Serviio

Hi all, new to Serviio (been using UMS) and to the forum.
Just got a Samsung Q950R, and noticed that some files are returning an "Audio not supported" error message. Sure enough the video plays without any sound.
According to videoinspector the files are V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC and Dolby DTS.

I used Samsung M profile in the Serviio console.
Also dumb question but in UMS there was a transcode folder where I could pick different formats. I assume Serviio does everything automatically and transparently?

Any advice appreciated!

Thanks,
G

Dolby and DTS are two different companies with incompatible audio codecs. It has to be one or the other. Dolby Digital is supported by all TVs in North America. DTS is supported by very few, so your audio would need to be transcoded. For a test, try using a different profile for your TV. I might suggest the Roku 4K TV profile, or perhaps one of the Samsung TV M-Series. There isn't a profile specific for your TV, so I suspect it's using the generic profile, which does no transcoding.

Hi Dan,

The "Roku 4K TV" profile worked. Awesome help, thanks a bunch!
G

Perhaps I spoke a bit too fast, the quality of the video seems greatly affected, with some hiccups. Dumb question to be sure but is there a way to tell Serviio to transcode the sound but not the video?
thanks

The Roku profile uses HLS for transcoding, so perhaps your TV doesn't like that much. Most of the matches lines don't touch the video, only the audio. Try the Samsung M Series. I'm pretty sure it uses MPEGTS for transcoding instead of HLS. I just bought a new Samsung NU7100 and have created a new profile for the N series, and I know it worked better with MPEGTS instead of HLS. It should be included in the next Serviio update. But overall I think the M series might be your best fit. But if it's not, then we can see about building you a custom profile.

Hi Dan,

No luck with the Samsung M profile (audio error message). Will be looking forward to your new N profile (happy to beta test!)
cheers,
g

I looked over all the different profiles, and couldn't find anything else I though would work, so let's try this as a test.

Place this file in your config folder, then restart the Serviio service. Then you will have a profile called Samsung Q Test Profile. It uses the MPEGTS container, and doesn't touch the video at all. It will just convert the audio to Dolby Digital. You might have some files that won't play, but I'm looking to see if a) the ones that wouldn't originally play with audio now play and b) if the video quality looks OK.

If we get past both of those successfully then we can work on anything else that isn't playing. One step at a time...

Hey Dan,

Here are the results:

- 4K video that wouldn't play before: sound is ok, but video heavily garbled and stuttering (see pic). Seems to be true for scenes with complex movement like waves.
- 1080p video that wouldn't play before: both video and sound are ok

it's cool to be a tester

Well, then it appears your TV can't handle the full bitrate stream of the media. When I get home this afternoon I'll add a bitrate restriction. But be aware that this will require video transcoding, so HDR will be stripped out and your computer will have to work much harder to perform the transcoding.

If your TV is connected via wired Ethernet, the TV most likely doesn't have a Gigabit connection, so it's limited to about 90 Mbps. Depending on the type of wireless protocol it supports, higher speeds than that are possible, but if the TV can't process that high of a bitrate it doesn't matter much.

Is that video a 4K clip? I'd like to see the media info. There's a link in my sig mine that explains how to get media information.

Have you tested it with 1080 material? I would expect the TV to support that well enough, and Fast Ethernet is fast enough for that bitrate.

Wasn't able to run ffmpeg.exe -i per the instructions, kept getting a "permission denied" error message in CMD (admin mode), regardless where I put the file.
I attached the mediafinfo, hopefully that is useful. 1080p works fine indeed, I also have other 2160p files that play fine, so not sure what is wrong with that particular one :/
thanks again,
g

If you change MediaInfo to text view, there might be some additional information. I use that program as well, and in text view it lists much more detail. One thing I'm looking for is the Max bit rate. My UHD rips show an average around 50 Mbps, but during playback I've seen my computer streaming with peaks over 120 Mbps. That's feeding my Shield, which can easily handle that level of bit rate.

Hi Dan - txt file attached

Thanks for that. It is listing an overall bit rate of 20.6 Mbps, and I would expect your TV to be able to handle that. The audio is definitely not supported by the TV, so it needs transcoding. Reading the manual for your TV, it should be fine with bit rates up to 80 Mbps.

When you used the Generic profile, did the video play fine, just no audio? or did it not play at all? Based on the data that I can see, this should be playing fine. I see the TV also supports the ASF container, so that might be another one to try. But by all that I can see the MPEGTS container should be working fine.

One other thing you could do is to use a program like TSMuxer to reorder the audio tracks, so the DTS Master Audio track isn't the default track. Then transcoding wouldn't even be necessary. However, you didn't appear to have ripped more than one audio track from the disc, so you'd have to rip it again with additional audio tracks. If you use MakeMKV to rip it, you have total control over what tracks to include.

Thanks Dan, I tried tsmuxer and from what I can see it only has one audio track (DTS-HD)? If there are more tracks, how can I see them?

When you rip the disc, you should be able to select the audio tracks you wish to include. I use MakeMKV, and it usually selects all English language tracks, but depending on what you used it may have only selected the audio track labeled as default. If you can't re-rip the disc to get additional audio tracks, then this isn't something you can do.