Serviio

Hello everyone,

I installed Serviio today and am using it as a DLNA server. I added my movies and that works fine. It's actually the only DLNA program I found that works for my Toshiba TV and will actually play the files. I also uploaded 6 seasons of Big Bang Theory but when I click under series it will only show seasons 4-6 (and with season four it has two ** next to it in the name which is really irritating me if I can get rid of those two ** i would appreciate it). However Seasons 1-3 show up under folders...documents...but not series. I have tried searching the forums all morning and can't really find anything that helps. Although from what I have read I am assuming it has to do with the naming of the files. I am not very familiar with Serviio just yet so be as detailed as possible with instructions. I am not sure how to create a log either

Also I have a few questions about playback. When I am playing some of my movies it delays a little. Is that something wrong with my TV or Serviio? They are Bluray rips. Should I be transcoding the files? They are mkv files and my tv is wireless? How many CPU to use? etc

Thanks for your time and any help is much appreciated

i have renamed the files according to this http://www.serviio.org/component/conten ... extraction and i did a force refresh and still nothing

Nervemind I figured it out. Even though I was naming the file one of the ways in the link it wouldn't except it. I tried it a different way and it worked.

Glad to see you got the file naming worked out.

The "**" shows you the last episode you watched or started to watch. I don't believe you can remove it, but most people find it a handy feature.

A small delay on start up of a video is normal - generally it's because it's transcoding (are some of your mkv's being transcoded?), but it may be your TV. It may also be because your PC is doing other things - has your library build process finished for example.

How many CPUs to use - all of them - only back off if your PC becomes unresponsive during playback (and this worries you). This is only relevant to transcoding btw - my view is give the transcoding engine as much CPU as you can and it can finish the process quicker - after finishing your CPU usage will drop to normal.

Transcoding is only used when it's needed (assuming you have the correct profile selected) so I'd recommend leaving it enabled so that you can play videos that are not otherwise playable on your tv. If needed, optimise your renderer profile to minimise transcoding.

Thanks for your reply.

I left transcoding on. As far as my laptop it has 8 cores. Right now its set to optimal so should I change it to 8? And as far as the lagging is concerned I noticed that It does it with Serviio and my Seagate server. When I am watching something the video will freeze and the audio will keep going or sometimes both at a time. I will have to fast forward a little and it syncs or kicks me out but it does this constantly on both servers. Do you think this might be happening because my TV is wireless?

Also I recently got a sound bar and am connecting it with HDMI ARC. I wonder it that could be the problem. Now that I am thinking this started happening after I connected the sound bar. But would a sound bar cause this sort of problem? Its a toshiba sound bar and tv.

This is the likely culprit, particularly if your laptop is also wireless.

None the less, you can rule out whether its your laptop itself by monitoring your CPU usage during transcoding - if you start task manager you can see what your CPU is doing. Look at the overall CPU usage and also look for the ffmpeg process and see what CPU it is using. Try it with both the "Optimal" setting and by setting 8 cores and see if it makes a difference. Probably won't notice much - with 8 cores you should have plenty of grunt for most transcoding jobs.

Similarly, you can also test if it's the soundbar easily enough - unplug it (pull the HDMI cable) and see if there's a difference. Also doubt this is causing it.

But my money is on the wireless. Are you able to try a wired connection, if not to the TV then at least to the laptop (if not already wired)?

So it looks like it was the sound bar. I unplugged the HDMI Arc and it didn't lag and kick me out. So is it a bad sound bar? or could it still be the TV having a hard time processing the audio/video when connected to the sound bar/DLNA server with the TV being wirelessly connected.

Can I get a wall plug ethernet adapter or will that still give a weak signal?

Well that's a new one! I can't think of why the soundbar would effect it, maybe it is as you suggest simply loading up the TV with too much to do... even though I can't see that audio redirection to HDMI is processor intensive??!

Is the soundbar a DLNA enabled device? Is it connected - maybe this is effecting things - can you disconnect it from ethernet/wireless and test... but this is all guessing.

I wouldn't think changing from wireless to wired ethernet will help in this case - but so far my suggestions haven't been on the mark, so who knows - you may want to try it by moving the TV to the router before you go to the expense of powerpacks.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/elec ... 049367.htm

According to the link it is not DLNA capable. It doesn't have an ethernet port or is wireless capable.