1.0.1 observations
Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2012 3:15 pmA little late on this, but maybe still of interest...
Using Win7 and XP on an i5 laptop and an Athlon 64 4000+ respectively. Serviio PRO v 1.0.1
The latest versions of Serviio, with internet streaming, seemed most interesting.
I'd used Serviio for some time for audio streaming to a dlna enabled internet radio, but had left the video alone, just using a player that could read a networked drive with video on it. Using XBMC you get stacking (CD1 and CD2 being reported and playing as one) and you get DVD playback, so an assorted stock of movies played just fine that way.
First shock using Serviio was that neither of these are supported. I hoped putting DVDs or multiple disks into a single iso file might work. Nope, isos not supported. I read lots about accurate naming and used theRenamer to make sure my folders and files had consistent and accurate names, e.g. The Blues Brothers (1980) CD1.avi in a folder called The Blues Brothers (1980)
Library building works reasonably well from online sources, but there's no easy editing method, so I looked to use nfo files. I created these two ways. First with XBMC and its systems/settings/video/library/Export video library capability, choosing separate files which then automatically get stored next to the videos. Or secondly using Ember (from http://sourceforge.net/projects/emm-r/ and also from http://ember.purplepig.net/projects/embermm). For both Serviio picks up the text from these files (e.g. plot, genre, etc) but stubbornly refused to pick up fanart or dvd covers. The pictures appearing in the mediabrowser/video/movies page were just stills from the movie, not the dvd covers or fanart.
Finally I tried playing movies. I used both local playing using localhost, and remote using my witopia vpn connection. The playing was reasonable, but there are still problems. You should be able to drag on the marker on the progress bar to rewind or fast forward. I couldn't. Note that this works fine on videos on the flowplayer site. The resource useage, mainly by ffmpeg.exe, on the server machine is very high. A single core machine is unuseable, my i5 machine coped. Just. And I could only get the player to work in Chrome. IE9 just wouldn't connect, even after I'd uninstalled real player and reinstalled the latest version of Flash.
Finally, I haven't tested this but I presume it won't work in Apple machines, since it needs Flash.
Now I'm happy to admit I'm fairly new at this, and would welcome any questions or advice, but right now, I can't see me buying the pro version.
Using Win7 and XP on an i5 laptop and an Athlon 64 4000+ respectively. Serviio PRO v 1.0.1
The latest versions of Serviio, with internet streaming, seemed most interesting.
I'd used Serviio for some time for audio streaming to a dlna enabled internet radio, but had left the video alone, just using a player that could read a networked drive with video on it. Using XBMC you get stacking (CD1 and CD2 being reported and playing as one) and you get DVD playback, so an assorted stock of movies played just fine that way.
First shock using Serviio was that neither of these are supported. I hoped putting DVDs or multiple disks into a single iso file might work. Nope, isos not supported. I read lots about accurate naming and used theRenamer to make sure my folders and files had consistent and accurate names, e.g. The Blues Brothers (1980) CD1.avi in a folder called The Blues Brothers (1980)
Library building works reasonably well from online sources, but there's no easy editing method, so I looked to use nfo files. I created these two ways. First with XBMC and its systems/settings/video/library/Export video library capability, choosing separate files which then automatically get stored next to the videos. Or secondly using Ember (from http://sourceforge.net/projects/emm-r/ and also from http://ember.purplepig.net/projects/embermm). For both Serviio picks up the text from these files (e.g. plot, genre, etc) but stubbornly refused to pick up fanart or dvd covers. The pictures appearing in the mediabrowser/video/movies page were just stills from the movie, not the dvd covers or fanart.
Finally I tried playing movies. I used both local playing using localhost, and remote using my witopia vpn connection. The playing was reasonable, but there are still problems. You should be able to drag on the marker on the progress bar to rewind or fast forward. I couldn't. Note that this works fine on videos on the flowplayer site. The resource useage, mainly by ffmpeg.exe, on the server machine is very high. A single core machine is unuseable, my i5 machine coped. Just. And I could only get the player to work in Chrome. IE9 just wouldn't connect, even after I'd uninstalled real player and reinstalled the latest version of Flash.
Finally, I haven't tested this but I presume it won't work in Apple machines, since it needs Flash.
Now I'm happy to admit I'm fairly new at this, and would welcome any questions or advice, but right now, I can't see me buying the pro version.