Serviio

I am new to the site and to Serviio. I just got a 4K Sony Bravia and am using my laptop in another room to serve files (primarily ripped DVDs in mkv format). I have a wifi router providing communications between the two, and it is working alright (the occasional hiccup, but that's my equipment, not the software). My question concerns how Serviio produces the thumbnails that are served to the TV. There's one static thumbnail taken from a few minutes in, and then another short clip of the first few seconds of the file. What are the ffmpeg commands used to generate these thumbnails, and can I modify either the command used to generate the thumbnail or simply replace the thumbnails with ones I generate separately? This is a great product and it was a breeze to set up. It was the fourth such piece of software I tried to use for a media server, and it is SO much better than the others, there is no comparison. So thanks to the developers!

Welcome to Serviio! I'm sure the developer (yep, only one) will appreciate your comments.

The easiest (and in my opinion the most reliable) method of generating accurate thumbnails is to use online metadata sources and use a specific naming convention for your media files. This page (https://www.serviio.org/index.php?optio ... icle&id=12) provides the details, but basically using online sources require the file name to be in a format that Serviio is expecting, and then it searches thetvdb.com and themoviedb.com to find the match and bring back things like cover images, cast lists, director, producer(s), and the synopsis of the title.

If you don't use online sources, I honestly don't know exactly how Serviio extracts a thumbnail. I know for titles that Serviio can't find cover art online, Serviio doesn't try to extract one from the video itself. If it is using FFMPEG to extract an image, I have my doubts that it's something a user can modify, at least without some deep knowledge of how Java jar files are constructed and can understand the coding required to make such changes.

Thanks. I tried using the metadata sources method for thumbnails, but I didn't like the results. They tended to be poor resolution, or zoomed in portions of a poster, or simply wrong. I decided it would be better to have some random frame from the movie rather than what the metadata sources were providing, especially since, again, I can't modify or edit individual thumbnails to correct them. I also tried creating jpg files for the movies and selecting "Look for a local DVD cover image" option, but the images end up being resized in odd ways. I saw someone else post that they embed the cover image in the mp4 metadata somehow, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet, and I don't know what size of image Serviio expects to serve.

By default, Serviio follows the DLNA specification for cover art resolution. You are right, it's terrible! But you can change that by making two changes in the config files. First on the profiles.xml file in the config folder, find the profile(s) you use and look for this line towards the end of the profile: <ThumbnailsResolution>DLNA</ThumbnailsResolution> Change DLNA to HD. This by itself will double the resolution of the images.

But you will likely still prefer a higher resolution than that. Look in the same config folder for a file named user.vmoptions. If it doesn't exist, just create an empty text file with that name. Now enter this into that file:
-Xmx512m
-Dserviio.hdThumbnailResolution=1000

The first line increases the memory used by the Java virtual machine, which isn't always needed but doesn't hurt unless your computer is really short of memory. The second line specifies the cover art resolution. You can alter that number but I have found that 1000 looks pretty good without drastically increasing the size of the database that the images are stored in.

Note that anytime Serviio is updated those changes in the profiles file will be overwritten. You can save your own personal profile with the settings you want, and the personal file is never replaced. The user.vmoptions file is never replaced.

OK. That looks pretty good.

Thanks for your help with this.