Serviio

Hello,

I've had quite a bit of success over the weekend watching live streams via Serviio on both my Samsung TV and on other PC's using VLC. If I save the stream in VLC to a file (using the default option of saving in H.264 format) I get a file that VLC will play back no problems. However, if I then include the file in on of the media folders that I share via Serviio the file appears in the list but won't play back via the TV (I get an error stating that the file contains no content).

Note that when I save the stream in VLC I'm right-clicking the stream from Serviio's list of available online streams and clicking "save" (so Serviio is acting as the proxy for the stream which is then sent to VLC for saving). Also (if it's of relevance) when saving the stream I'm giving it a MP4 extension.

So I have two questions:
1. Am I doing something wrong that might mean my saved stream file can't be served by Serviio?
2. Should I try another client or method of saving the stream (and if so, what client/method can anyone suggest).

Many thanks for any suggestions anyone can offer...

Cheers

post ffmpeg -I of the file

I get this output when running ffmpeg -i against the file:

ffmpeg version 1.1.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers
built on Feb 5 2013 21:59:54 with gcc 4.7.2 (GCC)
configuration: --enable-static --disable-shared --disable-ffplay --disable-ffs
erver --enable-memalign-hack --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libass --enable-librtm
p --enable-fontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-zlib --extra-libs='-lrtmp -l
polarssl -lws2_32 -lwinmm -lexpat -lfreetype -lfribidi -lz' --arch=x86 --enable-
runtime-cpudetect --enable-pthreads --target-os=mingw32 --cross-prefix=i686-w64-
mingw32- --pkg-config=pkg-config
libavutil 52. 13.100 / 52. 13.100
libavcodec 54. 86.100 / 54. 86.100
libavformat 54. 59.106 / 54. 59.106
libavdevice 54. 3.102 / 54. 3.102
libavfilter 3. 32.100 / 3. 32.100
libswscale 2. 1.103 / 2. 1.103
libswresample 0. 17.102 / 0. 17.102
[h264 @ 023AC740] reference picture missing during reorder
[h264 @ 023AC740] reference count overflow
[h264 @ 023AC740] decode_slice_header error
[h264 @ 023AC740] number of reference frames (0+5) exceeds max (4; probably corr
upt input), discarding one
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'Giro 2013-05-06.mp4':
Metadata:
major_brand : isom
minor_version : 0
compatible_brands: mp41avc1qt
creation_time : 2013-05-06 16:30:39
encoder : vlc 2.0.6 stream output
encoder-eng : vlc 2.0.6 stream output
Duration: 01:35:25.52, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 994 kb/s
Stream #0:0(eng): Audio: mp2 (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, stereo, s16p, 12
8 kb/s
Metadata:
creation_time : 2013-05-06 16:30:39
handler_name : SoundHandler
Stream #0:1(eng): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 720x404 [
SAR 1:1 DAR 180:101], 859 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 1001 tbn, 100 tbc
Metadata:
creation_time : 2013-05-06 16:30:39
handler_name : VideoHandler
At least one output file must be specified

The Serviio log shows this when the media library update is attempted:

2013-05-06 19:37:18,448 INFO [LibraryAdditionsCheckerThread] Added file 'Giro 2013-05-06.mp4' (title: Giro 2013-05-06) to Library
2013-05-06 19:37:18,473 WARN [LibraryManager] Skipping processing metadata for an unsupported file. Message: Unknown video file type.

When I open the file in VLC and look at the media information it gives the following info (amongst other things):

Stream 0:
Type: Audio
Codec: Mpeg Audio Layer 1/2/3 (mpga)
Language: English
Sample Rate: 44khz
Bit Rate: 128 kb/s

Stream 1:
Type: Video
Codec: H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)
Language: English
Resolution: 720x404
Frame Rate: 25
Decoded Format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV

Let me know if you want any more detail...

Thanks

I just did a bit of playing around with ffmpeg, recording streams that are being buffered by Serviio from online sources. I used the following command line to save the stream:

ffmpeg -i "http://192.168.1.31:8895/resource/1000000100001795/MEDIA_ITEM/AVC_TS_MP_SD_AC3_ISO-0/ORIGINAL" -acodec copy -vcodec copy "test.mp4"

(note that I just copied the source URL from VLC for the local Serviio link).

This saves the file OK and can be opened using VLC but Serviio is giving much the same result when I try to get Serviio to host the file for streaming over DLNA. I'm wondering if I need to get ffmpeg to transcode the file as it saves it but I'm not sure why I'd need to do this if Serviio is able to stream the original source.

Doh I just realised that actually the file saved with ffmpeg can be served up by Serviio. So I think the problem lies with the way VLC saves stream data. I tested a few other files that I created from streams using ffmpeg (via Serviio) and they work fine too when served up as files in Serviio. So it looks like it's all working OK