renderer.conf for Philips PFL6007

[rhayy]

Hello everyone,

I am writing a configuration file for the PFL6007 tv set with information gathered on the web about this device and the doc provided here and on the wiki github.

According to the manufacturer, the tv set has these capabilities (from the manual):
- Containers : MPEG Program Stream, MPEG Transport Stream, AVI, MPEG-4, Matroska, Windows Media, ASF
- Video Codecs : MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 AVC (H264), WMV9, DivX®
- Audio Codecs : MP3, AAC, HE-AAC V1, HE-AAC V2, WMA, AC3
- Image Codecs : JPEG
- Limitations : WMA (V2 up to V9.2), MPEG-4 AVC (up to level 4.0) <up to 4.1 in the french manual, even 4.2 in practice>
Subtitles are not supported over DLNA.
The tv set is not detected by device spy nor I can get information with the logs (except for the user-agent).

With that, I ended up with the conf attached in this post.

I have got questions:
1/ As for the TranscodeVideo parameter, does the profile alter the quality ? My tv set can't play h265 videos, is the MPEGTS-H264-AAC profile the best choice ?
2/ Are the Supported lines with the mpegts/mpegps format used for transcoding ? If yes, shouldn't they come last in the list ?
3/ I have put this line in the configuration file because the tv set actually played medias with these codecs:

Code: Select all

Supported = f:mkv       v:h264                                  a:aac-lc|.*ac3                          m:video/x-matroska

Given the information above, I could write this instead :

Code: Select all

Supported = f:mkv|mp4|avi|divx|wmv       v:avi|divx|h264|mp4|mpeg\d|vc1|wmv      a:.*aac.*|.*ac3|lpcm|m4a|mp3|mpa|wma.*  m:video/x-matroska|video/mp4|video/avi|video/x-ms-wmv
Supported = f:mpegts|mpegps              v:avi|divx|h264|mp4|mpeg\d|vc1|wmv      a:.*aac.*|.*ac3|lpcm|m4a|mp3|mpa|wma.*  m:video/vnd.dlna.mpeg-tts|video/mpeg

Right ?

I am running a headless UMS instance on a Ubuntu server.

Thank for your support

[SubJunk]

1/ As for the TranscodeVideo parameter, does the profile alter the quality ? My tv set can't play h265 videos, is the MPEGTS-H264-AAC profile the best choice ?
2/ Are the Supported lines with the mpegts/mpegps format used for transcoding ? If yes, shouldn't they come last in the list ?
3/ I have put this line in the configuration file because the tv set actually played medias with these codecs:

1) The profiles are all capable of the same quality, but newer codecs will achieve the quality at lower bitrates. MPEGTS-H264-AAC is a great choice.

2) Yes they are. The order shouldn't matter

3) I'm not sure whether wildcards work for the Supported lines, it would be safer to not use them IMO.
And there should only be one MIME type in the m: section.

[rhayy]

3) I'm not sure whether wildcards work for the Supported lines, it would be safer to not use them IMO.

I took it from the DefaultRenderer.conf:
# The media parser and this configuration file will recognize the following
# formats and codecs. Use lower case names only. Regular expressions are
# supported.

Questions about some parameters (I'm trying to make the best use for my tv set):
1/ about SeekByTime: is it this feature where you have the ability to enter the time on the tv ? I am confused because it is opposed at seek-by-byte, no one enters a byte to reach a particular moment on a media. How do I know if it is supported by my tv set ?
2/ about DefaultVBVBufSize: does it provide better performances when bitrate is not an issue ?
3/ on the behaviour of HalveBitrate: is its purpose is to divide MaxVideoBitrateMbps value by 2 ?

Thank you very much

[rhayy]

To add feedback:
- on the formats regular expressions, it is well supported

Code: Select all

TRACE 2022-10-21 21:32:31.645 [jupnp-netty-worker-7] Matched support line f:mkv	v:h264					a:aac-lc|.*ac3				m:video/x-matroska

- on the SeekByTime parameter, I think it is not supported by my tv set:

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TRACE 2022-10-21 20:33:27.684 [jupnp-netty-worker-4] Asked stream chunk : TimeRange [start=null, end=null]...

while

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TRACE 2022-10-21 20:33:28.001 [jupnp-netty-worker-5] Asked stream chunk : ByteRange [start=2074713415, end=-1]...

Can anyone confirm ?

[rhayy]

I do not have answers to these questions but they do not affect performance or quality in any way, so they are set with their default values.

[rhayy]

After testing, I can confirm this configuration works well with the Philips PFL6007 tv set (it should work for the tv sets from the same generation as well, aka 2012 PFL).
It allows to play more media types natively than the Philips-PFL.conf file.
This official picture could be associated with this configuration.

NB: that would be nice to choose a custom picture from a folder instead of gathering them all in a jar file. I hope it is changing for the future release.

[mik_s]

That looks good and I hope it will be included in future versions of UMS with some minor changes to standardize it like the other confs.

For most of your questions @Subjunk will be better to answer them as there is a bit of trial end error to see what your TV can play, I mostly try and and help to get the supported formats correct if UMS is incorrectly transcoding.

AFAIK it should be possible to reference a device picture from your filesystem in the conf and are not limited to the ones in the jar. I have not done this myself but have seen another user do it but can't remember exactly how. I think you have to put the full path instead of having to place the picture in a specific folder.

Are you sure that subtitles are not supported? Have you tried playing from the #--TRANSCODE--# folder with the "no transcoding" option on otherwise supported videos with subtitles and see if you can enable them? It seems strange that subtitles are not supported over DLNA but I wouldn't be surprised if that is true. Best to double check though to prevent unnecessary transcoding, especially since you have found SeekByTime is not supported which will mean you will not be able to FF or RWD on a video that is being transcoded.

[rhayy]

That looks good and I hope it will be included in future versions of UMS with some minor changes to standardize it like the other confs.

It needs to be tested by the other community members and get feedback. I'd be glad to help.

AFAIK it should be possible to reference a device picture from your filesystem in the conf and are not limited to the ones in the jar. I have not done this myself but have seen another user do it but can't remember exactly how. I think you have to put the full path instead of having to place the picture in a specific folder.

UMS is running headless so I don't mind. At the beginning, I tried it but with no success. Now, I know it.

Are you sure that subtitles are not supported? Have you tried playing from the #--TRANSCODE--# folder with the "no transcoding" option on otherwise supported videos with subtitles and see if you can enable them? It seems strange that subtitles are not supported over DLNA but I wouldn't be surprised if that is true.

Yes and it is officialy recognized. I can play most of the videos with the "no transcoding" option when subtitles are provided but it is not available on the device (the menu is greyed out). As a result, I'm always offered to play the transcoded videos even though it is supported because of the subtitles.

since you have found SeekByTime is not supported which will mean you will not be able to FF or RWD on a video that is being transcoded.

Setting SeekByTime to true or false doesn't change the behaviour, so I let it with the default value.
Actually, FF or RWD works...not well.
For example, with fast forward, you can see the images playing forward, then going backwards a bit sooner, and then forward on and again and again. Same with rewind. You can't expect to reach a particular moment but only approach it and you can't rely on the time displayed.

[rhayy]

- set KeepAspectRatio and KeepAspectRatioTranscoding to default otherwise videos are being transcoded when the device is able to play it
- add mp4 codec for avi and mp4 formats