Serviio

atc98092 wrote:First, you must remember that MP4 and MKV are simply containers, and the video and audio codecs within them are vary. Your Samsung appears to be having an issue with a codec within one of the files. Generally, MP4 containers have a supported video codec, but it sounds like you might have some that don't. What we need to know is what codecs are in the files that won't play. If you look at my signature line, there's a link to a page that tells how to retrieve the contents of a media file. Use those instructions and let us know what codecs are being used in a file that won't play.

Yes, Serviio will transcode files that are recognized as unsupported. It's all controlled by the profile Serviio has assigned to your TV. But that profile is likely assuming that anything within an MP4 container is supported, so does not attempt to transcode. Every profile has to make some assumptions about the file contents, although some profiles are more detailed than others to catch these outliers. You are likely using the Samsung E/F TV profile. I just took a quick look at it, and I only see one MP4 matches line, for LPCM audio. So it will only transcode an MP4 file if PCM audio is detected. It will also transcode any video that has a higher resolution than 1080, regardless of container. So depending on your media, you might need a customized profile.

Your other option is to use something like Handbrake to convert your unplayable files. Transcoding doesn't work quite the way you think. It can't convert MP4 to MKV. As I said, those are just containers. Most profiles transcode into a MPEG-TS stream, with some using a few other formats. The TS stream contains the codecs either as they were in the original container (if they are supported) or transcoded into a supported codec.

atc98092 wrote:The FFMPEG screenshots are both the same file (ca.mp4), so that doesn't help .

work.

atc98092 wrote:The FFMPEG screenshots are both the same file (ca.mp4), so that doesn't help .

The MediaInfo does show a slight difference between the two AVC video codecs, in that one is baseline L4, while the one that doesn't play is L4.2. And that's probably the cause. I looked on the TV manual online, but it's not really specific about what levels of H.264 it supports.

I don't know if the Serviio developer is willing to alter the existing E/F profile, since it's an older configuration and changes might have unintended consequences. I suggest we create a user profile that is easier to experiment with. So, you need to create a new text file in the Serviio/config folder, and name it user-profiles.xml. Inside this file, past the following text:

  Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Profiles version="1.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="http://www.serviio.org/xsd/profiles/v/1.10/Profiles.xsd">
<Profile id="Sam_F_user" name="Samsung TV (F-series)" extendsProfileId="sam_ef">
       
      <H264LevelCheck>FILE_ATTRIBUTES</H264LevelCheck>
      <Transcoding>
         <Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetVCodec="h264" >
             <Matches container="mp4"  vCodec="h264" profile='high" levelGreaterThan="4.0" />
         </Video>
      </Transcoding>
   
   </Profile>

</Profiles>

I can't test this, but it should identify and transcode any MP4 video with the Main profile and level higher than 4.0.

After you create and save the file, you need to restart Serviio to load the new file. Once it's loaded, change your profile for the TV to "Samsung TV (F-series)". Now see if the previously unplayable files work.

atc98092 wrote:I'm sorry. I see I made a typo. On the Matches line, after profile=, it's supposed to be a quote " but it's a parenthesis ' . Please change that and try loading it again. That should do it.