Bravia XBR9 crashes and reboots playing 1920x1080 videos...

I have a bizarre problem -- a few minutes into watching a 1920x1080 movie (an MKV transcoded on the fly by Serviio), the TV turns off and reboots. This is reproducible with all twelve 1920x1080 files, that I have...

Other (smaller) resolutions play just fine -- if the TV lists them at all, it will play them from beginning to end.

My server is fairly beefy (with 4 3.00GHz Xeons), so I don't think, this has anything to do with ffmpeg being unable to keep up... The network link is CAT6 Ethernet -- the server talks to switch using 1000baseT, although, I think, the TV itself can only do 100baseT.

It starts playing just fine -- and does look magnificent, by the way -- but begins freezing and completely reboots a few minutes later. Any ideas?

[zip]

You could turn on detailed logging, find the ffmpeg command that Serviio uses for the transcode, run that manually to produce a (mpegts I guess) file, add that file to Serviio's library and try playing natively. If it has the same problem it would mean that:
1) FFmpeg produces incompatible file
2) or the Tv has some limitations (eg max bitrate) that cause it to crash

[Zek]

I've crashed my Bravia hard too using other DLNA servers than Serviio. I think it was with some high bitrate h264 test files I found over at doom9. Very rare but kinda amusing. I bet it's a bug in the Bravia firmware.

Cheers,
Zek

I've crashed my Bravia hard too using other DLNA servers than Serviio. I think it was with some high bitrate h264 test files I found over at doom9. Very rare but kinda amusing. I bet it's a bug in the Bravia firmware.

I wonder, if ffmpeg can be told to produce a file, that would be less taxing on the Sony to decode...

I tried adding the maxVBitrate="15360" attribute to my Bravia profile here:

  Code:

--- profiles.dist.xml   2011-02-26 16:40:41.000000000 -0500
+++ profiles.xml        2011-02-26 16:44:26.000000000 -0500
@@ -286,5 +286,5 @@
                <Transcoding>
                        <!-- For dvr-ms files force mpeg2video transcoding to fix monotone timestamps problems-->
-                       <Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetACodec="ac3" forceVTranscoding="true">
+                       <Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetACodec="ac3" forceVTranscoding="true" maxVBitrate="15360">
                                <Matches container="asf" vCodec="mpeg2video" />
                        </Video>
@@ -303,5 +303,5 @@
                        </Video>
                        <!-- All Others video/audio codec will be transcoded into mpeg2ts, mpeg2video and ac3 audio (MPEG_TS_SD_EU). -->
-                       <Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetVCodec="mpeg2video" targetACodec="ac3" aBitrate="384">
+                       <Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetVCodec="mpeg2video" targetACodec="ac3" aBitrate="384" maxVBitrate="15360">
                                <Matches container="asf" />
                                <Matches container="avi" />

but that did not help -- the wonderfully detailed and crisp movies still begin to stagger after a few minutes of playback and eventually the TV reboots itself

[Illico]

The maxVBitrate="15360" attribute have sense only when video is transcoded ( to mpeg2video for ex.) , when "-vcodec copy" (remuxed) the maxVBitrate have no effect!

The maxVBitrate="15360" attribute have sense only when video is transcoded ( to mpeg2video for ex.) , when "-vcodec copy" (remuxed) the maxVBitrate have no effect!

So, which of these scenarii is playing out, when an MKV file like below is played?

  Code:

Format                           : Matroska
File size                        : 7.38 GiB
Duration                         : 51mn 10s
Overall bit rate                 : 20.6 Mbps
Encoded date                     : UTC 2008-02-23 12:33:26
Writing application              : mkvmerge v2.1.0 ('Another Place To Fall') built on Aug 19 2007 13:40:07
Writing library                  : libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1

Video
ID                               : 1
Format                           : VC-1
Format profile                   : AP@L3
Codec ID                         : WVC1
Codec ID/Hint                    : Microsoft
Duration                         : 51mn 10s
Bit rate                         : 19.3 Mbps
Width                            : 1 920 pixels
Height                           : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate                       : 23.976 fps
Original frame rate              : 29.970 fps
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Progressive
Scan order                       : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.389
Stream size                      : 6.91 GiB (94%)
Language                         : English

Audio #1
ID                               : 2
Format                           : AC-3
Format/Info                      : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                   : CM (complete main)
Codec ID                         : A_AC3
Duration                         : 51mn 10s
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 448 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 6 channels
Channel positions                : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                        : 16 bits
Stream size                      : 164 MiB (2%)
Title                            : AC3 5.1 448 kbps
Language                         : Russian

Audio #2
ID                               : 3
Format                           : AC-3
Format/Info                      : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                   : CM (complete main)
Codec ID                         : A_AC3
Duration                         : 51mn 10s
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 448 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 6 channels
Channel positions                : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                        : 16 bits
Stream size                      : 164 MiB (2%)
Title                            : AC3 5.1 448 kbps
Language                         : English

Text #1
ID                               : 4
Format                           : UTF-8
Codec ID                         : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info                    : UTF-8 Plain Text
Language                         : Russian

Text #2
ID                               : 5
Format                           : ASS
Codec ID                         : S_TEXT/ASS
Codec ID/Info                    : Advanced Sub Station Alpha
Language                         : English

[Illico]

So, which of these scenari is playing out, when an MKV file like below is played?

If you add maxVBitrate="15360" option, with this MKV+VC1+AC3 file, maxVBitrate must be taking into account.
Turn on detailed logging you should be able to see the FFmpeg command that is used for the transcode.
Try executing the command manually in a terminal window and post the result here (to confirm).

  Code:

+        <Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetVCodec="mpeg2video" targetACodec="ac3" aBitrate="384" maxVBitrate="15360">
            <Matches container="asf" />
            <Matches container="avi" />
            <Matches container="mp4" />
            <Matches container="matroska" />
            <Matches container="flv" />
         </Video>
      </Transcoding>
      <AutomaticImageRotation>true</AutomaticImageRotation>
   </Profile>

Sadly, this remains a problem with 0.5.2 -- when fed a high-resolution video, the TV begins to show jerky video and soon reboots completely...

Perhaps, ffmpeg can be told to produce output (uncompressed?), that's easier for the TV to process?

The situation seems to have improved after upgrading to 0.6.0.1. The video still freezes on occasion, but the TV no longer crashes. I can see ffmpeg running and using all available CPUs, so it must be that my CPUs (four 3GHz Xeons) aren't fast enough I wonder, if ffmpeg can be asked to convert quicker, even if it means a larger output file.

I don't know, why the TV was crashing before — perhaps, a Serviio bug was sending bogus data, when ffmpeg could not produce transcoding fast enough...