User Options - user.vmoptions not being applied

Goodmorning,

I've been using Serviio for more than 5 years now, its been great. Over time the platform growth has been great, I truly appreciate the user controls so I can keep the kids in check with our media library. I've always managed to work out issues and just stay in the shadows using help from the forums. Well it looks like I finally met my match with two issues.

Hopefully this general area is the best place to pose these questions, although one of my issues applies to some LG and Samsung Tv's. Here goes:

We've recently relocated and upgraded the Home Network with a dedicated server using Win Serv 2019, Router is a TP-link AX-6000. I have a completely wired network for Serviio, although I do have the wireless to make sure it's not a wired/wireless device bandwidth issue. Everything was mostly painless on the install and getting everything up and running. Serviio came up on my streaming devices without issues. My library is completely Video and it is almost completely transcoded to .mp4 with a few .m4v's here and there.

1. My first issue came up while streaming movies, where I appear to have a bitrate / bandwidth issue. The videos will run for a 1 to 2 minutes before they will pause for buffering, anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds before continuing to play. This occurs with both HD (2-5 Gig) and even SD (500M to 1G) content. I've done a bunch of searching regarding this "buffering" issue and it comes back to the network and ability to handle the bitrate. I've found several posts regarding changing the Socket Buffer from the default 65,535 bytes to 131,070 bytes. So I found some further posts on making this edit in the user.vmoptions, which i did:

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user.vmoptions.PNG (5.58 KiB) Viewed 2019 times

My understanding is, after stopping/restarting the serviio service the options will be applied. I found the buffering was still present after this change. I was unsure how to verify if the change was truly applied, and learned these updated options would supposedly be referenced in the Log file. I checked the log and did not see the change applied, I also rebooted and the change was not applied. See below:

Pre-errror Info log.txt

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So after this I was at a loss and started poking around, Yes, this was my first mistake!! I should have stopped and came to the forum.... Anyways, I did some more poking around on how user.vmoptions is applied to Serviio. I learned this user.vmoptions is invoked from the Serviioservice.exe.vmoptions. A couple of other references to placing user options in this location instead of the user.vmoptions location. After going back and looking these were older 2012 - 2015 posts so I am assuming this user.vmoptions implementation has been since then (just guessing). So anyways, I placed the options in this location:

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ServiioService.exe.vmoptions.PNG (8.7 KiB) Viewed 2019 times

I restarted the service and then things deteriorated quickly. I attempting to access serviio and it will show up on the streaming device. I access Serviio and the main folder shows up for a moment and then closes back to the home screen of the TV. I went to the log files and now found the option was being applied, but now it also appeared to go into errorsville. I removed the changes taking the option out of the exe.vmoptions and placing it back in the user.vmoptions. It won't let me place the log showing the errors (there might be a work around but this is my first post). Anyways, I have the error log showing the option is applied, but then there are many errors.

So I guess my first ask is how to I get it to go back to stock (i have Debug turned on in the log). I removed the options, but they won't apply. Once I get things back to stock I can then worry about the bitrate issue again. Thoughts, thanks in advance!

Here is my error log excerpt

Socket listed.txt

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[atc98092]

I don't believe the Includes line is needed in the main vmoptions file for Serviio to use the user.vmoptions file. I don't have it in mine.

To get back to "normal", change the main vmoptions file back to only include the Xmx line, and remove the user.vmoptions file completely. That should get you back to as installed.

Your buffering doesn't sound like something that changing the network socket setting would fix. It sounds more like either the server isn't transcoding fast enough for the player, there's a bottleneck with the media streaming off the hard drive, or a lack of network bandwidth. The last one is unlikely if you are using wired Gigabit for your network, but you didn't state if that's the case. Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) could certainly become saturated with multiple HD videos streaming.

I have my media spread out over four different hard drives. If I'm streaming to multiple players, the odds of them all coming from the same hard drive is reduced significantly, so the chances of a bottleneck there is minimized. I haven't compressed any of my media, so they are all fill bitrate from the ripped discs. For DVDs, that means a bitrate approaching 10 Mbps. For 1080 Blu Ray rips, I've seen steady bitrates of 20 Mbps, with peaks up to 40 or so. For my 4K rips, I see bitrates of 60-80, with peaks of 140 Mbps or more. So you can see how the higher resolution videos can become a possible network saturation point.

You didn't say what your players are (other than mentioning the two TVs). Remember that with very few exceptions your players will only have a 100 Mbps wired connection, and wireless might be higher or lower. If they can all play your media without transcoding, that would eliminate the potential of the server not keeping up with the transcoding demand. Video transcoding can easily saturate the computer's CPU, and adding a second transcoding stream might bring it to its knees.

Thanks Dan for the reply.

On the user.vmoptions and the serviioservice.exe.vmoptions I returned both of those to default. I’ve restarted the service and even rebooted, but it still won’t take me back to the stock setup. Any ideas on unbreaking my machine?

All my videos I had converted to .mp4 for the most part, so my understanding is there shouldn’t be any transcoding going on, I will verify with Device spy tonight. I’m pretty sure the Samsung M-series should play that format.

My wired network is all 1g capable with obvious slowdowns at the streaming devices. Can you advise on the best tools to troubleshoot for bottlenecks?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[atc98092]

I don't understand why it's not set back to default with those changes. Unfortunately, the fastest thing to do might be to simply remove Serviio and reinstall it again. Bit of a pain to reconfigure it all again, but at least you'd be back to ground zero.

You can quickly tell if Serviio is transcoding by looking at the Serviio console while a video is playing. There's a play indicator on the left side on the Status panel for each device. If it's green while playing, there's no transcoding. If it's yellow, then something is being transcoded: video, audio, or both. The console doesn't provide that level of detail.

Yes, the Samsung TV should support MP4 playback without transcoding, assuming there's not some off the wall codec within the container. MP4 usually has H.264/AVC or MP4 video, which the TV should support. If the audio is AC3, it too should be fine. Sometimes TVs might get persnickety with other audio codecs, although PCM shouldn't be a problem. But any audio with more than 2 channels that isn't AC3 might cause a problem. But transcoding audio is really a low level effort for Serviio, it doesn't take much CPU power at all.

You could check the Task Manager in Windows while a video is playing. That shows you the CPU load, and you can also see the network throughput. It's unlikely you have network issues with Gigabit, but as I mentioned the TV only has Fast Ethernet. That's fine for SD and HD content, but will choke on UHD/4K rips. If the bottleneck is within your PC (the bus getting saturated with the bitstream) I don't know if any tool to monitor that. But must computer buses have a bus speed far in excess of any streaming media. The hard drive might be more likely to be too slow. But again, SATAIII should be more than fast enough.

You might start with only a single stream to one TV, and see if there's any buffering. If it's clean, add the second TV. If it now buffers, try switching one or both TVs to WiFi instead of wired, and see if that improves things. In theory, 802.11N should easily exceed the wired Fast Ethernet connection, although there's more variables that could impact speed with WiFi.