SvtPlay

[ottomatic]

I have the exact same problem as you Swehawk. The picture looks good but stutter i.e not smoothly. I have a 100mbit broadband(tested to 112!) and a very fast i7 processor which has almost no load at all when I transcode. So I don't think this is a CPU-issue. If it's CPU-issue, is there a way to give Serviio more attention regarding transcoding, so it at least uses 70-90% of available CPU-resources instead of 3%. I have tested with 4-8 CPU's in the transcoding tab of serviio.

Anyway many thanks for a great and free product!

Please continue this discussion in Swehawk's thread in the Transcoding forum.

Regards

/ O

About:Live streams
Looking at http://www.svtplay.se/?tab=live&sida=1, not all SVT shows are listed, mainly news, sports and related stuff.
However, on http://www.svtplay.se/kanaler, all shows on all 5 SVT channels are listed. Is it possible to add all of those to Serviio?
I would very much like to watch some not listed shows (e.g Lögnen tonight at SVT2) live in high quality since I don't have a HD TV box.

P.S I never seem to stop bothering you Otto, do I?

[ottomatic]

About:Live streams
Looking at http://www.svtplay.se/?tab=live&sida=1, not all SVT shows are listed, mainly news, sports and related stuff.
However, on http://www.svtplay.se/kanaler, all shows on all 5 SVT channels are listed. Is it possible to add all of those to Serviio?
I would very much like to watch some not listed shows (e.g Lögnen tonight at SVT2) live in high quality since I don't have a HD TV box.

P.S I never seem to stop bothering you Otto, do I?

No problem. How can I make improvements if I don't know what to improve?

I'm on it!

[ottomatic]

Hi everyone,

Here is a beta of version 1.1.8 of the plugin with support for the live channels at http://www.svtplay.se/kanaler.

When I tested it on my server it crashed, but that might have had to do with hardware issues.
Just to be on the safe side I upload it here now as a beta. Please test it and report back. I will be away from my Serviio server for acouple of days, so this is the best way for me to get this tested.

Regards.

/ O

[n3mmr]

I e I start playback of, say, Lögnen part 24 on my not so trusty WD TV Live HD. About 15-20 minutes, while Taner explains to the suited up boss what he's found out about the phone records of Arif, the image freezes in a closeup of that sweaty face. Gaaaah.

I try my Sony BD and that freezes too, in the same spot....

In disgust we pour another glass of wine and just happen to leave my Sony BD running with the sound off. After 15-20 minutes we realise this and start watching the TV, and this time things go smoothly. Lögnen part 24 runs smoothly to the end.

Today I tried a few other shows: Molanders part 2, a Richard Dawkins show about genetics and a few otrhers. Same behaviour.

They hang, consistently at one spot, 2 or three times, and then they suddenly are OK.


What could this be??

I have only the TED and Svtplay plugins installed.

serviio v 1.1 and SvtPlay plugin v 1.1.6.

Any ideas??

[n3mmr]

One more thing:


I tried using the online SVT direct channels and SVTPlay shows from my android phone+PlugPlayer DLNA control+MXPlayer, and all is absolutely PURRFECT.

So, I guess my problems with SVTPlay are likely to be remuxing and/or transcoding related.

Can somebody advise??

I run ffmpeg 1.1.2, compiled to suit the 1.2 beta of serviio.

My (failing) renderers are one WD TV Live HD and a Sony BDP-S370, both on their latest respective standard mfg FW versions.

I tried SVTplay live first time yesterday. I started with v1.7 and URL: "http://www.svtplay.se/?tab=live&sida=1". The shows were displayed nicely in my player browser, but when I tried to play a show my player froze completely. Restarted the player and tried again, now the player entered standby

Next I upgraded to v1.8beta with URL "http://www.svtplay.se/kanaler" and my browser then displayed the "now playing" shows for each of the 5 channels. Nice!
Still, my player crashes as soon as I hit Play! Not so nice

I'm trying to figure out how playing live content works, correct me if I'm wrong, but I presume that when playing live content, Serviio doesn't create a temp-file on the HDD? Cashing in memory instead perhaps? Anyway, it should use the same <online transcoding> profile as when playing "non-live" streams, should't it?

II'll be back asap with debug logs, which hopefully wil cast some light over what's going on!

Edit: added log

@n3mmr: Did you monitor what was going on in your server when the playback froze? Like CPU-load, memory used etc? What about HDD free-space? Do you have a stable inet connection?

[n3mmr]

I tried SVTplay live first time yesterday. I started with v1.7 and URL: "http://www.svtplay.se/?tab=live&sida=1". The shows were displayed nicely in my player browser, but when I tried to play a show my player froze completely. Restarted the player and tried again, now the player entered standby

Next I upgraded to v1.8beta with URL "http://www.svtplay.se/kanaler" and my browser then displayed the "now playing" shows for each of the 5 channels. Nice!
Still, my player crashes as soon as I hit Play! Not so nice

I'm trying to figure out how playing live content works, correct me if I'm wrong, but I presume that when playing live content, Serviio doesn't create a temp-file on the HDD? Cashing in memory instead perhaps? Anyway, it should use the same <online transcoding> profile as when playing "non-live" streams, should't it?

II'll be back asap with debug logs, which hopefully wil cast some light over what's going on!

Check out: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9203

That might be what's the problem, HLS streams are difficult.

Check out: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9203
That might be what's the problem, HLS streams are difficult.

Thanks n3mmr, but most of that is over my head Still, I picked up the idea of installing VLC 2.0.5 and run it as upnp client, just to see if the stream would play, but VLC doesn't even see Serviio, only my Asset upnp server

[n3mmr]

Check out: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9203
That might be what's the problem, HLS streams are difficult.

Thanks n3mmr, but most of that is over my head Still, I picked up the idea of installing VLC 2.0.5 and run it as upnp client, just to see if the stream would play, but VLC doesn't even see Serviio, only my Asset upnp server

mostly over my head, too. still, I doubt we can fix this by random fiddling with various additions or version changes. something is not right with the way serviio handles hls streams, which is what svt channels is serving up to serviio.

mostly over my head, too. still, I doubt we can fix this by random fiddling with various additions or version changes. something is not right with the way serviio handles hls streams, which is what svt channels is serving up to serviio.

Hmmmm ... but what's the difference betweeen playing live streams and playing "non live" streams from SVTplay? I mean, I have no problem playing "non live" streams! Are they not HLS streams then?

Just a "stupid" question: Should SVTplay live URLs be added to "Web resources" or to "Live streams"? I added them to "Web resources", right or wrong?

[n3mmr]

mostly over my head, too. still, I doubt we can fix this by random fiddling with various additions or version changes. something is not right with the way serviio handles hls streams, which is what svt channels is serving up to serviio.

Hmmmm ... but what's the difference betweeen playing live streams and playing "non live" streams from SVTplay? I mean, I have no problem playing "non live" streams! Are they not HLS streams then?

Just a "stupid" question: Should SVTplay live URLs be added to "Web resources" or to "Live streams"? I added them to "Web resources", right or wrong?

Actually, the streams under film&drama are NOT hls streams, no.

Do try your idea, I might too, when I'm back at home

[n3mmr]

mostly over my head, too. still, I doubt we can fix this by random fiddling with various additions or version changes. something is not right with the way serviio handles hls streams, which is what svt channels is serving up to serviio.

Hmmmm ... but what's the difference betweeen playing live streams and playing "non live" streams from SVTplay? I mean, I have no problem playing "non live" streams! Are they not HLS streams then?

Just a "stupid" question: Should SVTplay live URLs be added to "Web resources" or to "Live streams"? I added them to "Web resources", right or wrong?

Actually, the streams under film&drama are NOT hls streams, no.

Do try your idea, I might too, when I'm back at home

For those of us who are reasonably fluent in swedish, this link: http://planka.huggpunkt.org/topic/68/
goes into a lot of detail concerning what the problem is with these new stream formats, i e HDS and HLS.

[ottomatic]

Hmmmm ... but what's the difference betweeen playing live streams and playing "non live" streams from SVTplay? I mean, I have no problem playing "non live" streams! Are they not HLS streams then?

The plugin delivers Content items to serviio. Each content item will include a title, stream urls fotr different qualities and some optional info such as a path to a thumbnail image.

When the plugin can determine that a show is indeed live, it flags it as such. This may or may not affect the way Serviio attempts to relay the info to the DLNA client.

One obviuos difference between Live streams and Video On Demand streams is that it is (usually) possible to skip backwards and forwards in the latter (although this feature is sometimes disabled in some clients when the VOD stream is transcoded, depending on difficulties in assesing future output of the transcoded stream).

Just a "stupid" question: Should SVTplay live URLs be added to "Web resources" or to "Live streams"? I added them to "Web resources", right or wrong?

It is still a web resource. The type "Live stream" is supposed to be used when you actually have a known address to a live stream (and not to a web page presenting a live stream).

[ottomatic]

Check out: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9203
That might be what's the problem, HLS streams are difficult.

Thanks n3mmr, but most of that is over my head Still, I picked up the idea of installing VLC 2.0.5 and run it as upnp client, just to see if the stream would play, but VLC doesn't even see Serviio, only my Asset upnp server

mostly over my head, too. still, I doubt we can fix this by random fiddling with various additions or version changes. something is not right with the way serviio handles hls streams, which is what svt channels is serving up to serviio.

I agree; the error is somewhere between Serviio and ffmpeg, and not inside this particular plugin.

I'll see if I can assist the Serviio developers in finding out what goes wrong. There may be some simple correction of the ffmpeg parameters. it is a bit scary that the whole machine can be brought to its knees by this ffmepeg command. It points to something being wrong both with the issued command and with ffmpeg's HLS demuxer.

Like I have stated before, there really is no alternative way for the plugin to support these shows right now as ffmpeg does not have HDS support. Using the well known AdobeHDS.php script in the tool chain is out of the question.

Just want to say that the effort you (and other developers) put in is very much appreciated by us users. It can't be said often enough!!

[n3mmr]

I can add that xbmc 12.0 on openelec 3.0 RC2 works perfectly with serviio, the svtplay plugin and the Channels set of true live channels. Delay compared to watching on a free-to-air transmission is around 30 seconds, but it runs smoothly.

Note that it takes about 10-15 seconds before it actually is smooth: I suppose some info used for long stream chunks might take 15 seconds to get hold of??

It seems that the stream is actually transcoded in spite of xbmc using the generic profile. Odd??

[ottomatic]

I can add that xbmc 12.0 on openelec 3.0 RC2 works perfectly with serviio, the svtplay plugin and the Channels set of true live channels. Delay compared to watching on a free-to-air transmission is around 30 seconds, but it runs smoothly.

Note that it takes about 10-15 seconds before it actually is smooth: I suppose some info used for long stream chunks might take 15 seconds to get hold of??

It seems that the stream is actually transcoded in spite of xbmc using the generic profile. Odd??

I have no idea how xmbc presents itself to serviio. Same with your android + plugplay setup above. If you enable debug log perhaps you can see what's going on.

The 10-15 second scruff has to do with key frames and other bits and pieces used to update the video canvas without having to send each pixel in the stream. In a VOD scenario you can be pretty certain that the decoder gets all the info it needs at the start of the stream to to perform the decoding, but in a live stream scenario you just plunge right in and have to wait for the necessary info to show up in the stream, which it does periodically.

[ottomatic]

I'm hoping that this may solve the live HLS stream issues in the next version of Serviio:

https://bitbucket.org/xnejp03/serviio/i ... -if-source

While waiting for that, I'll examine if a wrapper, removing the "-bsf:v h264_mp4toannexb " switch, may do the trick.

EDIT: It does seem to do the trick. Attaching new wrapper file (for Windows) which works for me for watching live hls streams using my Samsung Bluray player as Serviio client.

EDIT 2 (2013-02-12 9:52 AM): Please use with caution. I made the wrapper late last night and didn't think of the quoting issues we ran into the last time we fiddled with a wrapper. Also, do note that if you use this wrapper, your proper .MP4-files may not be rendered properly through Serviio.

[ottomatic]

To clarify things regarding the live shows: it is an error in the command Serviio 1.1 issues when REMUXING the live HLS streams. This will happen if your renderer has the capability to play h264 streams.

In this scenario, if you want to watch live shows (before Serviio 1.2 is released) and you don't care to try a wrapper and you do have the CPU-cycles to transcode HD content on the fly, you can force transcoding of the content by adding the following to your renderer profile:

  Code:

      <OnlineTranscoding>
         <Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetVCodec="mpeg2video" targetACodec="ac3" aBitrate="384" forceInheritance="true">
            <Matches container="applehttp" vCodec="h264" aCodec="aac" />
         </Video>
      </OnlineTranscoding>


If you have a remuxing section (i.e. a similar section but WITHOUT the targetVCodec attribute in the Video tag), make sure to comment out any "Matches" tag with applehttp containter attribute inside it.