Panasonic Viera and Serviio

[trampas]

I have a Panasonic Viera TX-L42D25B TV and a Windows 7 PC. Many thanks for Serviio, after a search for DLNA servers it seemed the best choice. On the TV through Serviio MP3s play well and also JPGs. I have set 'General DLNA profile' and unchecked the online metadata boxes. Video seems to work around half of the time. When it does it works perfectly but many of my avi files are XVID and some of these again work fine, some start and after a few seconds stop and others do not play at all with message about not being able to handle the file. I have looked at these with GSpot and there seems to be little and in some cases no difference between those that work and those that do not - apart from a few bytes in file length. Anything else I can try?

Intel UPNP Tools 'Device Spy' does not show the TV - my wife's PC which is similarly connected by homeplugs through the router shows up. This means I cannot get the TV data that you may want. Any ideas?

[zip]

Are you on wifi or wired network? It's possible the data stream dries up or connection hangs for a bit....

[trampas]

I am on wired (through homeplugs). Looking at the log (DEBUG) the files are sent 'in native format'. Presumably this means that the issue is with the TV unless the file does stop getting sent for some reason. Others work consistently okay though. I am doing a test by recoding one of the 'bad' XDIV files using a different converter.
Any thoughts on the profile for the TV and why I do not see it in 'Device Spy' - Serviio does!!

[zip]

Some of the devices are not visible in DeviceSpy for some reason. Not sure why, it's an external tool.

[trampas]

Okay - I have looked at a lot of videos with GSpot. All of the ones that fail to play, or play for a few seconds and then stop, or play for a few seconds then start to break up and then stop have the converter software listed as 'transcode'. I reconverted one of these using XVID/MP3 as per the original and the new avi works fine!!! As I know that sometimes the audio can cause problems I reconverted again but left the video as original (no processing) but converted the audio to MP3/44100/128. This new avi also works fine - and with no degradation in the video of course.
More research needed but if I only have to convert the audio track then this saves a lot of time.

Any thoughts on how I go about getting the info to set up a profile for this TV - or is the generic one okay?

[zip]

Any thoughts on how I go about getting the info to set up a profile for this TV - or is the generic one okay?

Start with the generic one, try playing different file formats. If you find some files that don't play, try another profile - if you find one that plays the file, make a note of it. We can then compile a profile from those notes.

[trampas]

Still trying different things. I have noticed that if I boot up my pc (Windows 7 Pro) which starts Serviio and the turn on the TV, the TV does not see Serviio. If I leave the TV on (or turn it off )and then stop/start the Serviio windows service (then turn on the TV if necessary) then the TV sees Serviio and I can watch videos etc. The logs (INFO only) look the same in each case - any thoughts?

[zip]

I was thinking it might be possible if the Serviio service starts before a Windows service that manages network - but I'm not sure if it's even possible. I know some dependencies can be setup in a Windows service config, if you can figure out which is needed then great

[trampas]

I have set the service to start 'automatic (delayed start)' but it did not seem to make any difference - except that I got a 'cannot connect' message as the the console was starting before the service. The fact that about 20 minutes before I had added my digital photos folder of over 10,000 photos to the library may not have helped
Anyway some time later I noticed that Serviio had appeared on the media server page of the TV. So ... more testing needed by me.

By the way, from the manual, the DLNA data for the TV is:
---------
Applicable data format
Photo : JPEG (Sub-sampling 4:4:4, 4:2:2 or 4:2:0)
Image resolution - 8 × 8 to 30,719 × 17,279 pixels
●MOTION JPEG and Progressive JPEG are not supported.
Video : MPEG-2 (PS format and TS format)
●AVCHD and DivX files are not supported by DLNA, but can be played by Media Player (p. 70).
●Music files are not supported by DLNA, but MP3 and AAC files can be played back by Media Player (p. 73).
---------
Not sure of the significance of 'Music files are not supported' as MP3s play just as well as AVIs(DivX/XVid) with the generic profile.

[zip]

it appeared later because Serviio advertises itself every x minutes. so the first try seems not to work, but the subsequent ones do.

[trampas]

It seems if the TV is off when Serviio advertises itself (every 15 minutes?) then Serviio is not picked up - stop/start of the service makes it work - which makes sense.
Anyway some more testing. I am trying to transcode mp4 and wmv videos. Trying
---
<Transcoding>
<Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetACodec="ac3" targetVCodec="mpeg2video">
<Matches container="mp4" />
<Matches container="asf" />
</Video>
</Transcoding>
---
failed showing a broken up image (not from the video strangely) in both cases. I ran FFMPEG with the parameters from the DEBUG log and got 'Libavcodec has been miscompiled' and stating that it would run slowly or crash. I tried again with the June2010 version of FFMPEG which seemed to work. So back to Serviio and the same broken up image. Then changed the transcoding to '<Video targetContainer="mpeg" targetACodec="ac3" targetVCodec="mpeg2video">' and this time both mp4 and wmv worked!!! The only issue now seems to be the aspect ratio of the transcoded mp4 video (The Bourne Ultimatum - Trailer.mp4 1920x816 or 2.353:1) - any way around that?

[zip]

It seems if the TV is off when Serviio advertises itself (every 15 minutes?) then Serviio is not picked up - stop/start of the service makes it work - which makes sense.

The TV should send search request on its start, so it should still work.

@trampas - did you already find a solution for the wrong aspect ration with the Panasonic Vieara?
I have a TX-P42V20E and I'm facing the same problem.
Would it be ok for you to share your current profile?

It seems if the TV is off when Serviio advertises itself (every 15 minutes?) then Serviio is not picked up - stop/start of the service makes it work - which makes sense.

The TV should send search request on its start, so it should still work.

Unfortunately, not. I have to restart Serviio Service everytime, when i go into "media server" on p42gw20. But I'll look into a problem (javadev too).

I found one more issue with Viera's client. They send "User-Agent" header only once, at the beginning. On all subsequent queries (like GET /resource/10/MEDIA_ITEM/AVC_TS_MP_HD_AAC_MULT5_ISO) there is no any evidence, what kind of server makes a request. As result, if an automatic renderer profile detection is switched on, Serviio responses with 'Generic DLNA Profile'. Shouldn't it keep a kind of a session, remembering what client is on a client machine?

P.s.: there is a new version of ffmpeg. This was important for me: http://roundup.ffmpeg.org/issue1882. Had a broken mkv, but in Serviio log was only "ffmpeg error".

[zip]

Yes, you'll have to select the profile you want and not autodetect in this case. I'm changing profile management right now for the next version so this should hopefully go away.

[trampas]

Sorry, I don't have any kind of sensible modified profile and didn't find any solutions to the aspect ratio issue. Biding my time waiting for updates, trying out the recording functions on the TV (to a USB powered 2.5" drive) and using a separate media player into HDMI.

Yes, you'll have to select the profile you want and not autodetect in this case. I'm changing profile management right now for the next version so this should hopefully go away.

ok.

i have a next problem, related to subtitles. Viera sends a following soap filter request:

  Code:

<filter>
    dc:title,dc:date,res,res@protocolInfo,res@size,res@duration,res@resolution,
    res@dlna:ifoFileURI,res@pv:subtitleFileType,res@pv:subtitleFileUri,upnp:albumArtURI,upnp:album,upnp:artist
</filter>


Serviio responses with that:

  Code:

    <item id="V_F#FOL_R4$F6$MI16" parentID="V_F#FOL_R4$F6" restricted="1">
        <dc:title>1x02</dc:title>
        <upnp:class>object.item.videoItem</upnp:class>
        <dc:date>2006-09-10</dc:date>
        <res duration="0:23:01.000"
            protocolInfo="http-get:*:video/divx:DLNA.ORG_PN=AVI;DLNA.ORG_OP=01;DLNA.ORG_CI=0;DLNA.ORG_FLAGS=01500000000000000000000000000000"
            resolution="640x352" size="183433216">http://192.168.200.40:8895/resource/16/MEDIA_ITEM/AVI</res>
        <res protocolInfo="http-get:*:text/srt:*">http://192.168.200.40:8895/resource/16/SUBTITLE.srt</res>
    </item>

I see, that Viera expects subtitleFileType and subtitleFileUri as parts of a first <res> key, near protocolInfo, resolution, etc. Is it correct? Or I assume smth wrong? If this is correct, is it possible to extend Serviio for Viera to pack the subtitle's type and url into a first <res>?

P.s.: the problem with a necessary restarting Serviio Service after entering Panasonic Media Server menu is solved. I just set a binding address in Serviio settings.

[zip]

Ah, cool. Looks like they support subtitles, although it's their extension. I'll look into it ASAP so we have enough time to test (as you have volunteered )

http://bitbucket.org/xnejp03/serviio/is ... nic-vieira

made some more experiments and changed minidlna for that.

It looks like, Viera doesn't want to download .srt for any .m2ts files. Even if subtitleFileUri was filled in, there is no request to this url coming from TV . With AVI/DIVX/... smth wich is not h264: no problem - it works.

Edit: will try with pgs now...

hi,
any new about this #176 issue ?
i see that the request status is 'ready to be tested', if there is beta tester missing please let me know..

btw
great tool, using almost everyday with panasonic tx-p42g20e

br,
Piotr