HOWTO: Change JWPlayer to the HTML5 version

[GJ51]

Low end quad core may not be enough either. I'm suggesting that as a minimum to get perhaps to 720p.

Video performance is dependent on many factors. It's a true "weakest link" scenario that involves CPU (including internal cahe size) power, available memory, network capacity, hard drive speed, and upload bandwidth from and download bandwith at the recieving end. Can't begin to tell you how often I've explained this to users who think there is something wrong with Subsonic. Stop and think how often you get a Youtube video that buffers even with their resources. The typical home network has nowhere near that capacity, yet I often see users post that they think poor video performance = somthing wrong with Subsonic.

After several years of isolating and tweaking each link in the chain, I've finally got what I think are acceptable results on my video server that has dual quad core xeons running at 2.83GHz, 16 GB ram, dual nics aggregated, gigabit lan, connected to the outside with 35/35Mbps Verizon Fios.

Granted your levels of acceptable performance might be found at a less powerful level depending on your useage and typical resolution of the native video. I primarily use Subsonic video for access to recorded TV over the internet when I'm not at home. That's at 1080i. It works well as long as I can get a decent download speed from the remote location.

Can setup and minor tweaks affect things? Yes, certainly, but not to the degree where it will totally compensate for any hardware or bandwidth issues. For video transcoding you need raw power.

That's why I often advise users that have lower power servers should preformat the videos to flv or mp4 and turn off the transcoding and just pass the video directly to JW player or the phone (flv). That way you're only dealing with bandwidth delivery issues and the CPU power is eliminated from the equation. I ran several tests comparing both approaches and it's incredible to see the difference. Preformatted video delivered directly without transcoding drops CPU use to so negligible you won't see it while you monitor the CPU useage compared to seeing it pegged out when transcoding.

Everyone complains that it takes to long to preformat the video. Sure, because then you see how hard the CPU has to work to make the conversion when reformatting. Well that's exactly what you do repeatedly when you ask the server to do on demand transcoding. It's the same issue - it takes a ton of resources. You can do it once deliver many times easily, or struggle every time you play back a video.

I have software that can monitor a directory and automatically convert files to desired formats at predefined load limits in the background and then store the result in a seperate directory thus automating the process, but it's a tedious configuration that I don't use now that I have the server power.

Bottom line - if you're having trouble with video, it's not inherently a Subsonic flaw, but more likely a hardware horsepower issue.

[daneren2005]

I guess it comes down to the point where I am probably just going to have to deal with the lower quality then. I just don't have the cash to spend on a high end server hardware like that. I wish there was a market for non-Xeon dual (or quad!) socket boards, but there just isn't and you pay too high of a tax for business grade equipment. I would love to be able to spend more up front on a dual socket mobo and be able to get another quad core in the future when I have more money. That would be pretty awesome to just chain 2 (or 4!) $200 i5's into a home server, but it will never happen

But back to the main point, I am mostly going to be using subsonic to watch video on mobile devices anyways. I rarely if ever have anything with a large screen when away from home so low quality transcodes on a phone or my Nexus 7 don't really bother me that much. The 90-95% total CPU usage I quoted earlier is for a 1000 kbps stream, which is almost good enough even on my computer. I mean that is almost dvd quality (usually vary from 800-2000 kbps for me) so your not sacrificing a huge amount of fidelity for that. So a modern quad core should be 3-4x as powerful as my current setup, so I would hope it could handle at least a 2000 kpbs stream.

Quick question since you seem to have researched this quite a bit: did you notice a difference in load based on the source quality? I just got a bluray drive for my computer and have started ripping some of my library into higher quality rips. Transcoding vidoe is already pretty much maxing out my server as it is, do you think this will drive it over the edge and make it not be able to transcode in real time?

[GJ51]

Without a doubt. Blue Ray is the most demanding resolution and will bring most servers to their digital knees. I think the minimum power for Blue Ray is around the Core i7 level of power. I haven't tested a Core i5, but it will put some load on an i7.

You also have to factor in other things that may be going on concurrently as well. Background network load, other backgound processes, hard drive activity can all impact video performance during real time transcoding. I've had instances where I saw unexpected buffering and found it related to some intense background volume shadow copuing that was running at the same time as a bacground process.

It's all about trial and error with your specific hardware. I have a couple AMD quad core servers that can handle video short of Blue Ray under ideal conditions. Video to phone is almost always going to be limited by the phone's connection speed so you have to get that right, but the server still has to transcode the source fast enough to que the feed. Getting the Blue Ray rip to transcode fast enough to keep up will be a challenge.

BTW - the dual quad core xeon was an ebay steal at $600. Incredible value. I troll ebay a lot looking for that kind of bargain. Not easy to find, but if you troll once a week you sometimes can find really good scores.

My real dream is to build a 24 drive 4U unit with dual 8 core xeons and a truck load of ram with quad nic's and then upgarade to 150/65 Fios.

I may need a lottery ticket ...

[mta99]

Yikes I was going to update my server to a more modern Pentium like that. I thought that it would do much better than my old Pentium D with transcoding but your tests seem to say it isn't that much better. Guess I might need to just wait until I have more like $300 to upgrade to a low end quad core.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

What OS you using? unRAID is incredibly light weight so almost all the CPU cycles are available for transcoding. However, some of the newer CPU technologies (and fairly old ones like hyper threading) aren't available which was why I went for a Pentium over an i3. Previously I used an Atom and an E-350 APU which could both handle SD no probs but for HD i needed the "horsepower" of the SandyBridge. My usage of transcoding is pretty small, its the GF who uses it the most. She spends a lot of time on the road and watching TV eps on crappy hotel wifi so, as GJ suggested, the bandwidth is by far the limiting factor.

Just out of interest here are my transcoding settings

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -ss %o -i %s -async 1 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -f webm -vcodec libvpx -b %bk -s %wx%h -acodec libvorbis -ar 44100 -ac 2 -preset superfast -threads 4 -v 0 -

I know threads 4 is nonsense but its placebo for both me and the server. I add the -map to prevent DVD/Blu-Ray rips with multiple audio tracks playing the directors commentary or (god forbid) French!

[r3dsk1n]

I keep getting "Error loading media file could not be played" I'm not sure what's wrong exactly, It's almost as if the file can't be found

[mta99]

I keep getting "Error loading media file could not be played" I'm not sure what's wrong exactly, It's almost as if the file can't be found

Usually a problem with your transcoding settings. Check the logs on the about page, should throw some light on the issue

[r3dsk1n]

Rebooted and it sort of worked, I think my machine is just a little too slow. I guess I'm stuck with flash

[daneren2005]

Yikes I was going to update my server to a more modern Pentium like that. I thought that it would do much better than my old Pentium D with transcoding but your tests seem to say it isn't that much better. Guess I might need to just wait until I have more like $300 to upgrade to a low end quad core.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

What OS you using? unRAID is incredibly light weight so almost all the CPU cycles are available for transcoding. However, some of the newer CPU technologies (and fairly old ones like hyper threading) aren't available which was why I went for a Pentium over an i3. Previously I used an Atom and an E-350 APU which could both handle SD no probs but for HD i needed the "horsepower" of the SandyBridge. My usage of transcoding is pretty small, its the GF who uses it the most. She spends a lot of time on the road and watching TV eps on crappy hotel wifi so, as GJ suggested, the bandwidth is by far the limiting factor.

Just out of interest here are my transcoding settings

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -ss %o -i %s -async 1 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -f webm -vcodec libvpx -b %bk -s %wx%h -acodec libvorbis -ar 44100 -ac 2 -preset superfast -threads 4 -v 0 -

I know threads 4 is nonsense but its placebo for both me and the server. I add the -map to prevent DVD/Blu-Ray rips with multiple audio tracks playing the directors commentary or (god forbid) French!

Currently using Ubuntu. Really the only thing I ever have going on there is a pretty consistent ~2% usage for deluge. But that's not the OS's fault that I'm using the same server to run torrents off of

And those extras aren't really necessary since I remove the extra audio tracks and junk when I do the original rips. Although that being said if I did get a quad core I would probably limit to 2 threads to make sure system resources aren't being completely drained by a single transcode (which is what happens right now for me).

If you are not having trouble with it I might just go for a sandy bridge Pentium and hope for the best. Worst case scenario I guess I won't have wasted that much money since it is only like $60. Most of the up front cost will be the mobo + ram.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[chali]

Hi

I can play my movies in html5 if I do as it says in the thread? or is this just for music?

(Info about My server if needed)

my films are all in MP4 format (h/x264/acc ffmpg)
server that handles transcoding: Amd 6272 (2.2 ghz x 16 core) 32gig ecc, dual intel nic.

and it uses ubuntu 12.04 x64, with madsonic 4.8 beta 3

/ Chali

[GJ51]

Yikes I was going to update my server to a more modern Pentium like that. I thought that it would do much better than my old Pentium D with transcoding but your tests seem to say it isn't that much better. Guess I might need to just wait until I have more like $300 to upgrade to a low end quad core.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

What OS you using? unRAID is incredibly light weight so almost all the CPU cycles are available for transcoding. However, some of the newer CPU technologies (and fairly old ones like hyper threading) aren't available which was why I went for a Pentium over an i3. Previously I used an Atom and an E-350 APU which could both handle SD no probs but for HD i needed the "horsepower" of the SandyBridge. My usage of transcoding is pretty small, its the GF who uses it the most. She spends a lot of time on the road and watching TV eps on crappy hotel wifi so, as GJ suggested, the bandwidth is by far the limiting factor.

Just out of interest here are my transcoding settings

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -ss %o -i %s -async 1 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -f webm -vcodec libvpx -b %bk -s %wx%h -acodec libvorbis -ar 44100 -ac 2 -preset superfast -threads 4 -v 0 -

I know threads 4 is nonsense but its placebo for both me and the server. I add the -map to prevent DVD/Blu-Ray rips with multiple audio tracks playing the directors commentary or (god forbid) French!

All my network runs on Windows, the servers running Win Server 2008R2, Although I may start moving to 2012 before too much lomger starting with the Domain Controller. I hope to start setting up and testing the webm setup in the next few weeks to see how it goes.

I too would like to get rid of the flash hassle on Android. I have it kludged for now, but clearly it's getting phased out and our next cycle of phone upgrades will likely lock it out entirely, so there's no time like the present.

[Fenny]

My setup: I have an old Linux box running both XBMC, and my Samba server. I have a LigHTTPd+mod-proxy/php-rewrite service running on my main windows server box (i7-970). Subsonic also runs on the windows server box, and pulls files via SMB. Works perfect.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

[Fenny]

Hi

I can play my movies in html5 if I do as it says in the thread? or is this just for music?

(Info about My server if needed)

my films are all in MP4 format (h/x264/acc ffmpg)
server that handles transcoding: Amd 6272 (2.2 ghz x 16 core) 32gig ecc, dual intel nic.

and it uses ubuntu 12.04 x64, with madsonic 4.8 beta 3

/ Chali

Yes, It's working for me.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

[chali]

Hi

where to put the externalplayer.jsp ? cant find the folder (ubuntu x64, madsonic 4,8 beta3 )

/Chali

Okay, and got it working for the external player as well. ;D
Now you can share media in splendid html5 glory
(There is no option for flash at all in this modified version)
Also: I think I have settled on:

Code: Select all

-vf lutyuv=y=val*1.1

[fatman06]

I"m so glad someone took the time to get this to work I am running into an issue though on my laptop when playing a video and I select full screen it expands to the size of the frame in Chrome. Has anyone else experienced this or know of a way to force it to go to the actual full screen?

Chrome: Version 24.0.1312.56
OS: OSX 10.7.5
SubSonic Server: 4.7 Windows 7

Thanks!

[mta99]

I've experienced the same, full screen will just fill the frame. The workaround (if that's the right name - could be exactly how it's intended to work after all) is to open the video in a pop out window, then hit full screen. Works for me :geek:

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2