Serviio

hello - first off, great piece of software. I used to rely on PS3MS but I find Serviio superior in many ways.

I recently acquired a second 50" Panasonic UT50. It is connected via wired ethernet directly to my router (via a run to my basement). My main PC that runs Serviio (v1.1) is an i7-2600k running Win7 64. I also have a 60" UT50 also connected via wired ethernet, but I am using a WDTV Live box with that one.

So my issue is that the 50", which I use Viera tools with to steam my media, seems to stutter slightly with 1080p movies. The same content on my 60" (using WDTV Live) does not stutter. The stutter is not pronounced, and it is only seen in random scenes and isn't constant, but it is if the video plays "catch up" every so often, but there is no audio lag.

Was wondering if anyone could provide any advice on this matter. Once again the same content run through the WDTV Live does not stutter. Could it be the UT50 on it's own is not powerful enough to run the content without an intermediary box like the WDTV?

Cheers

That looks like the case. In 'busy' scenes the bitrate might go very high and the CPU in the TV probably doesn't cope.

You can check the bitrate here: http://wiki.serviio.org/doku.php?id=vbitrate

Most devices usually cope with bitrates up to 20MBit/sec.

Thanks. Is there anyway to "force" the heavy lifting during transcoding to Serviio/my pc? Instead of exceeding the chips capability in the tv?

I assume the WDTV Live does the heavy lifting in that setup?

Thanks!

You would have to transcode them, look at the Bravia profiles.

We recently purchased a Panasonic TC-P55UT50
My video library is 100% mp4 format, created by myself using handbrake
with my own tweaked settings, etc.

I too noticed that HD material has what I would call random jitter or frame skipping
not really a stutter but something else

I stumbled upon your post, which meant I wasnt alone with the issue
So I dug a little deeper

I have to run a few more tests, to narrow down what x264/AVC setting is the culprit
But I can tell you that bitrate is not the culprit
Its too early to say exactly, but its most likely one of these advanced settings that is the culprit

b_pyramid
mbtree
weightb
weightp

I still have to create all the permutations of some test videos with and without those settings
to see which one it is
I make a test video, that literally had all x264 stuff disabled, and it played without a hitch
for example it was 1920x1080 at 50Mb or higher bitrate AVC/ACC in an mp4 container created with handbrake

will pass on what I discover, once I can get the kids off of the tv to do some tests

FWIW
my previous guesses were not it, this is what I did to narrow it down
handbrake was used to re-eoncode source from a blueray to mp4 and mkv containers with avc video and aac/ac3 audio
after exhausting all permutations of possible settings choices
I have come to the conclusion, that it is bframes that are the issue in avc video
why not sure really, but by not using them, the problem goes away
I went as far as to make an encode with only 1 bframe, and just having 1 bframe was enough to re-create the frame drops/skips