Video player - show how much has buffered?

[DGalt]

Is there any way to get the video play to show how much of a video has already buffered (a la Youtube, etc.)? Or if not, does anyone know a video player that can be used with subsonic that will show how much of the video has been buffered? (for windows and/or mac)

[BKKKPewsey]

That's what the red bar is showing in the video player

[DGalt]

The red bar (at least in mine) only shows up to and including where I'm at in the video. It does not extend beyond the little circle that indicates the point in the video that I'm at. I know it's buffering, though, because if I let it sit for 10 minutes I can watch ~30 minutes of video without it stopping and giving me the little loading swirling circle symbol every 5 seconds. Once it hits the end of whatever is buffered, though, it goes back to stopping and starting and stopping and starting (the video playback is smooth, it's definitely not a transcoding issue...just probably slow upload speeds on the part of my isp where my server is located, since I'm on wifi right now and watching blurays).

[GJ51]

What format is the the underlying video?

[DGalt]

Everything is .mkv (all my video files are lossless rips to .mkv). Like I said, the playback itself is completely fine. If I open a video file and pause it for 10 or 15 minutes I get a good chunk of pristine playback. But then I'll hit to be what I assume is the end of whatever was buffered and I start to get that swirling "loading" symbol (circle of dots, looks like it's spinning). And then it'll go into this situation of playing 15 seconds are so, loading, playing 15 seconds, loading, etc.

These are big video files (most are blurays), so I have no issue with having to wait for the video to buffer. I'd just like to know how much has buffered so I can watch a video straight through without having to stop at different periods of time through the movie to let another section buffer.

[GJ51]

Although I'm not an expert in transcoding, it has been noted a few times here in the forums that being able to see the buffer lenght on the seek bar is usually a function of how the raw video is ripped and encoded. This has been particularly evident with mp4 videos that are known to encode the indexing information at the end of the file, and thus will not show buffer lenghth until the entire video has been transcoded. For mp4 files there is a utility called QEIndexSwapper2 that will reformat an mp4 video and place the index in the front of the file so that you can get the behavior your looking for.

I don't have a lot of experience using mkv files but I suspect that your probably seeing a similar issue. I suspect a solution lies within your ripping and formatting process rather than being a Subsonic/JW Player issue.

HTH

Blue ray does take a bit of horsepower to transcode without playback buffering, I have 2 systems that can handle it, one a dual quad core 2.83GHz XEON, and my Core i7 desktop. I have several systems based on quad and 6 core AMD CPU's that just won't cut it.

The best result I get for steaming BR quality video is to rip the video to MP4 and then turn off transcoding so that the video is just passed directly to JW Player. MP4 is a native JW Player format, so playback performance is only limited by band width, which is usually not a problem. Setting up this way takes all the load off the server CPU and I've been able to stream multiple high resolution videos at the same time without problems.

http://webserver.subsonic.org/share/wfgOB

[DGalt]

I'm not clear on how most of this works, but if you were to use an external player could you move the burden of transcoding off the server and onto the computer that is actually viewing the video? I didn't realize that the server was what is doing the transcoding...the hardware in my server is very basic so I'm not the least bit surprised that it can't keep up with it.

Ripping into a non-mkv format isn't really an option. This is my media server that I use with my HTPC, and I've found .mkv's to be the best (and most convenient) format for playback in my HTPC front-end software. I have zero issues when I'm on my lan, but I assume that's because the demuxing / transcoding is done by my htpc.

[GJ51]

If you use an external player, such as VLC and pass the video without transcoding enabled, then the mkv would be sent to the player for viewing and that would take the load off the server. Unfortunately, I've not had very much luck getting external players to work well in some time, so I haven't really put much effort into making it work.

If you have an external player that can playback mkv files on the recieving machine, you could just define an external player that doesn't transcode the video before sending it out.

YMMV

[DGalt]

Is there any way to check whether the issue is a transcoding issue vs. an issue with upload speeds?

[GJ51]

Sure. Turn off transcoding and compare the result.

[DGalt]

Well the files don't play at all if transcoding is turned off ("file not available or access denied" error)

[GJ51]

They won't play in the embedded player, but if you send them to an
EXTERNAL player that can play mkv files you will see the difference. The only formats that will play in the embedded player, JW Player are mp4 and flv. You could create a high resolution mp4 and test it both with and without transcoding to see the difference.

Any other format nedds to be sent to an external player that can handle the content at the client.

[DGalt]

Ok so, the lack of a visible buffering is definitely a result of the .mkv file extension. I have a few .mpg's that I streamed that buffered properly.

So the question, I guess, is why .mkv's don't show a buffer and what, if anything, can be done about that. I'll take a look at the utility you referred to. If anyone else has any input on this it'd be appreciated (so far I've had little luck in getting external players to work)

[GJ51]

I've had very little luck with external players as well and don't get much input from anyone else when I raise the issue. Not a big problem for me as I get most everything playing in the embedded player.

Remember that transcoding and file formats are complicated issues with many variables that affect performance. When looking at your issues you have to look at the entire chain from the format of the original video to the ripping process to the transcoding. There are a lot of things that have to be done properly in order to get good results, which will also be dependent on the power of the underlying hardware of the server.

The most efficient video playback with SS is achieved by ripping or formatting video to MP4 and then using QTindexSwapper2 to move the index information to the front of the file, or formatting to flv. Either format will play in JW Player (the embedded player) without any transcoding.

High resolution video - 720p or higher takes a good bit of CPU power to accomplish without serious buffering. 720P and 1080i really need a quad core cpu of 2.5GHz or more. I only get decent blue ray transcoding with a Corei7 or my dual quad core Xeon server. The higher the resolution, the more hardware power needed.

If you bypass transcoding by formatting everything to mp4 or flv, then you're only limitation will be the upload speed from the server.

HTH

[DGalt]

I understand that but at this point I have hundreds of video files already as .mkv, since this is the best container for lossless rips of audio/video/subtitles/etc. that I've found.

To see how much my hardware was the issue here I decided to switch over my subsonic host machine to my HTPC (the computer hooked to my TV at home that I watch all of these video files). The hardware in my HTPC is significantly better than that in my server, yet I'm still getting a significant amount of buffering. Watching the process manager on my HTPC while streaming the CPU usage goes from ~25% to ~50%. While streaming, including during periods of buffering, I never see any jump that even approaches 100% usage of the hardware (CPU or RAM).

I'm not entirely sure where that leaves me. Is there any way to further optimize the transcoding? Or is the issue actually a bandwidth / upload speed issue?

If I let the video buffer for ~5 minutes I get ~25 minutes of flawless playback, and then it starts into the cycle of buffering, playing for ~30 seconds, buffering, playing, etc. etc.