Serviio

Hi All,

I am a Plex user, but would like to have a look at Serviio as I hear it is a bit lighter on resources, especially on the server side.
Can anyone tell me if Serviio will run on ARM devices like the Odroid-XU3? For plex I have had to run the Synology NAS binary as it is not open source.

Is Serviio open source? I don't see any links if that is the case ..
Also, I am having trouble finding a list of plugins for Serviio, as I use a lot of free movie plugins for Plex (like G2G)

Many thanks and sorry for all the questions.

EDIT: Actually I see that the ARchLinux AUR repo has Serviio available, I will see if it runs ok.
EDIT2: Well it works mostly on the XU3. I am having issues with 1080p MKV files, but all the rest play ok, at least on my Panasonic TV.

Which brings me to another point. Will the MediaBrowser client run on an ARM machine?
ACtually I tried it on my laptop, but when loading a movie just spins the wheel and does nothing ..

I guess this forum is pretty dead ...

Actually, this forum is usually pretty fast in responding. However, there are fewer members that can answer questions about using Serviio on computers other than Windows, Mac or Linux PC boxes.

For plug-ins, there's a separate sub-forum, and one member makes a file with all available plug-ins.

Serviio is not open source, but it is freeware with a paid upgraded version that adds the web based media browser. The media browser that ships with Serviio may or may not work on an ARM platform, but almost any web browser can access MediaBrowser. The question would be if your computer can provide enough power to transcode the video (I believe that transcoding is required for almost anything using MediaBrowser, but I could be wrong). Your 1080 MKV files may also be encountering a lack of power issue.

If Serviio only has to stream your video without transcoding, it requires very little in the way of computing power. However, throw any sort of transcoding in and processing power becomes much more important. Especially depending on what format the video is being transcoded to. Transcoding to MPEG2 doesn't take much power, but H264 takes quite a bit. If you're working with an HD video, I have doubts an ARM processor could keep up. So, depending on your Panasonic TV capabilities, and the files you are starting with, something running on an ARM CPU could be fine or might have issues. It sounds like you've already determined that it is underpowered. Depending on your TV, there might be a profile that fits your TV requirements better than the one that is chosen by Serviio.

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I don't think my ARM (Samsung xynos 8-core) is underpowered ... when transcoding I only see 4 cores using 50% cpu, the other 4 cores are doing very little.
Other 1080p content is fine, it was only the 1080p MKV file that had issues .... just got lines on screen, so it's almost as though the format wasn't supported rather than a power issue.

Maybe ffmpeg needs some more options turned on when I compiled it ...

Well, I guess my knowledge of ARM is lacking. I didn't know they have them with that many cores!

Of course, core count alone isn't the full measure of a CPU, but from your load levels it sounds like you are not starving for power. I'm not familiar with the different build options available for FFMPEG, so you may be on to something there.

Remember that a MKV file is simply a container. The video and audio codecs contained within are far more critical to know to determine where the issue(s) might be. Run FFMPEG -i against the file and post the results here. Might not hurt to also post one that plays fine.