Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[chucko]

                  Hello all,

         I had installed MC 15.0.95 (on Win XP Pro SP3), and done most of my playing with that - very nice (and fast) product! Aside from seeing numerous HiFi folks using it to demo their very costly ear candy products at RMAF 2 weeks ago, I'm hoping to use MC as a DLNA server for a new Sony BDP-S570. After fighting a corporate firewall installed on my PC, MC was finally serving up my library (all uncompressed AIFF files) beautifully to to the Sony... But at 320 Kbps MP3. From the same PC, selecting the "Windows Media Player" as the DLNA source (on the Sony, which sees both options) allows me to play uncompressed 1.44 Mbps LPCM (as identified by the Sony) WAV source files.

         I tried changing the MC's decoder to "uncompressed stream", and get a "no files in playable format" error on the Sony, whether the original source file is in AIFF or WAV format.

         Digging in this forum, I found a post for 15.0.122 with new WAV support features, and "L16" conversion support, so I installed it. No go - If I choose "uncompressed L16 - no header", the Sony now sees the converted AIFF files as "LPCM" format files (good!), but gets a "Corrupted/unplayable file" error whenever I select one for playing. I've also, just for grins, tried enabling "DLNA Extra" and "Playstation 3 Compatible" (hey, it's a Sony) under advanced tabs, no go. Reverting back to MP3/320kbps makes the files playable - but at 320 kbps.

         Any suggestions/pointers to existing posts/Whitepapers re: serving up lossless WAV or AIFF files via MC would be greatly appreciated. Since I went to the work of ripping my collection to uncompressed/lossless, I hate to settle for 320 Kbps MP3.

                   Thanks very much, best regards,

-Chuck O.
         

[JimH]

Welcome to the forum.  Please download MC 15.0.136 from the top of the MC15 board.  Then take a look at other Sony threads here.

[chucko]

                          Hi Jim,

               Thanks for the redirect to the correct forum, and the pointer to 15.0.136.  Unfortunately, no change with 15.0.136 - "L16 - no header" conversion still results in the files being seen by the BDP-S570 as LPCM, but get a "file corrupted" error when attempted to play. And plain "uncompressed stream" just returns an error, "no files in playable format found" for either 1.4 Mbps WAV or AIFF files. 320 kbps MP3 still works.

                 I did some searches of this forum, but haven't found anything specific to the "320 kbps mp3 versus lossless WAV" issue. I understand that every vendor may have its intolerances and gotchas, perhaps Sony more than most. But since the Windows Media DLNA server "just worked" with the Sony, I figured it must just be a setting on MC that I was missing. If there are any suggestions about settings or tricks to get MC serving lossless, uncompressed audio files at 1.4 Mbps, I would be grateful.

                            Thanks, best regards,

-Chuck  O.

[chucko]

                      Hello,

              Fwiw - I just installed a demo version of iSedora, and it streams the files LPCM at 1.4 Mbps by default; after installing, the only parameter I needed to set was the folder where the .aif files are located, and everything else just worked.

              JRiver MC is obviously a much fuller-featured product, even if used only for audio - for example, I would like to take advantage of MC's playlists - iSidore is *only* a DLNA server, so it basically just presents the artists or albums list. So if there is something I'm missing, and there is a way to configure MC to transcode AIFF to LPCM at 1.4 Mbps, I would prefer to use MC. If anyone has gotten this to work with a Sony BDP-S570 (or any Sony product), I'd appreciate any pointers.

                       Thanks, best regards,

-Chuck O.

[bob]

Can you email me an unplayable aiff file (bob (at) jriver (dot) com)?
Thanks.

[chucko]

                     Hi Bob,

          I just mailed the smallest file I could find (a "Jaco speaks" snippet).

          Again, the MC DLNA server serves up,and plays *all* the AIFF files fine if 320 kbps transcoding is selected. But *none* of them work if the only uncompressed LPCM option I can find (uncompressed stream - L16 - no header) is chosen. The Sony sees the files, and lists them as "LPCM", but when one is played it says "The file is corrupted or the music file is not supported". If "uncompressed stream" is chosen, the Sony does not see any of the music files, saying "There is no playable file" (I'm assuming they are just served as AIFF files, which is not supported by the Sony).

          I forgot to mention in the e-mail - almost all of my aiff files were ripped using iTunes - but some were also downloaded from HDtracks, with no difference in behaviour.

                                   Thanks very much for your help,

-Chuck O.

[bob]

                     Hi Bob,

          I just mailed the smallest file I could find (a "Jaco speaks" snippet).

          Again, the MC DLNA server serves up,and plays *all* the AIFF files fine if 320 kbps transcoding is selected. But *none* of them work if the only uncompressed LPCM option I can find (uncompressed stream - L16 - no header) is chosen. The Sony sees the files, and lists them as "LPCM", but when one is played it says "The file is corrupted or the music file is not supported". If "uncompressed stream" is chosen, the Sony does not see any of the music files, saying "There is no playable file" (I'm assuming they are just served as AIFF files, which is not supported by the Sony).

          I forgot to mention in the e-mail - almost all of my aiff files were ripped using iTunes - but some were also downloaded from HDtracks, with no difference in behaviour.

                                   Thanks very much for your help,

-Chuck O.

Thanks for the sample. The file plays here fine to my PS3 with L16 conversion, also to the WDTV with or without conversion.

Can you check to see if the sample rate, but depth and channels info is set? (right click on the file and do Tag)

If you look at Tools->Options->File Type->AIF Audio
do you see it set to "Automatic" not quicktime or something else?
There was a fix to AIF handling but that was a while ago.
If you set the Audio Conversion to "Always Convert" can you play files in formats other than aiff with L16 conversion to your Sony?

[chucko]

     Hi Bob,

Thanks for all of your help - yes, all of the Tag info (sample rate, bit depth, channels) are shown. And AIF Audio was set to "automatic".

MC was behaving strangely, often becoming unresponsive and using 100% CPU (at one point with 30-40 lame processes running). Since I had upgraded the version twice, I fully deinstalled it, deleted all J River folders, and reinstalled 15.0.136 from scratch. I then ripped 3 new files, 1 using MC to rip a .wav, and then a .wav and .aif using DB Poweramp to use to test (instead of loading up my 1200 CD AIFF library).

Unfortunately, all the DLNA/LPCM behaviour is unchanged after all the deinstall/reinstall. I did discover that no files would play at all to the Sony, even with "MP3/320 kbps" transcoding, until I enabled  "DLNAExtra" in the advanced tab. But still, no .wav or .aif files will play as LPCM, when "L16" tanscoding is selected. Same error messages on the Sony ("Corrupted files"). And MC itself still periodically hangs or uses 100% CPU and has to be killed.

The non-DLNA functions in MC all appear to work fine on my PC - so if you are able to play fine to your PS3 at L16, then I'll have to assume there's something funky on my system, or a basic incompatibility with the BDP-S570. If there is anything else you can think of that I can test or check on this end, I'll be very glad to, as I would like to be able to use the product (in other than 320 kbps mode)... But otherwise, I realize that not all compatibility issues can be identified and resolved.

                        Thanks, best regards,

-Chuck O.

[bob]

Hi Chuck,
there was a problem with the conversion to MP3 that could cause all of those lames to be run. It was fixed in build 15.0.139. You should try the 15.0.142 version currently available. For your player, you probably need DLNAExtra enabled to get the right behavior so it should always be set.
Can you install 15.0.142 and try again. If your profile is set to "always convert" and "L16..." do any files play? (for example mp3's, flacs, etc) or is the problem only in converting aifs and wavs?

Thanks...
Bob

[chucko]

              Hi Bob,

          Thanks - with 15.0.142, no change. I also tried "always convert", and all files (including WAV and MP3 sources) still return the "Corrupted or unsupported file" error on the BDP-S570.

          Since you are able to test MC with other Sony products successfully, it must be a compatibility issue with MC and the BDP-S570. But since iSedora (the current free/demo download) works, feeding LPCM files to the Sony, it must be serving up the files differently (with all default installation options). I think that the BDP-S570 is a pretty popular player (Costco is also now selling as the BX57), so I don't know if you would be able, and if it would be worth your trouble, to locally look at the data sent by iSedora & compare it to what MC is sending for LPCM converted files. Unfortunately, I don't have a packet sniffer here, and probably wouldn't understand the decodes even if I did....

                            Thanks again, best regards,

-Chuck O.

[tombert]

When I set to "Uncompressed stream" my Sony does not even see the file. When I choose L16 my Sony sees the file and it plays it.

[chucko]

                      Hi Tombert,

          The only non-mp3 options presented to me by MC are "uncompressed stream" and "uncompressed stream - L16 - no header". It's "uncompressed stream - L16 - no header" I've been using. When I use that, the files are seen by the Sony BDP-S570 as "LPCM", but will not play, and get the "corrupted file" error. If I just choose "uncompressed stream" (not L16) in MC, the files are not even seen at all by the Sony

Q1: Is there a different "L16" option I should see and use?

Q2: Is your Sony a BDP-S570 or BX57 (Costco equivalent of the BDP-S570)?

                     Thanks,

-Chuck O.

[tombert]

Nono ... i'am using the same option (uncompressed stream - L16 - no header) as you are - just did the "shortcut".
I do have a Sony BDP-S370 (which should be same as yours except 3D) and it doesn't work. With my Sony Bravia KDL-EX... TV it works fine. Whats interesting is that I don't even see the cover art ... it looks like there are two different DLNA renderer implemented ...
I've also noticed that not even PS3 Media Server is able to stream videos to it?? It works fine on the Bravia ...
I didn't found out earlier becaues I decided to do all this stuff with my TV ... so looks like I was lucky only ...

[bob]

The conversion option should be "Uncompressed Stream - L16 - no header" since that is required to be supported by all DLNA devices. A dump of it working with iSedora would probably be useful. The procedure is outlined here:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=57668.msg402391#msg402391

You can start capturing with wireshark just before starting MC, browsing to the file and just starting to play, then stop the capture.
Thanks!

[tombert]

I made you two wiresharks - one with the Blu-Ray player (not working) and on with my TV (working).
I assumed the email bob at jriver dot com.

thx

[bob]

I made you two wiresharks - one with the Blu-Ray player (not working) and on with my TV (working).
I assumed the email bob at jriver dot com.

thx

Thanks, I'll check that. It might be necessary to get a dump of the blu-ray player working with something else as well.

[bob]

Hi Tombert and Chucho, check your messages for a test build if your are interesting in checking the L16 out with the BD player.

[chucko]

                 Hi Bob,

        Thanks - I installed the test build, but no change, the BDP-S570 still sees the files served up as LPCM, but when attempting to play, indicates they are corrupted or unsupported format. I should be able to install the sniffer s/w and get comparative MC/iSedora captures tomorrow. Should I use the new test version of MC for the MC capture, or back down to the released version?

                    Thanks very much,

-Chuck O.

 

[bob]

                Hi Bob,

        Thanks - I installed the test build, but no change, the BDP-S570 still sees the files served up as LPCM, but when attempting to play, indicates they are corrupted or unsupported format. I should be able to install the sniffer s/w and get comparative MC/iSedora captures tomorrow. Should I use the new test version of MC for the MC capture, or back down to the released version?

                    Thanks very much,

-Chuck O.

Using the test version should be fine.
Browsing to the same file on each and getting a dump of navigating to the directory with the file, then just the start of playing should be sufficient.
Thanks!
Oh yes, I forgot to add, for testing, can you use a mp3 file not aiff? Aiff to LPCM conversion could have a gotcha in it I'd like to avoid for this test.

[Charliemb]

I am having the same issue on a Sony Bluray BDV-E770W.
Is this issue getting close to being resolved?
My MC trial ends probably today and this problem is currently the reason why I don't buy MC.

[bob]

I am having the same issue on a Sony Bluray BDV-E770W.
Is this issue getting close to being resolved?
My MC trial ends probably today and this problem is currently the reason why I don't buy MC.

What format are you transcoding from?

[Charliemb]

What format are you transcoding from?

As per the title, same exact problem, uncompressed wave.  The CDs were ripped by JRiverMC to uncompressed wave.

On to a related problem...
BTW, to my dismay, none of the metadata was written to the wave files that were ripped by MC.  What this means is that, when I fire up another player like Windows Media Player, or dBpoweramp's Asset UPnP server, everything shows up as Unknown Artist / Unknown Album.  What is a remedy for this?   (Ripping is too painful to dedicate the whole collection exclusively to one piece of software forever.)   Although I don't know this for sure, I doubt this would happen if I had ripped with iTunes or Windows Media Player, that is, 3rd party players would probably be able to extrapolate metadata from what is written to the disk by iTunes or WMP.

[bob]

As per the title, same exact problem, uncompressed wave.  The CDs were ripped by JRiverMC to uncompressed wave.

Found that problem, it'll work in a build Friday (assuming we have one).

On to a related problem...
BTW, to my dismay, none of the metadata was written to the wave files that were ripped by MC.  What this means is that, when I fire up another player like Windows Media Player, or dBpoweramp's Asset UPnP server, everything shows up as Unknown Artist / Unknown Album.  What is a remedy for this?   (Ripping is too painful to dedicate the whole collection exclusively to one piece of software forever.)   Although I don't know this for sure, I doubt this would happen if I had ripped with iTunes or Windows Media Player, that is, 3rd party players would probably be able to extrapolate metadata from what is written to the disk by iTunes or WMP.

I'm not an expert on that but from what I understand, wave doesn't normally allow tagging so the values are stored in the library. There IS an option to write tags to the wave file though. Once that's enabled I'm pretty sure you can simply update files from the library. I'm not certain however that those wav files can be sent to a DLNA device when they have tags since the PCM sent to a DLNA device has to be headerless (and big endian).

[Charliemb]

Thanks.  I'll keep an eye out.  I'll also try the tagging.

[Charliemb]

Found that problem, it'll work in a build Friday (assuming we have one).

Has this been fixed?  Actually, I would need to try it with my hardware anyway.  Which brings me to a catch 22: my trial has expired.  Is there any way to extend it 1 day just so that I can test this function?  For my application there is no point to purchasing this unless this aspect of MC works.

[Charliemb]

Bob,  that fix worked for me.  I purchased MC as a result.  Thanks.

For the benefit of all, this problem is resolved on my Sony BDV-E770W.  As an added benefit, it also solved it on my LG TV.  Therefore, I imagine that it fixed a much larger subset than originally targeted.

The version that fixes this problem is a version 16 beta, the latest as of last week.

[bob]

Good to hear it worked for you, thanks for the feedback!

[Charliemb]

Turns out that we are celebrating too soon for the LG TV.  It does start playing the files, but then does not finish.  The funny thing is that it stops at 1:34, waits a few seconds, then moves on to the next track.  The next track starts properly and then stops again at 1:34, and so on.   This is for L16-no header.  For mp3, it plays perfectly.

Any idea of why this is happening?

(Before when I reported that it was working, I was just glad to see it start playing and I assumed it would work.  not so.)

[bob]

Sorry to hear it's still giving you trouble.
Are you saying that it works on the E770W but not the LG TV with the same settings??
Is is possible the TV needs a firmware upgrade?
Are these still wave files? If so, are they tagged wave files or untagged?

[Charliemb]

That is correct.  It works on the Sony E770W but not the LG PK950 series TV with the same settings.  I checked for updates last night and there are no updates available at this time; although I don't doubt that it could be the fault of the TV.   It makes no sense that playback would stop at exactly 1 minute and 34 seconds.

These are no longer wav files.  I abandoned ripping with MC because when I "wrote the tags in MC's db to the files," no other application could see the tags.  It's as if MC never wrote the tags to the files.  So under advice from some, I used dbpoweramp to rip and I reripped all CDs.   The files are now uncompressed aif files, with embedded tags as written by dbpoweramp.

If it helps, I can untag a few and save them in any format you'd like and I can try again and report back.   Or I can rerip one with MC to any format and try it.   If you let me know what you'd want I'll follow up.

[bob]

Can you send one of the tagged aif files to me, bob at jriver dot com?
I'm thinking the tagging might have something to do with it (you could also try an untagged aif to check this theory).

[Charliemb]

Will do shortly, when I get home.  I'll look for a 2 minute song, since these are uncompressed aiff's.

What's odd is that I'm chosing the option of L16 with no header.  Therefore, no tags should be sent... I would guess.

On the other side of the coin, it could be that the LG is interpreting a song length of 1:34, assuming song length is sent in headerless L16.

[Charliemb]

Bob,

It appears that my ISP will not allow me to send an email with such a large attachment.  I've tried all night long.

Do you have an ftp server that I can upload to?

Meanwhile, I converted the file to tagless.  But apparently MC can't catalog it that way because I can't find it on the TV.

[Charliemb]

...I'm thinking the tagging might have something to do with it (you could also try an untagged aif to check this theory).

I finally found the tagless aiff file on my player by dropping it on a playlist within MC.  I played it.   It still stopped at 1:34.   

[JimH]

I finally found the tagless aiff file on my player by dropping it on a playlist within MC.  I played it.   It still stopped at 1:34.   

Does it play correctly on the server?

[Charliemb]

Does it play correctly on the server?

Yes.  It plays fine on the instance of MC serving DLNA.  It also plays fine on a Sony E770W player over wifi from the same server.

[Charliemb]

If it's any consolation, with Asset uPNP, the LG TV starts to play them but never gets beyond 0:00.  No error given.  Just stays stuck there and eventually goes into the screen saver mode as if it were playing the file properly.

At least MC DLNA gets to 1:34.

[bob]

Bob,

It appears that my ISP will not allow me to send an email with such a large attachment.  I've tried all night long.

Do you have an ftp server that I can upload to?

Meanwhile, I converted the file to tagless.  But apparently MC can't catalog it that way because I can't find it on the TV.

I sent you a PM...

[Charliemb]

I sent you a PM...

Bob, you should have received the file.  I sent it successfully last night or the night before.

[bob]

Thanks Charlie, I got it and it works for me with all of the devices I tested.
I think you might have to wait for a firmware update...

[Charliemb]

Thanks! 

I would agree.