based player, such as the Nvidia Shield or Onn 4K Media Player. There are numerous other off-brands available online as well. You can use a player app such as Kodi or VLC (among many others), and no transcoding is required. You can immediately move to any part of the video desired. The Shield is expensive, but it comes with a Gigabit Ethernet jack and can play virtually anything without transcoding. There are many inexpensive Android based players online, and other than losing the Gigabit connector (they pretty much all still have really good WiFi) you retain the same playability of virtually anything.

Also, if you really want to just use the computer for playback, I just tried VLC on my Windows computer, and it can play everything without transcoding and move anywhere within the video. The only thing you lose compared to MediaBrowser is the ability to stream your Serviio content from outside your home network. As long as you're inside the firewall, it works perfectly.

Thank you atc,
For me (using MS-Edge) it looks a little different, that might be because the reencoding is slow. It feels like there is no option to jump to for example 50% of the playback.
I would like to try VLC with windows, but I did not see an option to use VLC as a player (I can use it for playback using DLNA, but then there is no transcoding)?

But it works on Android (with the built in player). There I can just skip any part of a movie and even if transcoding is enabled I can nearly immediately resume watching starting at a random time. So when you say serviio "...transcodes everything.... ". That does not seem completely true. The Android client, together with the server is able to skip and continue somewhere else. Looks like the Windows players features are not on par with the android.

I need transcoding. Thats why I am so happy to have found serviio, because otherwise this NAS will not be able to transcode in realtime. Sometimes when I am not at home and like to watch a movie from the collection, the internet speed or quality is not good enough to stream full-HD. Using a mobile for watching is not a good experience because of the small display. But a PC with 12,13,14" display will do when you are near enough to the screen.

[atc98092]

VLC is a standalone program you install on your Windows computer. It is not something that can be used in MediaBrowser as a replacement player. Once it's installed, it will have a view called Playlist, and within that view is Local Network and then Universal Plug'n'play. That's where you'll find Serviio. It should be able to play your media without any transcoding.

But yes, if you want to watch your media when you're not at home, MediaBrowser is your only option. When I said Serviio transcodes everything, I meant that is what happens when you use MediaBrowser. When you use your Android player, transcoding is likely not being done, which is why you can seek to any position within the video. When I use my Shield players (which are Android based) Serviio transcodes nothing.

I think I rather found a Bug in the player which is used in the Web-interface.
Why:
I captured two sessions with wireshark, one from android, and one from windows, the same media. In both sessions I requested a trancsoded version. This can be seen In the wireshark dump.
Both sessions use the same Api (HLS streaming).
In the android capture, when I drag the slider to a point in time, the player makes a request for a later start:

  Code:

GET /cds/resource/575/MEDIA_ITEM/HLS-0/LOW.m3u8?profile=serviigo_hls&authToken=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&clientId=yyyyyyyyyy&start=3601 HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: stagefright/1.2 (Linux;Android 9)


this is the "start=3601" which requests a block at 3601 seconds. The server delivers this a few seconds later.

When I compare this to the capture I took with Windows I cannot see this kind of request in the data.
Since there is a slider I am able to drag why shouldnt the player not make this request if the same kind of streaming is used and the server and media supports seeking?