problems with audio and ffmpeg

[mrtickle]

Hiya,

First post and newbie here although I've spend the last few days searching and trying various things before I posted! Thanks for such a great product, I came over from PMS and I've only had my PS3 for a few weeks so the whole DLNA thing is a bit of a learning curve.

I'll try and break down my problems, I didn't want to add many new threads on all at once, hope that's ok?

* Video is generally ok, but I'm finding Audio is an absolute nightmare to get working. The main problem I have with video is that files grind to a halt at end and stick on "pause", instead of returning back to the PS3 menus. Also it would be nice to be able to automatically play the next item in the list without having to create a playlist.

* ffmpeg just doesn't seem to work at all for transcoding audio. I don't want UMS to pick it (see below) but when it's used, it fails. The PS3 says "the data is corrupted". I will attach my logs to this post. Running the same ffmpeg command on the command line works fine and outputs a converted file no problem.

* if I change the priorities so that ffmpeg isn't chosen - MPlayer set to top priority and showing in Bold - UMS ignores this and still chooses ffmpeg anyway! I have to actually disable ffmpeg, to get it to chose either MPlayer or Audio High Fidelity (both of which were higher priority). (This seems to be an intermittent issue! I was trying to get the ffmpeg error in the log just now, but UMS was stuck firmly on Mplayer today and I had disable that to get it to pick ffmpeg from the list).

* Many things seem to be transcoded that don't need to be. In order to get my PS3 to play back my AAC encoded music files, which have the extension .m4a, I have to enter m4a into the "skip transcode for the following extensions" box. Sorry if this is a stupid question, but surely UMS examines the files to see what they are, and knows that the PS3 can play AAC audio, and so knows not to transcode? I really don't like having to hard-code .m4a in that setting, because I have some other m4a container files which don't contain AAC, and do need transcoding, elsewhere (they are ALAC-encoded). So it means I have to choose whether I want my ALAC files to fail, or my AAC files . Am I doing something wrong?

* Music won't play from my NAS (d-link DNS-323 with SMB sharing). The PS3 takes an age to examine the file, and then says "Media Server Error: A network error has occurred. (80710736)". I've read so many threads about this error over the last week but unfortunately got no further forward and it's driving me nuts. I initially suspected file permissions, but it can't be that because it's the PC user running UMS which needs file permissions isn't it? (is it)? And besides, all my Video files from the same source play absolutely fine, both with and without transcoding.

* A different error - for files not actually on NAS, but shared from my PC on the same drive as UMS - The PS3 says "The data is corrupted". The icon for the track is then broken, and the track name is replaced with "Corrupted data".

* But I can get either error in either location - there doesn't seem to be any pattern I can follow.

* I'm confused about the naming of the "use LPCM for audio (lossless, not suitable for wifi..." option. Does this mean it will TRY to use LPCM all the time (up to LPCM 5.1), or does it mean it will make a judgement and only expand the data to LPCM if it needs to? Eg if I'm playing an mp3 I'd rather send the lossy compressed audio over the network and let the PS3 expand it and play it, I don't want to give the burden of decoding to UMS and have it send more data over the network when there's no need. I think the word "force" or "allow" in this option would help clarify which it is?

Sorry for such a long post and I'm happy to test anything you need me to

[mrtickle]

Can anyone help me please? Is there any more info I need to supply?

[kuroukage]

* Many things seem to be transcoded that don't need to be. In order to get my PS3 to play back my AAC encoded music files, which have the extension .m4a, I have to enter m4a into the "skip transcode for the following extensions" box. Sorry if this is a stupid question, but surely UMS examines the files to see what they are, and knows that the PS3 can play AAC audio, and so knows not to transcode? I really don't like having to hard-code .m4a in that setting, because I have some other m4a container files which don't contain AAC, and do need transcoding, elsewhere (they are ALAC-encoded). So it means I have to choose whether I want my ALAC files to fail, or my AAC files . Am I doing something wrong?

To me it seems like you've already answered your own question (about how to get it working). I was going to suggest (the same thing you were already doing) that you use the skip transcode box and enter what audio file types PS3 plays natively in there. Anything else you're having a problem with you could always just re-encode them (with LAME or something else) to a format that the PS3 can use without having to be transcoded.

[mrtickle]

That doesn't explain why UMS doesn't detect which audio format the files are in though? As I said in that part, I can't enter which types to force or skip in those boxes, because they are both subsets of the same container filetype. That's just a work-around, I want to get to the root of the detection problem if possible.

And the vast majority of my (mostly mp3 and flac) audio files result in network errors or "data corrupted" on the PS3. So at the moment, it's almost unusable for audio regardless of the filetype. Given that no-one else seems to have these network problems with audio I must be doing something wrong so I want to understand what it is!

[SubJunk]

I'll have a test of it tomorrow and post back

[mrtickle]

I'll have a test of it tomorrow and post back

Thanks... any help would be appreciated!

[Triplefun]

Sounds more like an issue with your codec settings. Please define what codecs you are using and check you are not trying to bitstream the audio.

[mrtickle]

Sounds more like an issue with your codec settings. Please define what codecs you are using and check you are not trying to bitstream the audio.

Sorry for the delay in my replying. I'm now using v3.2.1 build 2nd Dec 2013. I've been trying to play some of the profile files today. I get intermittent results. Sometimes I get network error 80710736. Sometimes the files play fine.

These are mp3 files. I do want the best audio quality for movies, so in the audio tab of transcoding settings/common/general I have ticked "keep ac-3 tracks" and "keep DTS tracks". In the Audio tab, "skip transcode for the following extensions" is not available. It's there in the Video tab, so I assume it means that the option now only applies to Video.

My debug package is attached. In this session, some mp3 files worked and others didn't. Sometimes the file which didn't work started working and then stopped working again.

[DeFlanko]

Sounds more like an issue with your codec settings. Please define what codecs you are using and check you are not trying to bitstream the audio.

Sorry for the delay in my replying. I'm now using v3.2.1 build 2nd Dec 2013. I've been trying to play some of the profile files today. I get intermittent results. Sometimes I get network error 80710736. Sometimes the files play fine.

These are mp3 files. I do want the best audio quality for movies, so in the audio tab of transcoding settings/common/general I have ticked "keep ac-3 tracks" and "keep DTS tracks". In the Audio tab, "skip transcode for the following extensions" is not available. It's there in the Video tab, so I assume it means that the option now only applies to Video.

My debug package is attached. In this session, some mp3 files worked and others didn't. Sometimes the file which didn't work started working and then stopped working again.

Can you do a fresh install -- I think there is a UMS Service installed once before but not now:

Code: Select all

DEBUG 2013-12-08 11:57:32.631 [AWT-EventQueue-0] Starting "C:\Program Files\Universal Media Server\win32\service\wrapper.exe" -r wrapper.conf
DEBUG 2013-12-08 11:57:33.038 [Thread-20] wrapper  | The Universal Media Server service is not installed - The specified service does not exist as an installed service. (0x424)

Also a Directory that is no longer available?

Code: Select all

WARN  2013-12-08 12:14:47.540 [New I/O worker #12] The directory M:\ does not exist. Please remove it from your Shared folders list on the Navigation/Share Settings tab

I think this might be your issue:

Code: Select all

DEBUG 2013-12-08 12:23:42.254 [Thread-59] [VD_FFMPEG] DRI failure.
DEBUG 2013-12-08 12:23:47.832 [Thread-56] Cannot grow buffer size from 52,428,800 bytes to 209,715,200 bytes.
DEBUG 2013-12-08 12:23:47.832 [Thread-56] Error given: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
DEBUG 2013-12-08 12:23:47.973 [Thread-56] Cannot grow buffer size from 52,428,800 bytes to 233,550,643 bytes either.

[SubJunk]

That debug info shows there were a lot of files played, can you tell us which one/s you had problems with?