Movie stutters when it gets " busy" on the screen

Hi Guys,

I have a Samsung UE55D6800. I've been using Serviio for almost 2 years now. I bought a new PC 4 months ago. My main reason to buy a new PC is because I suspected my previous PC (dualcore) did not have sufficient power to transcode my movies: they would often stutter. Whilst things have improved with this new computer (8-core AMD FX-8120), the disappointment is still there. The symptoms:

As soon as there is lots of action in the movie, or if there are many computerised images, the image will pause for a few seconds before it continues playing again. Within action scenes, it will quickly pauze again, as if it needs to buffer. A movie such as Cowboys & Aliens has both action as well as computerised images and is very unpleasant to watch.

I've set the Profile to Samsung C/D/E Series, I have 8 cores transcoding and am wired, not wireless. Anybody any ideas?

[zip]

The Samsung profile hardly transcodes anything, so PC power doesn't come in play really. In the busy scenes it's probably down to the bitrate and the fact the TV has a processing limit. So very high bitrates would cause the TV stuttering.

Try this tool to inspect the bitrate: http://wiki.serviio.org/doku.php?id=vbitrate

If it's anywhere near 20mBit it would be it.

Thanks for the swift response!

Check this out...

Looks like this says something. I never download extremely large files (usually +/- 8 gig). I always tried to get the bitrate as high as possible. So I am guessing I should focus on movies with a lower bitrate then?

[moltra]

what is your network type and speed?

Hi Mark,

1gig wired. So bandwidth is not the issue!

[zip]

As you see there is a lot of times it reaches 25 mbit and more, so at those times the TV will struggle

Thanks Petr,

Should I be focussing on geting lower bitrate movies instead?

[slyguy42o]

I had the same issue with my Philips TV, I was able to use the maxVBitrate variable int he rendering profile to limit the bit rate to this TV. It solved about 98% of the stuttering issues.

I had the same issue with my Philips TV, I was able to use the maxVBitrate variable int he rendering profile to limit the bit rate to this TV. It solved about 98% of the stuttering issues.

Now that sounds like a solution! But I have no clue how to get this into the profile... can anybody help?

[slyguy42o]

open up config\profiles.xml

find the config section that applies to your TV

add the value
maxVBitrate="12000"
to the transcoding section

12000 is just the value I am testing at the moment.. I have been playing around with it as some videos still stutter, but overall a big improvement.

here is the full string so you can see how it's used.

  Code:

<Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetACodec="ac3" targetVCodec="mpeg2video" maxVBitrate="12000">


@ slyguy42o: thanks! I will certainly give it a try. I really appreciate your answer and apologise for not responding sooner. It amy take a little more time but I will let you know how this works put for me. I will start at 20.000 and see what that does for me

@ slyguy42o

I finally got round to trying what you suggested, but I'm afraid it didn't work. The line you told me to edit was not identical, so I had problems trying to figure out what I should edit and where. Could I possibly email you my profile so you can tell me where to edit it? Or is there another way? I can post the entire profile here of course, but I think that will look a bit ugly...

Ah. I see I can attach a file, so I've done that. I have a Samsung TV C/D/E Series. If you search for 20000 you will find what I edited (and obviously didn't do very well...)

[slyguy42o]

Looks like you got most of them, I edited a few that got missed.

Note that if you don't see any difference do a search and replace on the 20000 value. Try 10000 just to see if it makes a difference or not, if that solves the issue you can work up from there to find your ideal value.

Thanks SlyGuy! Much appreciated! Will let you know!!! For now, be careful with fireworks tonight

Hi Slyguy,

Still stuttering

I'm at home recovering from an operation and thought this would be the perfect time to test this. Buy alas...

[slyguy42o]

what is the resolution of the files you are seeing this issue on? 1080? 720? 480?

I still see stuttering when I try to play a high action 1080.. but the same movie in 480 plays fine. I suspect this is due to my server having trouble keeping up with the transcode.

Hi Slyguy,

I have it mostly with the 1080 movies, when they are large in size. If I get files under 3gig, I generally don't have a problem, but you also see considerably less quality. Shame the TV can't handle higher bitrates by itself. I also see it in 720 movies if they are of considerable size. I just checked The Hunger Games, which is a 10gig file. Lots of peaks at 30.000. I've just reinstalled my computer and now have a clean profile; I got the feeling my previous profile was a little screwed up anyway (didn't even mention the model of my TV). What were you using to edit your profile? I have the feeling I don't have the right program to edit XML.

If you wanna have another go: I've attached the clean profile

And thanks for being there.

[grolschie]

I am wondering if the problematic files are ones that the renderer can play natively and are not being transcoded, therefore encountering the bitrate limitation? If so, maybe a possible feature request might be to implement a user-configurable bitrate value setting where any videos over this value are transcoded at an arbitrarily lower bitrate even if they are able to be played natively.

[slyguy42o]

isn't that what the abitrate variable kinda does?