[BDP-S370] Streaming to AVI, kind of...

[grolschie]

Hi there,

Is it not possible for a target container = "avi"?

I seem to remember another server product where I could set the mimetype to "AVI" on internet streams to get them to appear on the BDP-S370. Because pretty much most things play inside an AVI on the device (most countries I think).

If there is a limit because AVIs need something written at start of the file that's calculated at the end of transcoding, couldn't this just be fudged? I am suspecting the the device is transcoding stuff it doesn't really need to (i.e. wmv) when it could send through a WMV stream pretending to be an AVI as far as the device is concerned.

For example a streaming FLV with H.264 and MP4A gets transcoded to MPEG2VIDEO and AC3. Both should play natively in the device in an AVI file.

Trying to wrap both these in an MPEGTS doesn't work.

Your thoughts?

[patters]

AVI cannot be played as it's written. There's no way around it.

[grolschie]

Thanks. How does one simply change the MIMETYPE to AVI then, this is what the other server product did on the file. There was a MIMETYPE setting.

What info can only be written at the end, and out an arbitrarily large number just be used?

[patters]

I'm very much behind the effort to minimize transcoding (since I run Serviio on a low powered CPU - an ARM NAS). However the reason live streams are transcoded to mpeg2video is that the Sony BDP firmware just locks and crashes when live h.264 streams are played (probably a bug in the firmware). It's fine with on demand ones (which are not transcoded).

[grolschie]

I am finding the later versions of serviio stutter with online streaming like they need to buffer more. e.g. now radio streams splutter for just the first few seconds.

But internet video stutters regularly - moreso than I remember with Serviio.

I wonder if I can transcode to WMV or something. Or to whatever is less CPU intensive? My h/w is very low spec (AMD XP2800 single core, 768MB RAM, XP) - loooong overdue for upgrades. I notice that there is an ffmpeg option: -preset ultrafast

Is there a way to use this with Serviio? I guess it's not compatible with some of the switches that Serviio is passing to ffmpeg.exe?

[patters]

You can de-select the option "Produce the best video quality" in the Transcoding tab of the console if you haven't already done so. mpeg2video encoding is already the fastest really.

[grolschie]

Already done, thanks. I remember that with another server I could trick the player into playing things just be setting the MIMETYPE to .avi in it's config. I wonder if this is somehow do-able? For example, mms streams cannot video and audio that the player should be able to play natively i.e. WMV/WMA.

[grolschie]

Just chasing this one up. In the profile config, is there a way to change the mimetype of a file presented to a renderer without transcoding/remuxing the file? I know you can choose container, vcodec, etc, but what about changing nothing except the mimetype? Thanks.

[Illico]

I'm not sure to understand your request, but do you try <MediaFormatProfile> profiles.xml elements for example:
With:
<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/mpeg" name="MPEG_PS_PAL,MPEG_PS_NTSC">AVC_MP4_MP_SD_AAC_MULT5</MediaFormatProfile>
The default generic profile
http-get:*:"video/mp4":DLNA.ORG_PN=AVC_MP4_MP_SD_AAC_MULT5
will be replace by following ressources:
http-get:*:"video/mpeg":DLNA.ORG_PN=MPEG_PS_PAL
http-get:*:"video/mpeg":DLNA.ORG_PN=MPEG_PS_NTSC

or
With
<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/avi" name="">AVI</MediaFormatProfile>
The default generic profile
http-get:*:"video/x-msvideo":DLNA.ORG_PN=AVI
will be replaced by foloowing ressource
http-get:*:"video/avi"

[grolschie]

Thanks for that. So for example, could make a renderer think that all .asf files are .avi files with the following?

  Code:

<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/avi" name="">ASF</MediaFormatProfile>

[Illico]

Thanks for that. So for example, could make a renderer think that all .asf files are .avi files with the following?

  Code:

<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/avi" name="">ASF</MediaFormatProfile>

Yes.
Check on detailed logging file the serviio http-get answer.

[grolschie]

Thank you very much.

[Illico]

Thanks for that. So for example, could make a renderer think that all .asf files are .avi files with the following?

  Code:

<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/avi" name="">ASF</MediaFormatProfile>

In fact, NO...

In Generic profile, ASF is delivered with following:
<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/x-ms-asf">VC1_ASF_AP_L1_WMA</MediaFormatProfile>
<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/x-ms-asf">VC1_ASF_AP_L2_WMA</MediaFormatProfile>
<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/x-ms-asf">VC1_ASF_AP_L3_WMA</MediaFormatProfile>

If you want to change mime-type on your custom profile, use this on Sony profile...

<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/avi" name="">VC1_ASF_AP_L1_WMA</MediaFormatProfile>
<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/avi" name="">VC1_ASF_AP_L2_WMA</MediaFormatProfile>
<MediaFormatProfile mime-type="video/avi" name="">VC1_ASF_AP_L3_WMA</MediaFormatProfile>

[grolschie]

Got it. So I need to know and specify all the different variant names to catch them all. Thanks.