Transcoding/Streaming videos

[jermanbdogg]

Hello all,

I have a paid/donated account with the URL pointing to my home server. When I was on v4.5 everything was running great with a 512Mb memory allocation.

Specs:
Windows 7 32 bit
AMD Athlon 3.0 GHz
4GB DDR2 866Mhz (3GB Avail)
3TB HD Digital 5400 RPM

ISP: 12D/5U

I upgraded to 4.6 and ever since When transcoding/streaming over the internet (both music and movies) I get stuck buffering every 4-5 seconds. I monitored my PC CPU while a friend tested it over the internet and didn't see anything wrong CPU Speed (Never above 25%). I upped the memory allocation to 1024 MB to see if maybe it needed more memory to transcode and still the same thing. I checked my up/down speed and verified with my ISP that they were not throttling. I defragged my storage space. All with the result.

Tried multiple browsers with a clean cache (Client Side and Cleaned server side). No errors listed in the log file either.

I am running on fumes here. Any ideas all?

Any input would be helpful.

Thanks,
Jerry

[paulodell]

Hi as for the music,
Try and use the encoder setup below as well as the default setup, the one below will auto encode any mp3 to mp3 again but this seems to fix most of my playback issues.
> Transcoder Addition (subsonic setting) for SubWiji:

> ConvertFrom = mp3

> ConvertTo = mp3

> Step1 = ffmpeg -f mp3 -i %s -ab %bk -v 0 -f mp3 -

please be sure to include everything in bold including the - otherwise the Transcoder setting will not work.

I use this transcoding setup when using SubWiji (my free Windows Client which links to subsonic)http://forum.subsonic.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8772

Thanks

Paul

[jermanbdogg]

Yeah I saw that. I was thinking about using subwiji too. (Off topic question) does it work for video too or just music? Looks like it was written for music but then again so was subsonic . Now it seems that feature is a make or break scenario for all in one.

But back to topic. If what I implement for video currently doesn't work I will give the mp3 transcode settings a shot for music. I scoured the forums last night and found that it might just be a flaw/incompatibility in the previous version of ffmpeg. I updated it last night to the latest static version and it seems to work on the LAN. I will be testing it this weekend for offsite troubleshooting. fingers crossed.

[paulodell]

Yeah I saw that. I was thinking about using subwiji too. (Off topic question) does it work for video too or just music? Looks like it was written for music but then again so was subsonic . Now it seems that feature is a make or break scenario for all in one.

But back to topic. If what I implement for video currently doesn't work I will give the mp3 transcode settings a shot for music. I scoured the forums last night and found that it might just be a flaw/incompatibility in the previous version of ffmpeg. I updated it last night to the latest static version and it seems to work on the LAN. I will be testing it this weekend for offsite troubleshooting. fingers crossed.

At the moment SubWiji is music only but it is in my list to add video
Paul

[jermanbdogg]

I updated jwplayer, ffmpeg, and java, reinstalled SS and received the same buffering issues. So i completely wiped the box clean and started fresh. reinstalled essential services, then SS. I am still running into video buffering issues.

I am convinced of two things. it is either hardware or coding issues. It is easy to blame hardware because it is hardware intensive, however if it wasnt for v4.5 working so well for so long, i would be out buyibg a new processor right now.

Not too sure of what to do here. i reran performance monitor multiple times throughout the process and can see my processor peaking at 100% then dropping back down to about 50 or so. i upgraded my router and internal network to gigabit, thinking that if it is a network bottleneck, it aint gonnabe from inside. (plus i just wanted to).

my next COA is going to be messing with encrypted Vpn to see if it my ISP scanning the output. if that is the case then i will be switching my port numbers around. (possible fix). Next updates a comin soon.

Anyone else experiencing issues like this?

[BKKKPewsey]

I do not stream much video because of my cr*p ADSL upload speed but one thing I would try is streaming a flv file.
That will take the transcoding out of the frame.
You could also try going via https which will also encrypt the stream and may be easier to implement then a vpn.

[jermanbdogg]

I have been playing around with that since I briefly glanced at a couple other posts as an alternative (about 18 mins per 700mb file x 1.5TB to re-encode). I even found a tool that helped with learning all the switches in ffmpeg
http://rodrigopolo.com/ffmpeg/ (cheating....I know )

How do you implement that in SS? Say I have the .flv file in the folder and point SS to find it. Will it just work automatically like with MP3s or will I have to play with the transcoding section more?

I already have my server set up for a simple PPTP VPN that will encrypt the traffic. I just ran a speedtest with 3Mbps up (supposed to be 5Mbps). I suppose that isn't too bad but with a 1Mbps stream I might be able to do better with VPN anyways.

I wish I was back on the ADSL line. Back then (about 5 years ago) I never would have thought about doing any of this....or that it was possible. With experimentation comes bigger bills I guess.

[BKKKPewsey]

The web player does not need to transcode flv files as it's a native format (flash) so therefore SS will just stream it.
If you still get dropouts /buffering then you know its not the transcoding that is the issue.

[jermanbdogg]

So it turns out afterall that it was my processor trying to chug away at transcoding before sending. I tested an original file with a performance graph and one that I re-encoded and it worked just fine.

Two options: bigger hardware ($$$) or re-encode 1.5TB of data (Time).

I can't remember what I was using that stated that my CPU was using only 25% (probably some dumb 3rd party app). I am gonna try and script something together to run all of the re-encoding together so I don't have to fiddle around with it forever.

Question on the SS transcoding though. I have been playing around with the ffmpeg switches and seems to be quite different than in the one listed in SS. I want to try and match whatever it has with what I am doing manually.

Current: ffmpeg -ss %o -i %s -async 1 -b %bk -s %wx%h -ar 44100 -ac 2 -v 0 -f flv -vcodec libx264 -preset superfast -threads 0 -

What are the percent signs referencing? Is it probing the files to find out what is currently listed for the file before hand and referencing it back into the player?
Also what is the "-preset superfast" switch doing? (I can't find it in the manual).

[BKKKPewsey]

Also what is the "-preset superfast" switch doing? (I can't find it in the manual).

That is a speed preset for the libx264 codec
See http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings