Universal Media Server | Forum

With all the improvements that have been made over the past couple of months, I've completely lost track of what the advantages/disadvantages of each are. From my limited testing, here is what I've got so far:
Both now handle DTS embedded audio. Can both handle DTS-MA as well?
FFmpeg handles variable rate files better than mencoder. That seems to be the only difference I see.
I think mencoder does subtitles better, but I burn mine in so I never come across that.
Does anyone have a good compare/contrast?

The main difference in our implementation of both engines as of UMS 2.3.0 is that FFmpeg doesn't do subtitles. We are working on adding that.
The main difference in the engines themselves is that FFmpeg is much more reliable with audio/video sync. It's also faster, so a great choice for slower computers. It's also much more actively developed (probably something like 50 commits for every 1 MPlayer commit these days).

Thanks Subjunk! That was kind of my impression based on reading between the comments.

some other items I've tested so far:
Neither will play DTS audio as part of a multi-audio track file, but will play AC3 as part of multi-audio file. I'll continue to test and am willing to compile others inputs into a master list if interested.

A weird quirk:
FFMPEG seems to not like some variable frame rate files. It seems to be file size dependent at first glance.
Ironically, mencoder will only play the file correctly if the 'Force Frame rate parsed from FFMPEG' option is checked. go figure....

Both play constant rate just fine.
Here is the mediaInfo details from the variable rate file that had trouble with FFMPEG:
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 2h 16mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 4 430 Kbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 816 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.35:1
Frame rate mode : Variable
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Minimum frame rate : 11.987 fps
Maximum frame rate : 23.981 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.118
Stream size : 4.21 GiB (48%)
Writing library : x264 core 128
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=2 / deblock=1-1 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=6 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.15 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-3 / threads=6 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=1 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=24 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=30 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=4 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=62500 / vbv_bufsize=78125 / crf_max=0.0 / nal_hrd=none / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Encoded date : UTC 2013-01-28 05:54:54
Tagged date : UTC 2013-01-28 09:38:16
Color primaries : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
Transfer characteristics : BT.709-5, BT.1361
Matrix coefficients : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177

VFR is horrible :p

SubJunk wrote:The main difference in our implementation of both engines as of UMS 2.3.0 is that FFmpeg doesn't do subtitles. We are working on adding that.

Question(s): Why doesn't FFmpeg support subtitles in UMS? Is it because of FFmpeg itself or something that needs to be changed in the code of UMS? Or perhaps both?

Both; FFmpeg itself supports external subtitles, but not internal ones. We are in the process of adding external subtitle support for our FFmpeg implementation and it should be here in the next version of UMS

Awesome. Looking forward to it.

SubJunk wrote:Both; FFmpeg itself supports external subtitles, but not internal ones. We are in the process of adding external subtitle support for our FFmpeg implementation and it should be here in the next version of UMS

Yeah, that is very very cool.

Jumpy now has support for FFmpeg with external subs too. It'll work when the new UMS comes out.