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What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

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galmok

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Post Sun Nov 15, 2020 6:36 pm

What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

What is it that marks an episode as seen?

I ask this because VLC on Android is able to stream the entire episode, yet Serviio doesn't mark the episode as seen.

This is quite irritating, as I have to find a different DLNA player to play some of the same episode to have Serviio mark the episode as seen. VLC however is the only player I have found that just plays it all without problem (except for this final problem).

Please provide the information on a way that I can carry it to the VLC team to implement, assuming it is VLC that needs a fix and not Serviio.

Thanks.
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atc98092

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Post Mon Nov 16, 2020 1:29 am

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

Since you are using something Android based, have you tried using Kodi as your player? I have the '17 and '19 Nvidia Shield players, and Kodi marks them as played without a problem. How does Serviio determine an episode has been viewed? I can't say for certain, but my guess is it determines when the file has reached 100%, or perhaps in the high 90s. It then has a field in the database that is set to indicate it was the last episode viewed.

While I have VLC installed on my Shields, as well as a couple of Windows PCs, I don't use it for playback on the Shields. I don't care for the user interface with VLC, although it's an exceptional player. For my family users, Kodi is just far simpler to navigate.

I just fired up VLC on one of my Shields, and went to a TV series that I know I have watched. It shows the two ** on the Season I most recently watched, and when I view the titles I see the ** next to the title I know I watched just yesterday. So it appears that VLC correctly shows the last viewed marking that Serviio offers. Of course, that last viewed was using Kodi, so I can't say if VLC would do the same. I just tried watching the next episode, but VLC is freezing the image shortly after playback begins. The audio continues, so it's not like the app has frozen. I fast forwarded and the video would start, but then it freezes again. Guess I won't bother using VLC as my player.

EDIT: I do see a setting under Interface labeled "Show seen video marker". Do you have that enabled?
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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galmok

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Posts: 69

Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 9:35 pm

Post Mon Nov 16, 2020 3:45 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

Hi.

Thank you for your insight.

I have it tried Kodi, but if it is free and Android TV compatible, I'll give it a go.

The two * are delivered by Serviio and are moved forward when Serviio gets the signal to do so. And unfortunately, playing most of the file of all of it with VLC does not advance the **.

Also, I do not want VLC to be the responsible for remembering which episode I have seen. This needs to be Serviio.

I'll try out Kodi. I hope it is as smooth as VLC is on my TV.

Thanks.
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atc98092

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Post Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:21 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

Yes, Kodi is free, and should work on Android TV. Setup is not as simple as VLC, which recognizes the uPnP servers automatically. But it works very well on my Shield players.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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freaknik

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Post Tue Nov 17, 2020 3:38 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

I have used vlc on ios and it marks things seen, that's weird. x2 for kodi its a great piece of software with the addons it can do a lot.
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galmok

Serviio lover

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Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 9:35 pm

Post Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:09 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

I have now installed and used Kodi and it works. It plays my streams without hiccups and correctly marks the episode as watched.

So for now my problem is solved.

Thanks for the suggestion. :-)
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atc98092

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Post Wed Nov 18, 2020 8:00 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

Great, thanks for the info! :D
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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galmok

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Posts: 69

Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 9:35 pm

Post Mon Nov 23, 2020 7:11 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

And now it seems to not making Serviio mark the episodes as seen. I thought it was just aggressive caching by Kodi, but verifying with a DLNA browser on my phone, Serviio doesn't know the episode has been watched.

So I am back to square one.
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galmok

Serviio lover

Posts: 69

Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 9:35 pm

Post Mon Nov 23, 2020 8:19 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

So again I ask what makes Serviio mark episodes as seen? Actually watching the episodes makes no difference to Serviio so it must rely on some other way to detect that an episode is marked as seen.
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atc98092

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Post Tue Nov 24, 2020 12:08 am

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

Strange, as Kodi marks TV episodes as marked for me on two different Shield players. As to what triggers Serviio to mark it, I think it's playing within a minute or so of its full length. I can stop watching something when the end credits roll, and it still marks it as last watched. That's usually with 1-2 minutes remaining from the end of the file. But to know for sure, we need Zip to chime in here with the definitive answer.

I just checked Kodi for something I watched yesterday, and I know I ended it when the end credits started. Serviio shows it as the last watched episode (the two ** marking the title name), and not something in progress (Kodi shows a partial progress indicator in such a case.) I also checked a show my wife watched on the other TV, and it too displayed the correct last watched marker. So it's nothing Kodi is doing to mark is as watched, since it's showing shows watched from a different player entirely.

For what it's worth, I just watched something on my Shield using VLC, and when I was finished the last watched marker was there. I then went into Kodi, and that mark was there as well. Serviio is marking everything correctly, and both Kodi and VLC showed the ** on the season and episode last watched.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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galmok

Serviio lover

Posts: 69

Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 9:35 pm

Post Tue Nov 24, 2020 5:50 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

Your report gives me hope that I to can get it to work. But so far, no, it doesn't work. If I stream via Bubbleupnp to MX Player, then it works for me. But MX Player isn't fast enough and causes grange drops.

I am using Kodi 18.9.

I just got an episode marked as seen using Kodi! I did the same as yesterday, where it didn't work, but today it works. Go figure.

Maybe watching episodes from the "Recent unwatched" section doesn't mark episodes as watched? But I am sure I tried from the Series category as well.

Is there any way to make Kodi stop caching the directory information? Exiting Kodi to see what has changed is getting old. :-P
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galmok

Serviio lover

Posts: 69

Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 9:35 pm

Post Tue Nov 24, 2020 5:56 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

Just tried my success approach on a different series and failed. I don't understand where the problem lies, but it is unreliable.
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atc98092

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Location: Washington (the state)

Post Wed Nov 25, 2020 8:28 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

I can't begin to guess why that's happening for you, but I have no issues with either of my Serviio servers (both running 2.1) and using any of my streaming players, which includes Roku, Shield , smart TVs and Blu Ray players.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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galmok

Serviio lover

Posts: 69

Joined: Thu Jul 28, 2011 9:35 pm

Post Sun Nov 29, 2020 7:17 am

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

I have my series on two different drives and occasionally have to move some from one drive to another. Usually never the active series though, but perhaps Serviio has a bug marking episodes as watched when there is more then 1 series folder configured?

Anyway, if only I knew what Serviio looks for when making episodes, then I could dump the network traffic and see if that message is sent or not. In any case, I usually do let the media player play all of the stream until the very end, so that cannot be what I am missing.

But the player does make a difference.
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atc98092

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Posts: 5205

Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2012 10:22 pm

Location: Washington (the state)

Post Sun Nov 29, 2020 10:21 pm

Re: What triggers Serviio to mark an episode as seen?

Nah, I have my media spread across five different hard drives, with TV series in four separate folder locations. And within those four folders are 54 sub-folders for each TV series. I have no explanation for why yours aren't being marked as read. Hopefully Zip will see this thread and have some wisdom to impart. :D
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents

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