Serviio

I'm starting to get the hang of this low cost player and it's great value for the money. However I have one problem I can't figure out. I have converted a lot of my old DVDs to MKV using MakeMKV. Unfortunately the WD TV Play can't play MPEG2 streams embedded in MKV. Can this be fixed by changing the proile for the player? Any help would be highly appreciated.

Cheers
Peter



General
Unique ID : 178474015758291529130220824247601632303 (0x8644D85A127E4D14E5CD246A707E942F)
Complete name : P:\shares\movies\Die Hard 4.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 2
File size : 4.29 GiB
Duration : 2h 3mn
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 4 972 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2014-02-23 07:28:21
Writing application : MakeMKV v1.8.8 win(x64-release)
Writing library : libmakemkv v1.8.8 (1.3.0/1.4.1) win(x64-release)

Video
ID : 1
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@Main
Format settings, BVOP : No
Format settings, Matrix : Custom
Codec ID : V_MPEG2
Codec ID/Info : MPEG 1 or 2 Video
Duration : 2h 3mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 4 425 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 7 500 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Standard : PAL
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Scan order : Top Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.427
Time code of first frame : 00:59:59:00
Time code source : Group of pictures header
Stream size : 3.82 GiB (89%)
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 2h 3mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 448 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -56ms
Stream size : 396 MiB (9%)
Title : Surround 5.1
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No

Text #1
ID : 3
Format : VobSub
Codec ID : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info : The same subtitle format used on DVDs
Language : Danish
Default : No
Forced : No

Text #2
ID : 4
Format : VobSub
Codec ID : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info : The same subtitle format used on DVDs
Language : Danish
Default : No
Forced : No

Menu
00:00:00.080 : en:Chapter 01
00:03:42.720 : en:Chapter 02
00:06:02.160 : en:Chapter 03
00:07:29.040 : en:Chapter 04
00:11:02.320 : en:Chapter 05
00:14:37.640 : en:Chapter 06
00:17:12.480 : en:Chapter 07
00:19:55.520 : en:Chapter 08
00:24:51.240 : en:Chapter 09
00:26:21.640 : en:Chapter 10
00:28:48.160 : en:Chapter 11
00:30:09.520 : en:Chapter 12
00:32:23.160 : en:Chapter 13
00:36:41.360 : en:Chapter 14
00:39:22.440 : en:Chapter 15
00:43:49.640 : en:Chapter 16
00:50:06.800 : en:Chapter 17
00:53:09.440 : en:Chapter 18
00:55:38.760 : en:Chapter 19
00:58:16.840 : en:Chapter 20
00:59:55.400 : en:Chapter 21
01:05:26.880 : en:Chapter 22
01:09:32.160 : en:Chapter 23
01:13:51.040 : en:Chapter 24
01:15:14.440 : en:Chapter 25
01:18:08.880 : en:Chapter 26
01:22:20.160 : en:Chapter 27
01:28:56.280 : en:Chapter 28
01:32:51.160 : en:Chapter 29
01:35:41.360 : en:Chapter 30
01:40:43.200 : en:Chapter 31
01:42:00.120 : en:Chapter 32
01:46:46.600 : en:Chapter 33
01:51:51.120 : en:Chapter 34
01:53:21.120 : en:Chapter 35
01:56:45.800 : en:Chapter 36

Try having Serviio remux the video to an mpeg container. Assuming you are using the WD Live TV profile (on Serviio Console, Status tab) edit profiles.xml and add:

<Matches container="matroska" vCodec="mpeg2video" />

the following to that profile, just above the existing line

<Matches container="matroska" vCodec="vp8" />

Thx. Tried your suggestion but it didnt work

Unless I'm completely wrong the TV Play doesn't like mpegcontainers. I would by the way prefer h264 instead. So can it be done at all?

Transcoding on the fly to h264 can be done as long as your PC is up to it. The problem though is that Serviio can only transcode to asf, mpeg (MPEG2PS), mpegts (MPEG2TS) or applehttp (HLS) containers.

The mpegts container appears to be supported by the WDTV Play. As a quick test try the Panasonic 2010 profile - this transcodes all MKV files into mpegts.

You could create your own profile - I have no idea this will work though:

Although your spec sheet makes no mention of it, if this doesn't work try setting targetContainer="applehttp". Other than that the only thing I can suggest (others may have other ideas) is to re-encode your MKVs with Handbrake or XMedia Recode to a file that your WD Play likes (eg. MKV/H264/AC-3) - this way you will keep your menu's and subtitles, which are lost when transcoding on the fly.

ps. If you didn't realise it you must restart your PC (or the Serviio service if you know how) after changing anything in profiles.xml.

Hi again
The Panasonic 2010 trivk didn't work . I then added

<Profile id="mywd" name="WD TV Play" extendsProfileId="1">
<Transcoding>
<Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetVCodec="h264">
<Matches container="matroska" vCodec="mpeg2video" />
</Video>
</Transcoding>
</Profile>

to the profiles. Stopped the Serviio service, and started the server again. The weird thing is that I can not even select "WD TV Play"????

How did you do that? It must be the service (not just stop and start the server n serviio Console). Just to be on the safe side, restart your PC.

I stopped the service using services.msc

Did you add the profile just befor the last line (just before <Profiles/>)?

I think I tried both. Is this supposed to be a new profile or should it be merged with the old one ? Please elaborate. This is what it looks like now

<Profile id="14" name="WDTV Live" extendsProfileId="1">
<Detection>
<UPnPSearch>
<ModelName>WD TV HD Live</ModelName>
</UPnPSearch>
</Detection>
<ContentDirectoryMessageBuilder>org.serviio.upnp.service.contentdirectory.PacketVideoDLNAMessageBuilder</ContentDirectoryMessageBuilder>
<Transcoding>
<Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetVCodec="h264">
<Matches container="matroska" vCodec="mpeg2video" />
</Video>
<Video targetContainer="mpeg">
<Matches container="wtv" />
</Video>
<Video targetContainer="mpeg" targetVCodec="mpeg2video" targetACodec="ac3" aBitrate="384">
<Matches container="flv" /> <!-- this is used by online content, assuming WDTV cannot play local flv either -->
<Matches container="matroska" vCodec="vp8" />
<Matches container="rm" />
</Video>
</Transcoding>
<OnlineTranscoding>
<Video targetContainer="mpeg" targetVCodec="mpeg2video" targetACodec="ac3" aBitrate="384">
<Matches container="mp4" />
<Matches container="asf" /> <!-- for mms:// -->
</Video>
</OnlineTranscoding>
<Subtitles>
<SoftSubs mime-type="text/srt" />
</Subtitles>
</Profile>

It was a completely new one - having said that, what you have done should do the same thing (albeit you would select the "WDTV Live" profile) - it will transcode mkv with mpeg2 video to a ts container with h264 video. ps. mke sure transcoding is on in Serviio Console

However I still can get it to work. Are there any log files I can check? Txh

I found the logfiles. However they give no info in regards to what goes wrong.

Thank you for all your help.

Cheers Peter