[SOLVED] Timelines search for transcoded video in ServiiGo

[pefri]

/* Edit:
[SOLVED: pls see DLNA master will's answers (in postings #2 and #4)]
Now I know, my issues were due to my inappropriate ServiiGo settings.
For best TLS (timeline search) results the recommended settings from will's answer #1 in posting #2
>
> in ServiiGo, go to Menu->Settings and select
-> Profile> 'Enhanced (x264)'
-> Video player> 'Auto'
>
made the difference! With these settings TLS (timeline search) works perfectly well!
Out of habit, from FTP LAN connection usage, I had checked wrongly "Video player>'Force external'".
This was not a good choice for TLS and caused the TLS issues reported here in posting #1.
*/ End of Edit

Hi,

I am a simple user and I'm new here. I am in the trial period for serviio-1.3.1-win and current ServiiGO 3.1. Serviio-1.3.1 server run on my Vista 32-bit computer. My player devices are a Samsung TV (F-series), a Samsung S2 I9100 and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 P6800.

I am very happy to have found Serviio. What I have seen so far Serviio comes close to what I am looking for. Much closer than any other DLNA server which I know.

Currently, my main concern is Timeline Search (TLS) when playing with my phone and tab. I believe the problem origins in my usage of serviio server. Maybe a problem with my settings. Please help.

M2TS example:
In the app ServiiGo, after I press PLAY I get a choice of resolution options.
Timeline Search appears to depend on the choice between these resolution options:
Original (1280x720) -> transcoding is off, TLS is always enabled - OK
00:00 --------------- 00:00 (MX Player Pro Timeline)
Medium (854x480) -> transcoding is on, TLS is NOT enabled - NOT OK
00:00 --------------- 00:00 (MX Player Pro Timeline)
Low (428x240) -> transcoding is on, TLS is NOT enabled - NOT OK
00:00 --------------- 00:00 (MX Player Pro Timeline)

It looks like transcoding kills the possibility for TLS and forces to always view from the very beginning (TL position 00:00:00.000 = frame 0)! MX Player Pro the TL like this:
00:00 --------------- 00:00 (MX Player Pro Timeline)

MP4 example:
Original (854x480) -> transcoding is off, TLS is always enabled - OK
00:00 --------------- 26:43 (MX Player Pro Timeline)
Medium (854x480) -> transcoding is on, TLS is NOT enabled - NOT OK
00:00 --------------- 00:00 (MX Player Pro Timeline)
Low (428x240) -> transcoding is on, TLS is NOT enabled - NOT OK
00:00 --------------- 00:00 (MX Player Pro Timeline)

M4A example:
Playing a 34:10min m4a audio file I observed heavy cpu load displayed by Windows Task Manager up to 01:25min playing time. After 3.6% of the expected full playing time audio transcoding of the whole media file is finished.
If and only if I restart playing of the _same_ resolution option, then I get TLS enabled for that mediafile resolution replay from its start.
If I play the same media file with a different resolution, then NO TLS again! If I return to the formerly fully transcoded low resolution, after having tried medium in between, then TLS is gone, again!

Same seems to hold for video, except transcoding the complete file takes much, much longer, especially for HD.

My strategie needs to be the following:
For each media file type find out the percentage of total playing time needed for transcoding the full media file. Build a memo of the percentage table.
At replay, for each replay of a media file resolution let Serviio do the transcoding, drink tea, do something else and wait until transcoding is finished (like waiting for Xmas or waiting for Godot). Then replay this mediafile with the transcoded resolution, and only with this resolution), then you get TLS enabled.

Maybe I run the wrong Serviio settings for TLS? If so, please help tell me which setting are needed to get TLS when transcoding is on.

Else, please, implement a strategy to extablish the necessary (end times and/or other) items needed to enable TLS as soon as possible after initialising playing by MX Player.

Please enable TLS for all resolution options! ALWAYS!
IMHO, TLS is a very important key feature for watching media files with play times beyond YouTube 3-10 min, e.g. shows, concerts, opera, etc.

Another commodity FR:
Please enable "Player selection" for playing audio as there is for playing video. I use to play my m4a audio files "as Video" with Act1 Video Player in order to use its fine sleeptimer.

Many thanks in advance!
Regards!

Edit reason: typos (English is not my first language)

[will]

Hi,

Yes third party video players cannot seek transcoded videos, which is what happens when you play Medium/Low quality videos regardless of input format. If you start playback of a video that needed to be transcoded, but has finished transcoding (before playing back any other video or other quality), then the external players will be able to seek because Serviio will re-use the existing transcoding job.

If you Android device is running (4.0+), which I assume it is, in ServiiGo, go to Menu->Settings->Profile, and change from the profile from 'Standard' to the 'Enhanced' one. Then when you playback video under Medium/Low it will play it in an internal player that can seek transcoded video (assuming you leave the Video player option under settings to 'Auto').

Note that everytime you seek to a new position, Serviio has to start a new transcoding job (and kill the other one), so depending on your machine specs, there can be upto a 10+ second delay before the video resumes.

Another commodity FR:
Please enable "Player selection" for playing audio as there is for playing video. I use to play my m4a audio files "as Video" with Act1 Video Player in order to use its fine sleeptimer.

How does the sleep timer work? I would prefer to add features to the built in music player, rather than allow playback outside of ServiiGo, as there isn't a consistent way to pass a playlist of tracks to other players, so you could only play one at a time.

[pefri]

Hi Will,

Thank you for your quick answer. I will follow your advices.

I also will PM or email you details and screenshots about Act1 Video Player's sleeptimer feature as seen by a user. I do not know how it works internally.

Regarding playing on the DLNA client I would prefer a client/server handshake which allows the user to decide if ihe wants transcoding for bandwidth reasons or let the third party player do the transcoding job on the fly. MX Player and BSplayer do very well and play fluently footage where you would not expect it.

Regarding transcoding at the server before sending the result to the player client I would expect a handshake which ensures that the server first tells how long the media file's timeline is supposed to be so that the user can tell the player from where he wants the player to start playing, then to transcode on the fly exactly that part which is needed for keeping the play buffer filled with playable (transcoded) material for continuous playing (like simultanuous translation at a prime ministers conference meeting). I would prefer not to use limited phone storage for buffering complete videos and audios. Many media files last 1 - 4 hrs per show. Transcoded mp3 files are larger than m4a files, etc.

Without the above handshaking features it may be the best choice to first convert (overnight, once for all) the complete server library to medium or low resolution and then use the "original" (no transcoding) setting. But this could mean to transcode an archive of some 100 TB (a collection of many 2TB USB disks), and in a couple of years WiFi and phones be able to play all footage without transcoding. Like Captain Claw used to say: That needs careful strategy.

Next, players should support chapters/bookmarks from accompanying bookmark/chapter text files with the media file's name (like subtitle files) in the same source folder as the media file. Act1 Video Player and mVideo Player use *.bkm extension files with time stamps in (not so user friendly) milliseconds units plus (different line formats with different) separator characters plus annotation text (chapter/bookmark headline). BSplayer uses a *.chf (chapter file) extension text file with time stamps in (more user friendly) hh:mm:ss.mss time format, but is not yet supported in BSplayer for Android. Act1 and mVideo *.bkm also works for chapter jumps in audio files played "as video". But only in phone context or with CIFS mapping of the source folder on the server computer to a corresponding (empty) place-holder folder in the phone' s sdcard.

Where can I find a dedicated profile for my Samsung S2 I9100 and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 P6800? Currently I use the "Samsung TV /player (C/D/E/F-series)" profile which works well for my Samsung TV (F-series) and hope that it helps to avoid forced transcoding for 1280x720 AVCHD camcorder recordings.

Last, not least, a "All Files" / "File system" library category which would link/map the whole windows file (sub-) system will allow the user to do what he is used from Windows and ES File Explorer, to browse to a folder containing the media and annotation text files of a show and decide spontanuosly what he wants to see, read or play.
Example: Lookup the timestamp of a point of interest (chapter/bookmark) in the BSplayer's chapter file (*.chf textfile). Then drag the play cursor to the corresponding point on the time line or use the "GOTO/JUMP TO time feature) of BSplayer for Android.

Please excuse my numerous typos, twisted, omitted characters and spaces (language, keyboard, 2-finger typing problems) and the long posting!

Please consider Time Line Search enhancements by dedicated handshakeing between Serviio server and ServiiGo app.

Regards
Peter

[will]

I don't quite follow your reply, but it might be because you have miss-understood what currently works and does not work.

In brief, when using the 'Enhanced' profile on Android 4.0+, time based seeking/Time Line Search works under Medium/Low when using the internal video player (and always works regardless of profile under Original quality via external players).

First, ServiiGo does not use DLNA, so any profile set in the Serviio Console has no effect, profile selection is done from within ServiiGo. Original video is delivered without transcoding, but Medium/Low is transcoded to a lower resolution and bitrate to support streaming over 3G etc... By default, ServiiGo uses the 'Standard' profile, which uses mpeg2 video for Medium/Low, this is fairly light on the Server CPU, but isn't supported my most devices, so is handed off to external players (as is Original video quality). ServiiGo also has an 'Enhanced' profile option, which uses x264 which uses a lot of server CPU, but is supported by pretty much all devices running 4.0 and as such, can be played in the internal video player. Now the special feature of the internal player, is it can seek transcoded streams, well sort of. It doesn't actually seek transcoded streams, it instead asks Serviio to start a new job starting at position X, so as far as the user is concerned it was able to seek to the correct position.

So if you are at home with lots of bandwith use Original quality, and the external video will decode whatever format it is. If you are away from home with limited bandwith, then the video must be transcoded server side (transcoding a video client side will not reduce the data that must be sent over the network), which you choose by picking the quality. If you want to be able to seek in these videos, then use the Enhanced profile and internal video player.

I would prefer not to use limited phone storage for buffering complete videos and audios. Many media files last 1 - 4 hrs per show. Transcoded mp3 files are larger than m4a files, etc.

This doesn't happen for video, a portion of the video is kept in a circular buffer in memory for the internal and external players. For audio, the file is stored in the device cache, but the cache has a limited size so it won't take up huge amounts of space, its also on the SD card, not inernally (actually I must check that it won't try to delete the current file if it is larger than the size of the cache....).

Next, players should support chapters/bookmarks from accompanying bookmark/chapter text files with the media file's name (like subtitle files) in the same source folder as the media file. Act1 Video Player and mVideo Player use *.bkm extension files with time stamps in (not so user friendly) milliseconds units plus (different line formats with different) separator characters plus annotation text (chapter/bookmark headline). BSplayer uses a *.chf (chapter file) extension text file with time stamps in (more user friendly) hh:mm:ss.mss time format, but is not yet supported in BSplayer for Android. Act1 and mVideo *.bkm also works for chapter jumps in audio files played "as video". But only in phone context or with CIFS mapping of the source folder on the server computer to a corresponding (empty) place-holder folder in the phone' s sdcard.

Would need to be added to Serviio first, there is possibly a similar issue https://bitbucket.org/xnejp03/serviio/i ... amsung-tvs But this would only ever work with the internal player unless the external players added an option for ServiiGo to send them the chapter text files. And it would also need to be supported by ffmpeg to convert between, so realistically it probably won't happen, at least for a while.

Where can I find a dedicated profile for my Samsung S2 I9100 and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 P6800? Currently I use the "Samsung TV /player (C/D/E/F-series)" profile which works well for my Samsung TV (F-series) and hope that it helps to avoid forced transcoding for 1280x720 AVCHD camcorder recordings.

As above, ServiiGo does not use DLNA, so there isn't one. It has some special hidden ones which you can set from the app.

I also will PM or email you details and screenshots about Act1 Video Player's sleeptimer feature as seen by a user. I do not know how it works internally.

Yes I would only want to know what it does, not how it works.


BTW, could you rename this thread to something like 'Timelines search issue for transcoded video in ServiiGo' (by editing the first post), so that other ServiiGo users might find it (it was a fluke that I saw it!)

[pefri]

Hi will,

I am really excited and overwhelmed!
You are awesome! Your helpful service is awesome! Your app ServiiGo is awesome!
You should combine the contents of your two answers into a HOW TO User's Guide and link to it in Google Play store, so that simple minded users, like me, get enabled straight away to fully enjoy and appreciate the great features of your app ServiiGo!

Now I understood, tested and verified:
Your app ServiiGo offers great TimeLine Search!
Like I expected it, including smart "handshaking between app and server"!
Fantastic! Incredible! Stupendous! (Source: Google translator)

From what I read in your 2nd answer (posting #4) how you implemented your careful strategy to enable timeline search in your app ServiiGo, I can imagine that features like "GOTO/JUMP TO time" or even "JUMP TO bookmark/chapter" are not too far away. These features would only need minor variations of and and a simple addition to the current TLS feature! (I will add the details to my email regarding sleeptimer which will reach you in a day or two.)

Right after your 1st answer (posting #2) I gratefully bought both PRO versions (Serviio server and ServiiGo app).
Now it would be time for an additional button "Super Donation" with open donation amount input! Your great app deserves more donation than you ask for even from a poor and simple minded user like me.

Hi zip,
Now it becomes your turn! Now I can propose a feature request to you, the author of Serviio server, too:
I observed that ffmpeg takes a tremenduos amount of cpu usage on the server computer when transcoding AVCHD footage (my DVB-S2 test example has variable bitrate 12.0 - 23.0 Mbps, profile Main@L4.0,
1280x720p, 50 fps, 3 audio streams, 1 x AC-3 5ch 448 Kbps, 2 x MPEG2 256 Kbps and consumes some 70% to 90% of my good old 2.4 GHz Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600).
On the other hand, Cyberlink proudly advertises since years their market leading advantage of using HW re-encoding. (On my computer Cyberlink PowerDirector does all the re-encoding with only ~4% to 7% of cpu usage.)
Why not do HW transcoding in Serviio server too?

Thus,
Serviio Feature Request:
Please implement HW transcoding in Serviio server.
My NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 (with CUDA) fluently encodes and plays all my AVCHD and Blu-ray footage and disks and is idly waiting for transcoding work. A CUDA transcoding version would be welcome!

Many thanks in advance!
Regards!

Peter

[will]

Glad its sorted .

Hi will,

I am really excited and overwhelmed!
You are awesome! Your helpful service is awesome! Your app ServiiGo is awesome!
You should combine the contents of your two answers into a HOW TO User's Guide and link to it in Google Play store, so that simple minded users, like me, get enabled straight away to fully enjoy and appreciate the great features of your app ServiiGo!

Its kind of mentioned in the FAQs, but I have been meaning to write up a proper guide along with a table/matrix showing what works under different profile/video player options. Sadly I've been incredibly busy with work recently, but should have a chance near the end of the month.

From what I read in your 2nd answer (posting #4) how you implemented your careful strategy to enable timeline search in your app ServiiGo, I can imagine that features like "GOTO/JUMP TO time" or even "JUMP TO bookmark/chapter" are not too far away. These features would only need minor variations of and and a simple addition to the current TLS feature! (I will add the details to my email regarding sleeptimer which will reach you in a day or two.)

I guess I could add a go to position dialog where you type in a position rather than using the slider, what I meant was getting the bookmark data over would be a completely different problem.

Right after your 1st answer (posting #2) I gratefully bought both PRO versions (Serviio server and ServiiGo app).
Now it would be time for an additional button "Super Donation" with open donation amount input! Your great app deserves more donation than you ask for even from a poor and simple minded user like me.

The best thing you can do is leave a (hopefully positive ) rating for the app on Google Play. But if you really want I have a PayPayl address that some users have sent a little extra too, PM/email me for details if you so wish.

Hi zip,
Now it becomes your turn! Now I can propose a feature request to you, the author of Serviio server, too:
I observed that ffmpeg takes a tremenduos amount of cpu usage on the server computer when transcoding AVCHD footage (my DVB-S2 test example has variable bitrate 12.0 - 23.0 Mbps, profile Main@L4.0,
1280x720p, 50 fps, 3 audio streams, 1 x AC-3 5ch 448 Kbps, 2 x MPEG2 256 Kbps and consumes some 70% to 90% of my good old 2.4 GHz Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600).
On the other hand, Cyberlink proudly advertises since years their market leading advantage of using HW re-encoding. (On my computer Cyberlink PowerDirector does all the re-encoding with only ~4% to 7% of cpu usage.)
Why not do HW transcoding in Serviio server too?

Thus,
Serviio Feature Request:
Please implement HW transcoding in Serviio server.
My NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 (with CUDA) fluently encodes and plays all my AVCHD and Blu-ray footage and disks and is idly waiting for transcoding work. A CUDA transcoding version would be welcome!

Many thanks in advance!
Regards!

Peter

The main blocker on this is that ffmpeg, the tool used for transcoding, does not support HW accelleration, infact I don't belive any non-proprietary ones do. However, remember its not just important how much CPU is used, but how long it is used for. You could for example tell Serviio to only use 2 out of your 4 cores, but then it would take longer. But if you are interested, I would suggest timing how long it actually takes to transcode say a 30 min video. My Intel Atom is able to just about keep up with transcoding to Medium quality in real-time, whereas my Deskop is significantly faster (about 8x).

[pefri]

...The main blocker on this is that ffmpeg, the tool used for transcoding, does not support HW accelleration, infact I don't belive any non-proprietary ones do. However, remember its not just important how much CPU is used, but how long it is used for. You could for example tell Serviio to only use 2 out of your 4 cores, but then it would take longer. But if you are interested, I would suggest timing how long it actually takes to transcode say a 30 min video. My Intel Atom is able to just about keep up with transcoding to Medium quality in real-time, whereas my Deskop is significantly faster (about 8x).

Yes, I was thinking that zip could offer an extra paid non-proprietary transcoder version of Serviio server for those users who prefer to pay the license fee (what does CL PowerDirector cost with HW transcoding license fee and all its other features included? ) instead of buying a much more expensive new computer.
Never mind, it was just an idea, my 2 cents.

Regards