Sun Apr 15, 2012 10:27 am
Serviio stutter/restart movie playback.
This is going to be a lengthy report, and that is because I spent quite some time on a problem and want to describe it as detailed as possible. First of all I wanna say that I like Serviio. It is definitely one of the better DLNA servers. However I’m having a few issues with it. I tested Serviio a while ago and at that point it didn’t work very well with my Samsung TV (and BR). However it works fine with my Sony TV, so that is where I used it for sofar. Lately I got interested in buying a NAS and therefor want to get Serviio working with my Samsung. So I upgraded to 0.6.2 and it improved, but I’m still having problems.
The problem I’m experiencing is with video playback. General problem: when playing movies my TV will “randomly” halt showing a text that it is preparing playback for a second and then continue. This happens quite frequently. Very important: This problem does not happen when I use Samsung PC ShareManger 4.2 (same file, same PC, everything the same, only difference is DLNA server software).
So, that was the simple explanation, now for the details. Lets start with explaining my configuration: I have PC which serves as my DLNA server. It is connected via Gigabit switch to 100mbit ADSL/switch to 100mbit hub/switch to Samsung TV. This perhaps sounds like a complex setup, but it really isn’t and it isn’t the reason for my problems. Again, when using Samsung DLNA server it works fine.
The Samsung TV is a 2010 UE40C6000 Samsung TV which is connected via ETH to my local network. As many know, the Samsung TV/BR have problems with MKV when header compression (or something of that sort) is on. I solve this by remuxing every MKV I have with mkvmerge version 0.3.4.0. Apparently you can also run mkvfix but I’ve never done that.
The PC is an AMD965 Quad core 3.4G with 4GB memory with two drives in soft-raid running Windows 7 Professional 64bit (BTW: I notice that most people reporting stuttering issues are running win7 64bit, not sure if it is related but it might be).
Serviio is configured with transcoding disabled. So it should just stream the movie to my TV.
First I tried to solve the problem by setting up QoS. Ofcourse you can argue that that is useless since my equipment is not QoS capable, but that is not entirely true. It causes also internal priority within Windows. Since I have no problems with Samsung DLNA server I though maybe Samsung is setting up the connection differently. Anyway this did not change anything. While testing this I realized that the hickup always occured at the same point in the movie. So the next step I took was remuxing with mkvmerge and split it up and cut the part which caused the problem. However when I played this file it did not fail. Eventually I found that if I had to cut out more. So if I only added 10 secs before the hickup then there was no problem playing the movie. After putting around 55 secs in front of where the hickup would occur it failed again (I don’t know exactly how much is needed, probably 30 secs would have been enough). When I paused the playing just before where the hickup occurs and then continue playing then there is no hickup. Attached is a log. I cleaned the setup. Only one directory was configured and two files exist in this directory. I removed the log, started the sevice, played the short movie. Got the hickup at 55 secs in the movie. Finished the movie, stopped the service and copied the logs. I don’t know what to look for exactly in the log but this is what I notice:
2012-04-13 21:37:14,772 DEBUG [WebServer] Incoming connection from /10.0.0.213:46274
Which seems to indicate that the TV is just requesting a new connection. But maybe there is more info in the log I don’t see. Once more: if I play this movie using Samsung PC Share Manager then it all just works fine. To me it looks like the TV does not get served with enough data and reconnnects for that reason, but that is just a guess from my side.
Unfortunately the movie is copyright material so I can’t upload it.
I downloaded the latest version of FFMpeg, but that did not make a difference. I really would like to get this fixed and am willing to help in any way.
regards.
The problem I’m experiencing is with video playback. General problem: when playing movies my TV will “randomly” halt showing a text that it is preparing playback for a second and then continue. This happens quite frequently. Very important: This problem does not happen when I use Samsung PC ShareManger 4.2 (same file, same PC, everything the same, only difference is DLNA server software).
So, that was the simple explanation, now for the details. Lets start with explaining my configuration: I have PC which serves as my DLNA server. It is connected via Gigabit switch to 100mbit ADSL/switch to 100mbit hub/switch to Samsung TV. This perhaps sounds like a complex setup, but it really isn’t and it isn’t the reason for my problems. Again, when using Samsung DLNA server it works fine.
The Samsung TV is a 2010 UE40C6000 Samsung TV which is connected via ETH to my local network. As many know, the Samsung TV/BR have problems with MKV when header compression (or something of that sort) is on. I solve this by remuxing every MKV I have with mkvmerge version 0.3.4.0. Apparently you can also run mkvfix but I’ve never done that.
The PC is an AMD965 Quad core 3.4G with 4GB memory with two drives in soft-raid running Windows 7 Professional 64bit (BTW: I notice that most people reporting stuttering issues are running win7 64bit, not sure if it is related but it might be).
Serviio is configured with transcoding disabled. So it should just stream the movie to my TV.
First I tried to solve the problem by setting up QoS. Ofcourse you can argue that that is useless since my equipment is not QoS capable, but that is not entirely true. It causes also internal priority within Windows. Since I have no problems with Samsung DLNA server I though maybe Samsung is setting up the connection differently. Anyway this did not change anything. While testing this I realized that the hickup always occured at the same point in the movie. So the next step I took was remuxing with mkvmerge and split it up and cut the part which caused the problem. However when I played this file it did not fail. Eventually I found that if I had to cut out more. So if I only added 10 secs before the hickup then there was no problem playing the movie. After putting around 55 secs in front of where the hickup would occur it failed again (I don’t know exactly how much is needed, probably 30 secs would have been enough). When I paused the playing just before where the hickup occurs and then continue playing then there is no hickup. Attached is a log. I cleaned the setup. Only one directory was configured and two files exist in this directory. I removed the log, started the sevice, played the short movie. Got the hickup at 55 secs in the movie. Finished the movie, stopped the service and copied the logs. I don’t know what to look for exactly in the log but this is what I notice:
2012-04-13 21:37:14,772 DEBUG [WebServer] Incoming connection from /10.0.0.213:46274
Which seems to indicate that the TV is just requesting a new connection. But maybe there is more info in the log I don’t see. Once more: if I play this movie using Samsung PC Share Manager then it all just works fine. To me it looks like the TV does not get served with enough data and reconnnects for that reason, but that is just a guess from my side.
Unfortunately the movie is copyright material so I can’t upload it.
I downloaded the latest version of FFMpeg, but that did not make a difference. I really would like to get this fixed and am willing to help in any way.
regards.
- Attachments
-
serviio.log- Log of 70sec playback with hickup at 55sec
- (105.63 KiB) Downloaded 429 times