Serviio

I've been ripping my blurays to digital copies for easier playback and have run into a problem where some of the mkv files will only playback scrunched into 16:9 and not the correct AR. I can change the TV view to wide zoom to correct the AR, but that also chops off the sides of the movie, which I don't want to do. Other movies ripped with the same exact settings will play at their correct AR as they should (used HandBrake if that matters).

Sony player is the BDP-S5100, OS is Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, Serviio v 1.5.2, profile is set to Sony BDP-Sx70/SMP-N100 (2010).

For one example where it happens, The Wrath of Khan, AR is 2.40:1, yet is scrunched into 16:9 on playback through the S5100. If I transfer the file to a USB drive and play it, it plays back at the correct AR as it should.

I've attached the serviio log file with the library info omitted, as well as the MediaInfo output for the movie, as well as for another movie ripped the identical way that does playback in the correct AR (The Search for Spock), in case you catch something different that I'm missing.

Is there anyway to fix this issue so I don't have to transfer those movies to a flash drive to view correctly? It seems to affect about 1/3 of my ripped movies, even though as I said all settings are identical when ripping with HandBrake.

You need to post the ffmpeg output for both files and the part of the serviio debug log that contains the ffmpeg command when you play these files.
That will show what metadata parameters Serviio got for the files and the resulting command Serviio uses to transcode and play them. That will show what is happening. Probably a result of different SAR/DARs. Also what profile is set in the console for your device?

I included the Serviio log when playing that particular file, I take it that doesn't include the ffmpeg info you need? Your link just sends me back to how to create the Serviio log. How do I get the output from ffmpeg?

My above post included the profile I'm using, "profile is set to Sony BDP-Sx70/SMP-N100 (2010)."

Edit: I should add that I've tried all the Sony profiles and even a few generic profiles, and the files either don't play at all or the same files are played in the wrong AR as with the profile I'm using.

I know you said you tried all the Sony profiles, but the one you're using is for much older hardware. The one that should work best for you is the Sony BDP-Sx100 (2013) profile. I have the S3100 model, and haven't had any issues with formatting.

Here's the transcoding line from your log:

The thing is, your player shouldn't need it to be transcoded.

I have the same movie, but I ripped it with MakeMKV and have not run it through Handbrake. The major difference I see between yours and mine are the audio tracks. I have the standard AC3 and TrueHD tracks. However, I do see something odd. Mine shows a width and height of 1920x1080, and yours shows 1920x808. I realize yours is likely the more "accurate" for the actual film aspect ratio, but that may be what is messing up your display. Mine plays with the correct aspect ratio, with black bars above and below on a 16x9 set.

I suggest you try ripping it with MakeMKV (freeware that works great) and see if you encounter the same result. My guess is you won't. If you don't have something that supports the HD audio, then only rip it with the AC3 track.

I just tried the 2013 profile again, but this time removed all transcoding files, all logs, and shut down Serviio completely instead of just stopping and restarting the server, and now those problem files are playing in the correct AR as they should.

But now that leaves other .mkv files that used to play perfectly under the 2010 profile that won't play at all under 2013. The player tries for awhile then finally says "The file is corrupt or unsupported." Once in awhile I can use the H264 Level Editor to change the High Profile from 4.1 to 4.0 and it'll work, but most times it doesn't. I'm sure I've been using the 2010 profile from original instructions I got either at this forum or another one about that particular player, that the 2010 profile was the most compatible with various files and formats. And I have to say until this problem with the AR, I've never had so much as a hiccup with the profile and playback of any files. It does transcode more files, but then it plays them back perfectly, so I don't mind the transcoding.

HandBrake just removes the black useless borders, which is actually how the majority of my mkv files are. With the 2010 profile, 13 out of the last batch of 35 blurays playback in forced 16:9 rather than the correct AR. But that means 22 mkvs ripped with the identical settings with HandBrake do playback in the correct AR (see first post for MediaInfo for The Search for Spock that plays perfectly, it shows width of 1920, height of 818, the black top/bottom bands removed, and plays perfectly with correct AR). There shouldn't be a difference like that when MediaInfo is identical.

So if I switch to using the 2013 profile, it solves one problem of the AR, but creates another bigger problem where I'll have to re-encode quite a lot of mkv files because they won't play at all with that profile. Here's the MediInfo from one older mkv file that won't play under the 2013 profile that played perfectly under 2010 as an example:

If you want to debug the problem using 2010, the log needs to show the playback of both files not just Khan, and the we need the ffmpeg details per my 3rd howto below.

After this command:


a lot of info appears, but I can't find a way to output the text from it. It keeps giving an error at the end that says "At least one output file must be specified" and I can't find a way around that. What am I missing? Using the usual > textfilename.txt gives the same error (or any other variation I could think of).

OS is Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.

That "error" is not an issue when using the command this way. Post the output as it is - it will aid others help you.

Can't help but think it would be better to modify the 2013 profile to transcode those files that aren't playing rather than using the 2010 profile to transcode everything (eg. files with DTS audio probably need to be transcoded for your player).

It's that everything plays perfectly with the 2010 profile. If I'm doing something stupid when ripping the disks (always a possibility! ), this seems the most likely way to find out as well. But if the blurays are ripped with the same video settings for all movies, you would think either all of the movies will be forced to 16:9, or all of the movies will display at their correct AR letterboxed, not the mix that I'm getting from the same settings.

Anyway, I hope all the necessary logs are included this time. Just to keep all the info in one post:
OS is Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, Serviio is v1.5.2 using the Sony BDP-Sx70/SMP-N100 (2010) profile, Sony bluray player is BDP-S5100.

The Wrath of Khan is forced into 16:9, The Search for Spock displays at the correct AR. Out of a dozen of the ST movies, 5 of them play forced to 16:9, the rest are perfect.

Logs for the movie that does display correctly, The Search for Spock.

Well Serviio treats both files the same and generates the same ffmpeg command.

So, lets clarify what you mean by "scrunched" for Khan. Both movies should play with black bars top and bottom because the ffmpeg output shows Spock=2.35 and Khan with bigger black bars at ~2.38.
Do you mean that Khan has bigger black bars than this or none? If bigger by how much?

The thing is the Khan ffmpeg out put shows 2 SAR/DAR values. ( [SAR 12019:12000 DAR 119:50], SAR 1:1 DAR 240:101 ) I have never seen this before so I do not know what ffmpeg or your player will do with it.

To determine if the problem is your player or ffmpeg, you need to run ffmpeg against the transcoded Khan .stf file and see its SAR/DAR values. If they are unchanged I would think its your player that cannot handle it. If it is changed then it will show what ffmpeg did with it. My guess is that ffmpeg changed it since your player can handle the file as is from USB.

In any case it would appear that handbrake has created this 2 value problem and you need to recode these videos to get a clean SAR/DAR value.

One other possibility is the mp4toannexb parameter. Zip has posted elsewhere that "The filter is only needed when remuxing h264 from mp4 to mpegts" viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7141&p=50961&hilit=mp4toannexb#p51478 but it is used here for mkv to mpegts so this may be the problem. Lets see the .stf output to further debug this.

What I mean by "scrunched" for Khan is that the movie has no black bars at all, it is not letterboxed as it should be. The full image is forced into 16:9 AR for some reason, which of course displays everyone looking taller and skinnier.

I don't think you wanted me to upload a 5 GB .stf file, so used the ffmpeg -i command and got this for The Wrath of Khan:


And in case ffmpeg -bsfs is of any use here (picked up from the other thread you referenced):


Is there some way to prevent HandBrake from doing this? When I ripped these movies, I used identical settings in HB for the video (a few extra audio streams were AAC or AC3, that was the only change at times), and checking the other 4 movies that don't display letterboxed they also show the 2 SAR/DAR values you noticed. So I'm not sure how I can set it to force HB to do it any differently.

I also have the Sony BDP-S5200 player on a 2nd TV which displays the same 5 movies without being letterboxed, the same as the S5100.

So the ffmpeg output shows it used the first set of SAR/DAR values which should have given you a 2.38 aspect ratio but you got full screen.

Rename your transcoding.stf to transcoding.mkv and play it from (1)USB and also in a (2)PC player like VLC, and see what aspects you get.
Also to ensure that the annnexb parameter is not causing the problem run
and also play it from (3)USB and a (4)PC player like VLC and see what aspects you get.

Depending on which ones are full screen and which ones are 2.38 letterboxed we should be able to figure out the problem.

I can't help you with handbrake. Maybe its all OK and the double ffmpeg values are normal.

When I play the renamed transcoding.mkv on the PC (used both PotPlayer and VLC) it plays in the correct AR. When I play the renamed file on the S5100 from a USB drive, the file is scrunched into 16:9.

Your command gave an error though and ended with a failed to convert, here's the entire text from it:


Edit with more info discovered tonight: I'm beginning to think that there's some glitch with HandBrake that caused the problem and the 2 SAR/DAR values. It's always the mkv files with the 2 values as you noted, I went through them all to be sure. After reading through the other post you linked and digging up more info about SAR/DAR, I decided to redo The Wrath of Khan but using Strict anamorphic. Before I left the default of Loose/2, and rips always turned out fine and played perfectly, until this last batch. Before I switched that setting from Loose to Strict though, I noticed that when I loaded the same exact profile I had saved and used for all the movies that it now gave an output size of 1904 x 800. Before it was 1920 x 808 for the same profile with Loose/2 for the same movie. So I reripped the movie twice, once with the same settings of Loose/2 and once changed to Strict. They both turned out near identical in file size, both were 1904 x 800, and both play perfectly in the correct AR as they should on the Sony players. Now I would have expected the difference with the Strict setting, but I'm stumped why now the Loose setting also plays perfect. I had ripped that movie several times before thinking I had some setting off causing the problem, and each time it turned out the same. So possibly it's just a HandBrake glitch that happens only once in awhile? The ffmpeg info now shows only 1 SAR/DAR value for both the newest Loose/2 and the Strict rips I just finished up. I also did another of the off movies using Strict and it's also playing perfect with correct AR.

So now I have 13 of the blurays to rerip and from now on I'll stick to the Strict setting always. I doubt I could reproduce the problem using Loose/2 after seeing the same profile rip play the movie perfectly, but I think Strict will be pretty foolproof to be correct (if my assumption is right at least).

Thank you for the help with this, I learned a lot from it too.

Ok your results show that the annexb parameter is required for mkv transcoding to mpegts as well as for mp4, and that the 2 DAR/SAR parameters cause ffmpeg to change something that seems to impact only the S5100 AR.

So it does seem a handbrake problem that must be resolved by changing handbrake to output the single SAR/DAR values, as you have done.

Glad I could help.

As an FYI: the S3100 will playback DTS native, including Master Audio, so I don't think the S5100 will require transcoding.

He posted above that he tried the Spock video without transcoding(profile 2013) and it failed. We did not analyse why nor did he post a log of that to confirm that it did not transcode and tried to play the raw file. Does seem strange since apparently that raw file does play correctly from USB, and the ffmpeg output for the raw file looks correct with a single SAR/DAR.

Just to clarify about using the 2013 profile, at first it didn't make a difference, but I only shut down and restarted the server within the Serviio Console, which I though was enough. Later I tried it again but first shutting down the Serviio Console and Server completely, deleting all previous transcoding files and all logs, and then restarted the service from Windows Services. After doing that the Star Trek movies with the wrong AR did play correctly under 2013, but the tradeoff was that other older mkv files wouldn't play at all. Or they would take forever to start playing where you'd wait over a minute of a black screen not knowing if the movie would eventually start or you'd be kicked back to the movie list. With the 2013 profile, there's very few times any transcoding takes place for most files, so I would expect it to be faster playback, not slower. Using the 2010 profile that will transcode all the mkv files, it's near instant playback even on the largest of files and without any stuttering at all.

I just get better, faster, more reliable playback using the 2010 profile. At least until this last AR issue at least.

One set of problem movies for me is the Star Wars Despecialized Editions under the 2013 profile, they take forever to load and then will playback with very bad stuttering, if they playback at all. Although one of those movies, The Empire Strikes Back, only plays in the scrunched 16:9 under the 2010 profile for me and no matter how I re-encode it, I can't get that fixed. Rips off my own bluray set don't have that problem.

When I try the ffmpeg -i command on that particular movie, because there are 30 subtitles, the video stream info scrolls off and it doesn't let me scroll up past subtitles 15 or so. Is there any way to output all of the text into a file or to the clipboard to be able to read it all? Using the usual old DOS commands of /p to pause the screen or > filename.txt for file output (turns out blank) or | clip to copy to the clipboard (pasting also is blank again) don't seem to work.

ffmpeg -I filename 2> output.txt

Thank you, that works, I was missing the 2 in the command.