Cant fast forward Videos in UMS 9.3.1

[smokedporkroast]

Ever since I started using UMS about a year ago I thought it was great, except one flaw that stumped me. Movies wont fast forward on any device save my phone. With other servers like Plex and Playon it works perfectly, but since I like more control over the settings I am sticking with UMS. I read in a thread from 2013 that disabling subtitles would solve this, but nothing so far has gotten it to work. Mostly everything is mp4 and I have a pretty fast computer so I don't think its because the computer cant handle it, and the Roku 3 that I have should work fine with mp4s. I'm attaching a log, maybe there is some bug that screws this up.


Thanks,
smokedporkroast

[mik_s]

I don't see anything getting played or any renderers other than 3 lots of Windows Media Player with ip's of 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.21 and 192.168.1.42. One of those will be on the computer running UMS and I'm guessing there are another 2 computers on your network. no mention of a Roku 3.

Could you do another set of logs trying to play something?

When UMS is transcoding files that are not supported by your renderer in real-time, with some renderers have trouble fast forwarding and rewinding as there is no way for them to know how big the file that is being sent is. some can be made to work by tweaks in the config on how the data is being sent.
It would probably be the same with other servers if they were transcoding unless they found a workaround. It is more likely that they detected what is supported and are streaming.

It is best to avoid transcoding whenever possible by having the right config with the supported formats that work with the renderer so they can be streamed as is, and for that your render needs to be correctly detected.

If you wanted subtitles on a renderer that didn't support them they would have to be burnt in by transcoding. so in this case for files with subs, disabling them would avoid the unnecessary transcoding.

[smokedporkroast]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply. Sorry, the Roku was off when I took the log, I'm re sending it while playing something on the Roku. To be clear, I dont want subtitles just the ability to fast forward in videos. Also, should I turn off gpu acceleration, my graphics card should be plenty fast to do real-time transcoding but If it helps I can turn it off.

[smokedporkroast]

Just out of curriosity, I was looking at the config files and noticed that the audio in a video that I was playing to my phone wasnt supported by the phones renderer. If the device doesnt support the codec then transcoding is required, right?
If this is the case then maybe I could run all my videos through handbrake and change the audio from aac to mp3 or another supported codec. Either way I'd like to learn how to edit the individual config files for better control.

Thanks

[Nadahar]

You could convert all your source files to a format that is supported by the target renderer, but that kind of defeats much of the point of UMS. The idea is that UMS does this for you, on demand. If you're willing to convert all your files, that's certainly a possibility.

That said, I doubt that a modern mobile phone doesn't support AAC, so I'd try changing UMS configuration file for the renderer instead and see if it will actually play using AAC.

[smokedporkroast]

I tried adding new lines to the config file but nothing changed when I played the video, do you have an example of how I should change it?

[Nadahar]

There is some documentation in the "default renderer configuration" file: https://github.com/UniversalMediaServer ... derer.conf

In addition, you can look at other configurations found in the same folder - or search this forum.

[mik_s]

Looking at the Roku config it looks a bit bare, so I looked up the Supported formats and there isn't much it does support, which is why most things are being transcoded for it.

The Samsung TV should have support for more formats though but doesn't like transcoded files so you won't be able to fast forward.

One thing you can do to check that a file is supported and being incorrectly transcoded is to go to the #-Transcode-# directory and select transcode. This will send the file to your renderer as is. If it plays then you can alter the config to match that format next time.

[Nadahar]

@mik_s I'm sure you meant: Select "No transcode".. (or "No transcoding", I don't remember).

[mik_s]

oops, yeah meant to say "No Transcoding"