video's showing inflated "Plays"

[pir8radio]

I have been posting a bunch of questions lately, i have recently added my movies to subsonic and am having all kinds of small issues.. Here is another one... Someone is watching a movie from my subsonic server via iSub app on their ipad. They have only been watching for about 30 mins, yet this video is now showing "Played 382 times" even though its just this one user streaming.... I am noticing like 3 ffmpeg.exe's running and dieing off and other starting... This is a MKV file being transcoded via stock settings.

Any input?

[pir8radio]

Really....... annother issue that is just me. :-/ that sucks... i assume this is caused by ffmpeg, keeps opening new sessions to transcode the same file or something? Again any help will be appriciated... otherwise my movies will consume the "Most played" play list after one view!

Again to see what im talking about http://music.notallmine.net login/pass view/view check the movies folder and look at "X-men Origins Wolverine (2009)" that movie has been watched once. or view the most viewed link on the home page.

[bushman4]

It probably has something to do with the way that iSub is requesting the movie in chunks, buffering, and then requesting a new chunk in the background...

Does the same thing happen if a movie is played via the web interface or the android app? If not, it is a question for the iSub guys.

Glenn

[bushman4]

BTW, remember that we are all just users like you... waiting 14 hours for an answer or suggestion is not excessive...

Glenn

[daneren2005]

It probably has something to do with the way that iSub is requesting the movie in chunks, buffering, and then requesting a new chunk in the background...

Does the same thing happen if a movie is played via the web interface or the android app? If not, it is a question for the iSub guys.

Glenn

I'm pretty sure that iSub is using HLS which provides chunks of data for the video player to use. If Subsonic isn't designed to only consider the first "chunk" of data as a play, then you will get this behavior. But it really isn't anything the iSub guys can change AFAIK.

[pir8radio]

Thanks for the input guys... Yea i know bushman 14 hours isn't a long time to wait... I guess i have just gotten spoiled by the help i receive on this site... I don't mean to take anyone for granted... And i didn't want my post to fall down in the mystery hole of past posts....

Thanks, I will try streaming a vid with the web based player... and then harass the iSub group.

[pir8radio]

This appears to be an iOS issue with all apple devices. Because apple wants to use their own purposed standard. At least that's what i gather from both of these sites below. This explains why i have 600 views on a movie every time someone watches from an iCrap. So I cant really fix this, it sucks because it starts like 5 ffmpegs and kills the server, and throws stats off. Is there a way to have subsonic not count the video as "PLAYED" until after a certain length of time has passed. For example only increase play count if video has been streaming for 5 mins. Is this something i can find in script/code somewhere without having to recompile? I will look around for it tonight, but as usual any input would be appreciated.

Quote from below iSub software developer, in case you don't want to follow the links: "First, the reason it took so long to get iSub video support after Subsonic initially added video streaming is because Apple requires that all iOS apps use HTTP Live Streaming to do video streaming. This is why you won't see any issues playing from Android or from the web, the HTTP Live Streaming format and special Subsonic API call are only used for iOS devices."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming
http://isubapp.com/forum/#/discussion/comment/1397/

[daneren2005]

Meh I'll weigh in on this issue a bit that you WILL have this exact same issue with Android once it adds support for HLS ('m currently working on it). HLS may have been championed by Apple, but it is actually a great piece of technology. Hell even Android officially added support for it (although in their usual half assed manner). HLS is really just breaking a video into chunks so the player knows how to seek around. The problem is that Subsonic set it up to use the same API as watching a whole video, so that each "chunk" is being counted as a separate view. Subsonic needs to change this so that it only counts as a view when watching the first chunk, or it gets to the end, or some mix of the two. While the iSub developers can't do anything about it, it doesn't mean it's a iOS only problem, or even the specifications fault.

[pir8radio]

Well that leads me to my original question for the more advanced subsonic peeps.. like Daneren2005 says "The problem is that Subsonic set it up to use the same API as watching a whole video, so that each "chunk" is being counted as a separate view. Subsonic needs to change this so that it only counts as a view when watching the first chunk, or it gets to the end, or some mix of the two." Is there somewhere i can edit something to change this without having to recompile? Or is this a deeper software change that i need to put a ticket in for?

[daneren2005]

Although I can't say for sure, I would imagine it is a code issue that you aren't going to be able to fix without compiling from source.