Description of Transcoding Basics

I apologise if I'm asking for something that is plainly out there. But if it is, I can't find it. The problem is this.

I've got many films, and I've just bought a Sony Bravia TV. But I have many AVI's which don't play on several of the Sony Transcoding profiles.

I'm prepared to work at this but I don't see any joined-up description of how to go about it.

Presumably I need to find the structure of each problem file. It appears that MediaInfo might tell me this.
Then I need to find out which parts of the structure my TV does/does not support. I don't know how to find that properly.
Then I need to modify a transcoding profile to send the correct format to my TV. What process do I follow for doing this? I've seen the xml code and it appears fairly simple, but I just don't know what it's doing.

Are there descriptions of these things anywhere, please?

[jhb50]

I apologise if I'm asking for something that is plainly out there. But if it is, I can't find it. The problem is this.

I've got many films, and I've just bought a Sony Bravia TV. But I have many AVI's which don't play on several of the Sony Transcoding profiles.

I'm prepared to work at this but I don't see any joined-up description of how to go about it.

Presumably I need to find the structure of each problem file. It appears that MediaInfo might tell me this. OR FFMPEG
Then I need to find out which parts of the structure my TV does/does not support. I don't know how to find that properly. TV MANUAL
Then I need to modify a transcoding profile to send the correct format to my TV. What process do I follow for doing this? I've seen the xml code and it appears fairly simple, but I just don't know what it's doing. SEE http://www.serviio.org/index.php?option ... icle&id=16 AND http://www.serviio.org/index.php?option ... icle&id=24

Are there descriptions of these things anywhere, please?

See Above

@SolihullRog - For your collection:

There is a snippet in this post http://forum.serviio.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=17311 you may want to add to your sony2013 profile (I suppose you got yourself a NEW Bravia and sony2013 profile applies) to make some more AVIs playable.

Also keep in mind that the H.264 video codec was never specified for the AVI container, as I've read elsewhere. You might have to remux AVI/H.264/<someaudioaswell> to MKV to stay within spec.

At some point in troubleshooting AVI issues, I just got fed up and added some just transcode all s*dd*ng AVIs, no matter what codecs they use rule to my profile. I haven't got that many AVIs anyway and can live with the odd one still not playing.

Hi,

Thanks for your help. My TV is a 2012/2013? Sony W905A

I'm carrying out structured tests and started with the 2013 profile.

I tested 30 AVI's and exactly 15 of them played correctly.

I thought I'd try all the other profiles before asking for more help. Amazingly Sony 2012-US played every one OK, so I'm getting there.

I'm curious to find out what did it so that I have a head-start when I try my other 500+ movies. But I'm glad that my top 30 AVI's now work.

Still got problems with at least one MKV and I'll work on that this afternoon.

So I achieved all my test base of 30 AVIs starting to be played (rather than saying 'Unsupported format' or similar).

Next, I tried a new film - and hit the next hurdle.

It was an AVI and it started to play OK. But after about five minutes there is a crowd scene, and this made the film stutter to a halt (almost). A calm period followed the crowd scene, and the film played as expected. But then there was another crowd scene and the stuttering repeated.

Now, I understand the principle that each whole frame isn't send to the device - only the changes from the previous frame. So much more data has to be processed during the crowd scenes.

I'd just like a little advice on how to address this.

Several of the films that I've tested, run OK. I stream the films to my Sony W905 using Serviio and the Sony 2012US profile, through a 200 MBPS(?) powerline.

I can only think that I need to do one of the following:

Convert from AVIs to remove the transcoding (BIG job!)
Convert the offending files in some other way, such as reducing the frame rate
Buy a pair of 500 MBPS powerline plugs. (The house is fairly new and they aren't used for anything else).
Something else.

Is the most sensible path obvious to you people out there?

The Sony profiles are fairly safe as far as the bandwidth the Bravias can digest is concerned. For the moment, we can rule out the TV itself as the component that can't keep up with the video.

So it looks like, for some reason, the TV doesn't receive the data fast enough as soon as things get busy on the screen.

The most popular (and most expensive to fix) bottleneck is the hardware that does the transcoding. Transcoding crowd scenes and fast panning can generate quite some stress here. Depending on what kind of device you use as a server - I don't think you have mentioned that yet - you could have a look at a task manager or the like to see if your hardware permanently reaches its limits while transcoding.

On the networking side, before you go out and buy stuff, do you have a possibility to cut out the powerline adapters completely and establish a "proper" wired connection server -> switch/router -> TV?

Thanks very much for your reply.

By the way, my Windows 7 PC has 2 (Duo) x 2.66Ghz processors and 2 x 1TB disc drives. My modem is a D-Link DIR 301.

I've now used the Windows 7 Resource Monitor on my PC. (Why didn't I think of that?). It seems to reveal that the PC side is OK (just), but perhaps someone can understand all this.

The PC had been on all night, Serviio service not running. Nothing running. Kaspersky watching but not showing any activity.

I started the Resource Monitor and the Serviio service and went downstairs to the TV.

When Serviio appeared on the TV I started the offending film and ran upstairs to the PC.

**** FFMPEG was occupying 70% of the CPU for several minutes. **** Confession - I'm not clear what FFMPEG does.

Serviio transcoding was accessing the discs at a rate of 800 KBps

After about 5 minutes I decided to Google something, so I started Chrome.

The next thing I knew, FFMPEG was tailing off, and eventually disappeared (as though it was no longer in memory). The movie continued to play. **** No sign of FFMPEG ****

I left things to settle down and the result was as follows:

Movie still playing, picture and sound out of sync, crowd scene stutter still present, no sign of FFMPEG, Serviio service using 0.55% of the CPU (ie less than half a percent), Transcoding using disc at 800 KBps, network activity 5 Mbps.

I guess this means I don't need new Powerline plugs, but it sounds as though the TV can't handle the stream?

Any ideas? Please!

NEWS
=====

I decided to by-pass Serviio's transcoding, and converted the offending movie from AVI to MPEG-1 using iSkysoft Video Converter.

MPEG-1 is a format that's officially recognised by my TV.

It plays perfectly.

This suggests to me that the transcoding code in the Serviio SONY 2013US profile is flawed. But I'm not knowledgeable enough to be confident.

[Illico]

MPEG-1 is not a very good choice... MPEG-2 should be better (DVD format)

Thanks. I'll try it and let you know of any differences.

I tried MPEG 2 and results were very similar to MPEG1 for me.

But You stimulated me to try lots of other things - which have enlightened me.

See viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17492&p=94009#p94009

Thank you.