Serviio

I own a TC-P55VT60. I recently installed Serviio on my MS Server 2008 to feed from my Panasonic TV and other devices. Before I installed Serviio (should have found you earlier), I converted a MKV video to MP4. The MP4 plays fine on my TV (Panasonic does not support MKV). After installing Serviio, the transcoding appears to be partly working for the MKV. The video starts, the audio plays, but the video does not. I get pause notifications on the TV due to some lag. I tried both available Viera profiles. Is the video issue a problem with the profile for the new Viera TVs, is the transcoding delay affecting the video, or do you have other suggestions? The MKV transcoded video plays on my Android devices properly.

Could you provide information about your file ? (see signature link)

Panasonic has supported most Matroska files since 2011, and they are certainly supported by the VT60. MKV's with high h264 profile levels (like this one) and some rarely used codecs, do however need to be transcoded.

I'd suggest giving the Panasonic 2013 profile a try - currently under development here: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=12367. This has been designed for the 60 series Panasonics. Not only does it support transcoding of higher level profiles, but also will enable you to play your MP4's with AAC audio without transcoding (and has a few other enhancements).

Thank you for your reply. I modified profile.xml to add the Panasonic 2013 profile which you supplied. I tried it on my MS Server 2008 and another Windows 7 machine. The issue remains the same with audio but no video for MKV files. Prior to loading Serviio, the MKV files were not visible on my Panasonic TV through DLNA. What is unusual is that the MKV files play fine on my Android tablet and phone.

I was a little thick on this one. An MKV is just a bucket with video and audio codecs. I would think that the trancoding would translate an unsupported codec, but could the video be something unsupported? Is there software to look inside the MKV?

Yes, transcoding is designed to convert the video stream and/or the audio stream into formats that are compatible with your TV. The profile lets Serviio know what to convert for your particular TV.

The problem here is that your video file - which comprises H264 video and AC3 audio - should be natively supported by your TV (there are a few exceptions - which MediaInfo will help us with).

Yes, the ffmpeg -i command that you posted above, and MediaInfo (see viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4510), which imo provides better detail. Can you please post MediaInfo detail for your file.

Is this happening for all MKV files, or just a selected few? It could simply be a bad encode of the movie (and by bad, I mean something that your TV is rejecting, although it plays in other players). Also what do you mean by "no video" - is it black, or video is pixelated/corrupted, etc.

A quick thing to test is whether the container is dodgey - remux the video using the command:

ffmpeg -i "c:\users\public\videos\The Final Countdown (1980).mkv" -c copy -map 0 "c:\users\public\videos\The Final Countdown (1980) Remuxed.mkv"

and see if the resultant file plays.

I tried the remux and had the same result. When I say no video, I am getting a blank screen. I see that the codec for video is supported. As I mentioned earlier, converting the file to MP4 permits the video playback properly. I included the info for both the MKV and the MP4.

Here is the file info from Mediainfo for the MKV

General
Unique ID : 177447311429149355743133956105597485185 (0x857F1BEB918BA1FD887249A611BE0081)
Complete name : C:\Users\M.J. Bennicelli\Videos\The Final Countdown (1980).mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 1
File size : 1.37 GiB
Duration : 1h 42mn
Overall bit rate : 1 906 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2008-11-12 11:48:48
Writing application : mkvmerge v2.3.0 ('Freak U') built on Sep 8 2008 18:32:16
Writing library : libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 16 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1h 42mn
Bit rate : 1 519 Kbps
Width : 1 056 pixels
Height : 448 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.35:1
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.134
Stream size : 1.06 GiB (78%)
Writing library : x264 core 65 r1024M 2652abe
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=16 / deblock=1:-2:-1 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=7 / psy_rd=1.0:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=4 / nr=0 / decimate=0 / mbaff=0 / bframes=16 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=1519 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 1h 42mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 282 MiB (20%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No

For the MP4 with the same video codec that plays

General
Complete name : C:\Users\M.J. Bennicelli\Videos\The Final Countdown (1980)(2).mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom
File size : 1.27 GiB
Duration : 1h 42mn
Overall bit rate : 1 774 Kbps
ContentType : Unknown Type
Encoded date : UTC 2014-02-07 01:15:50
Tagged date : UTC 2014-02-07 01:15:50
iTunMOVI : <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"><plist version="1.0"><dict><key>copy-warning</key><string>copy_warning</string><key>studio</key><string>studio</string><key>cast</key><array><dict><key>name</key><string></string></dict></array><key>directors</key><array><dict><key>name</key><string></string></dict></array><key>producers</key><array><dict><key>name</key><string></string></dict></array><key>codirectors</key><array><dict><key>name</key><string>codirector</string></dict></array><key>screenwriters</key><array><dict><key>name</key><string></string></dict></array></dict></plist>

Video
ID : 2
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Baseline@L3.0
Format settings, CABAC : No
Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=25
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 1h 42mn
Bit rate : 1 502 Kbps
Width : 1 056 pixels
Height : 448 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.35:1
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 24.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.132
Stream size : 1.08 GiB (85%)
Writing library : P
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Language : English

Audio
ID : 1
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 1h 42mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 265 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 197 MiB (15%)
Language : English

When you are converting to MP4 you are transcoding both the video and audio, and that is fixing the issue. You haven't mentioned whether it is just this file:

• if it is only the one file (or just a few MKV's) then I'd put this down to a bad encode - rather than transcode it using Serviio (which will effect all MKV files) it would be better to simply re-encode the file using Handbrake or the like;
• if it's all MKV's (with a high profile) you can get Serviio to transcode them by adding the line in the 2013 profile - add:
  <Matches container="matroska" vCodec="h264" profile="high" />
  just above the existing line
  <Matches container="*" vCodec="h264" profile="high" levelGreaterThan="4.1" />

Restart your PC (or Serviio Service) after changing profiles.xml.

Winner, winner chicken dinner... That was the one. It is a fully functional file now and there is no buffering pause. Thanks for the help. Just as an aside for someone new to the various codecs, what is your preference for the highest quality videos and audios?

Wrong man to ask I encode for compatibility rather than quality - my devices have limited codec support. Search around though - there are lots of suggestions on this forum, or the Handbrake forum.