AVC format with Sony Bravia 2012 (KDL-46HX850)

[Dude]

Hello Dennis,

Does KRR support transcoding to the AVC format? Because my Sony Bravia 2012 does and I only see files in MPEG2 format.
Using MPEG2 is not a good choice for me since it's got a huge bitrate at the highest quality and my wired network+the TV's ethernet card don't do more than 85MB/s. Full quality MPEG2 will result in choppy playback on any DLNA server. AVC instead has a superior quality to that of max bitrate MPEG2, and smooth playback too.

I've just installed KRR 1.4.0 and no video works. Only a blank screen. It appears as if the video is playing but there is no image or sound. If I let the transcoding engine finish and try to play the vids in KRR's transcoding folder with WMP or VLC on Windows, the transcoded file appears corrupted with a lot of artifacts on the screen, never recovering. Sound plays fine. Also, the few frames that play in the transcoded file have no subtitle burned in, even if I do a manual transcode and tick the Subtitle checkbox in the transcode properties.

I'm sending the logs right after posting this thread.

Regards.

[Dude]

I was unable to attach the logs files to a Private Message, so I've sent them via the Zendesk ticketing system.

Edit: Also sent them to the support address.

[Dennis]

Yes, KooRaRoo fully supports encoding to AVCHD and will attempt to do so when it can (either by remuxing or a full encode). I will check the logs and get back to you via support e-mail.

[Dude]

Great, thank you.

No video files can currently be encoded to AVC on the Bravia 2012 profile (have not checked other profiles) and MPEG2 still transcodes to a corrupted video regardless of the settings I'm choosing. I'll continue to play with it and let you know if MPEG2 gets unstuck.

[Dennis]

Please try the Bravia "2011 models" and see if that encodes to AVCHD correctly - the current "2012 models" profile is mostly based on a TV model different to yours and perhaps a new profile is needed. If 2011 works (AVCHD), then definitely a new profile is needed and I'll send it to you via support as well.

[Dude]

This may have an obvious answer which I'm somehow missing, but how do I select a different profile? I can't find any profile settings anywhere. I can only select an auto-detected profile on the network, for example the "Device:" select box found in the manual transcoding dialog which is listing (among other DLNA devices on the network) the Bravia TV set.

[Dennis]

Sorry, I should've mentioned how to do this The instructions are in this thread: http://forum.kooraroo.com/showthread...device-profile

[Dude]

Ok, choosing the 2011 yields some progress. AVC is working. Subtitles look stunning, best I've seen on any DLNA server, but only partly functional.

Current problems:
1. Pause/resume is not working. Pausing works, however, when hitting the resume button on the remote, the TV says "Playback not available." and I need to quit the movie.
2. Upon stopping a movie and restarting playback, the movie restarts from the beginning, not from where I had left it off. Because the server doesn't remember the file position, the TV no longer displays the Restart Playback option to start the file at the beginning, because it's already at the beginning.
3. The audio volume is too low, I can't find any audio volume setting on transcoding. Selecting AC3 or MP2 has no effect on volume.
4. No subtitles when transcoding with the movie's built-in subtitle stream (selected the "subrip" option on the Subtitle select box, but I guess that's just a passthrough for TV's that support a separate stream for subs - Bravia doesn't)
5. Burned-in subtitles display nicely except the fact that I'm not using an English charset, but a Central/Eastern European one. Characters such as "șțăîâ" are not rendered properly. Instead, a square with a question mark inside it appears. Video codecs such as FFDshow (or CoreAVC) together with VSFilter (DirectVobSub filter) have a charset selection dialog. I can't find such a dialog in KKR.
6. The Windows CPU chart shows all my 8 CPU cores at 100% usage while transcoding, but looking at my processlist and ordering by CPU usage descending shows most processes at 0-1% usage (WTF?!). Looking at it with Windows Resource Monitor shows FFMpeg.exe with 25 threads and 97% CPU usage. ffmpeg doesn't appear in the regular process list. Maybe due to the way it's being spawned?
7. Any way I can use ATI GPU hardware acceleration while transcoding to AVC? Or perhaps an AviSynth alternative that uses CoreAVC for transcoding?
8. I couldn't find any settings for 3D subtitles (either SBS or OU). Do you plan on adding support for auto converting a single centered external sub to 2 subs for 3D support? FFDshow is one codec that supports stereoscopic subs.
9. MPEG2 still doesn't work with the 2011 profile (appears to play but no image, no sound). Not that I would ever want to play this antique format.

Thanks for the help so far Dennis!

[Dude]

9. Correction: MPEGTS doesn't work, with the blank screen, no sound. MPEG works fine. I've seen this behaviour with the blank screen on other media servers. I assume that my TV is unable to play MPEGTS.

[Dennis]

Ok, choosing the 2011 yields some progress. AVC is working. Subtitles look stunning, best I've seen on any DLNA server, but only partly functional.

Great, thank you for letting me know!

Current problems:
1. Pause/resume is not working. Pausing works, however, when hitting the resume button on the remote, the TV says "Playback not available." and I need to quit the movie.
2. Upon stopping a movie and restarting playback, the movie restarts from the beginning, not from where I had left it off. Because the server doesn't remember the file position, the TV no longer displays the Restart Playback option to start the file at the beginning, because it's already at the beginning.

Can you please send a log trying to pause/resume a movie to support e-mail and I'll check it out.

3. The audio volume is too low, I can't find any audio volume setting on transcoding. Selecting AC3 or MP2 has no effect on volume.

The volume should be the same as in the original file. Does the original sound ok on the PC?

4. No subtitles when transcoding with the movie's built-in subtitle stream (selected the "subrip" option on the Subtitle select box, but I guess that's just a passthrough for TV's that support a separate stream for subs - Bravia doesn't)

Yes, that's coming soon (extracting embedded subtitles).

5. Burned-in subtitles display nicely except the fact that I'm not using an English charset, but a Central/Eastern European one. Characters such as "șțăîâ" are not rendered properly. Instead, a square with a question mark inside it appears. Video codecs such as FFDshow (or CoreAVC) together with VSFilter (DirectVobSub filter) have a charset selection dialog. I can't find such a dialog in KKR.

One thing to try is to use a different font (one that supports your character set). This is set on the Subtitles tab in device properties. Also, can you please send a sample SRT with such characters to support as well and I'll test it here.

6. The Windows CPU chart shows all my 8 CPU cores at 100% usage while transcoding, but looking at my processlist and ordering by CPU usage descending shows most processes at 0-1% usage (WTF?!). Looking at it with Windows Resource Monitor shows FFMpeg.exe with 25 threads and 97% CPU usage. ffmpeg doesn't appear in the regular process list. Maybe due to the way it's being spawned?

FFmpeg is spawned by the server, which is a Windows service, so in Task Manager you need to enable "Show processes from all users" to see FFmpeg.

7. Any way I can use ATI GPU hardware acceleration while transcoding to AVC? Or perhaps an AviSynth alternative that uses CoreAVC for transcoding?

There is preliminary support for using avisynth in KRR, albeit only in a testing phase. If you are interested, I'd be happy to work with you on getting it finalized.

8. I couldn't find any settings for 3D subtitles (either SBS or OU). Do you plan on adding support for auto converting a single centered external sub to 2 subs for 3D support? FFDshow is one codec that supports stereoscopic subs.

Yes, that will come in one of the future updates. Perhaps paired with avisynth processing.

9. MPEG2 still doesn't work with the 2011 profile (appears to play but no image, no sound). Not that I would ever want to play this antique format.

Is it transcoded (with subtitles) or streamed natively? I'll need to see logs for that as well.