Clarification about Ffmpeg requirement (Linux)

Hi guys,

I've been using Serviio for a while now for music and photos. It's a very nice and useful piece of kit - thanks!

Just taken the plunge into serving up videos as well which is understandably a bit more involved.

I'm actually struggling at the first hurdle which is to get the video files added to the library.

I get errors in the serviio.log (at a different box at the mo' so can't post the exact errors sorry) to the effect of:

[a] ffmpeg is not found which gives an error
[b] can't add unknown video file type to library which gives a warning

Now, in the first instance I have *not* selected "use transcoding" so I am a little unsure as to the Ffmpeg requirement. Is it something like Serviio is running FFPROBE on video library file candidates to works out the stream metadata and so on? ie. is ffmpeg needed regardless of that transcoding setting?

I actually have a static build of ffmpeg on the serviio box, and I have tried running Serviio with [serviio.sh -Dffmpeg.location=/home/username/myffmpeg/ffmpeg] but
that does not seem to have any effect and i get the same errors in the logs.

Any ideas and advice greatly appreciated, thanks.

- Daniel

[will]

Ffmpeg is required regardless of transcoding as it's used to analyse files.


For ffmpeg.location, are you edit the JAVA_OPTS line in serviio.sh, or passing it as an option, if so you have to actually edit the file.

Thanks for the speedy answer Will, it's good to know that Ffmpeg is always required.

I was simply passing a -D option to the serviio executable. I will try editing the option in the file itself.

Thank you!

I can confirm that editing the JAVA_OPTS line in serviio.sh has worked!

Great!