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[soundcheck]

Hi MC team.

Meanwhile I bought the MC18 license. I hoped there'd a be a little improvement on the video streaming side.

Fact is. I still don't get better video quality then DVD quality over my MC DLNA network.


Are there any plans to improve this situation???

If yes - what's the timeline??

THX

[csimon]

There is no reason why DLNA streaming should result in SD quality - presumably you are talking about HD files? I've got bluray rips in .mkv files and they are stunning over DLNA from MC, even on a cheap media player like the WD TV Live!

Have you got transcoding on?

[soundcheck]

I've been trying HD .m2ts. 

I do have great results with Serviio DLNA server. Serviio maxes out the capabilities of each TV.

Unfortunately I can't get it done with MC.

The only option that works for me (Sony Bravia 2011) is MPEG2/DVD/PAL.


Data:

Container is MPEGTS
VideoCodec should be MPEG2
Region is Europe -> PAL
Maximum videobitrate the TV would accept is 17000 - higher stuff should be transcoded
Audio should be transcoded to ac3 - stereo


It should be a no-brainer for the MC team to introduce such a profile.

Let me know if I missed something.

[bob]

Can you try the MP4TS very high format? That's 1080p.

[soundcheck]

Dear Bob.


Let's give it another try.


With MP4TS playback starts, but the screen stays black.

To me it looked that your media server seems to face serious performance issues.
Ususally, if the format wouldn't be recognized by the TV the playback woudn't even start.
I do not have any options to trace anything. I just have Serviio as a working reference.


Hope that helps.

Cheers

PS:
Just to remind you: We (you and me) have been discussing the issue several times (It's been a year by now!).

[bob]

Sorry, too many stack pushes, stack overflow.

Probably need a mpeg2 hi-res profile (which depending on libavcodec may or may not implement threading).

[soundcheck]

Yep. MPEG2-Hires would be it - a EU and US profile of course.

But as you suggest and as I mentioned before: You probably won't get around multithreading.

I'm running ffmpeg multithreaded over  4 procs on an i5. That's giving me smooth camera moves
on downsized 17000kb/s material.


BUT:
I also told you before.  To get the media streaming under control you need to get away from todays profile scheme.  
You need to introduce highly customizable device profiles. It probably needs community support to get all those
devices and formats out there under control. You need to give us the tools to be able to support you guys.

[yinmeout]

I am new to the forum - I's just like to add a 'me too' to this request.
I have a very high def solution with Serviio which I had to "tweak  myself" to get working at the maximum definition.

Your product simply is too inflexible in this department to be workable at a decent quality.
Currently I can only render standard ~756 lines in otherwords PAL. When I select the recommended settings, "MPEG2/DVD PAL(or NTSC) Stream" (NTSC is obviously even less lines).
So my beautiful 1080p Hi def movies come out blocky and low quality :-( though the J River server. (which I want to use and pay for - like the others who have raised this).

Specifically:

Sony TV's DO support H264 and AAC encoded content up to level 4.1 (32000 (X x Y x frames)/256 is the formula ) (and others as per the Sony website).
What they are fussy about is the 'transport container' that those streams are wrapped into.
They require an m2ts transport stream at the point of delivery. That is to say a 'remux' not a transcode.

This command line will produce a file at maximum quality for the TV and it will not require a transcode to be rendered, only a remux (which is in essence amounting to an identical copy of the original file at the point of delivery).

ffmpeg -i myfile -acodec aac -ac 2 -strict experimental -ab 192k -ar 48000 -vcodec h264 -crf 18 -preset slow -level 4.1 -f mpegts "C:\myfile.m2ts"

They then also require specific rules to stop the DLNA server trying to NEEDLESSLY transcoding the outgoing stream.

The options you provide in the "video mode" section of the DNLA servers configuration tab are woefully simplistic to accommodate all the DLNA rendering devices out there.
Please please please - remove the transcoding module from the main exe back into ffmpeg and write some rules in an xml file that we can all customise - that would solve it - once and for all.
This is as per what Serviio and others have done.
Also some decent logging options would be a bonus.

This is such a pity as I am so impressed with the product, overall which I have been evaluating for just 24 hours.

[jmone]

Hi yinmeout - the transcoding engine is in fact based on a custom ffmpeg build, and Hendrik (one of the devs) has mentioned that he hope to add more customisation at some point (TBA).

[yinmeout]

Right - that is encouraging - and it seems I am wrong!!! You might want to sticky this somewhere for the other SONY TV users.

After more fiddling - I have got two exclusive scenarios which work differently and give different results.
One hi def no transcoding (assuming original files in correct format as previously listed) and one not.

If I select in the DLNA settings / Video:
Mode: Specified Output format (= transcode)
Format: MPEG2/DVD PAL Stream (= stream format i.e. the remux)
Advanced:
Check "MPEG video mimetype override" and then set:
video/vnd.dlna.mpeg-tts
AVC_TS_HD_60_AC3_ISO

The TV will display all the content the server has in it's library - and list said content as MPEG
It will also play it back all be it at a lower resolution that it is stored in, since it's set to transcode via the first setting.

However!
If I set MODE = original (= do not transcode)
Then I set the advanced Video DLNA Override to:

AVC_TS_HD_EU

Hey presto - it works exactly the same as Serviio does.
Full HD render and no transcoding on the server side - problem solved.

Note for others I looked up the correct formats here

"http://wiki.serviio.org/doku.php?id=sony_bravia_tv"

Click on the appropriate year and you will see a list of all the DLNA profiles your TV will support.
You also need to correctly encode the video files before hand. H264 AAC is the smallest and highest content combination hence why I listed how to do that before below.

Right I am in for a purchase then. Awesome product!

[jmone]

Glad you worked it out, there are so many devices and their implementations of DLNA drive us all nuts!