ab123ga 11 Posted December 15, 2014 Share Posted December 15, 2014 (edited) I have decided to convert all of my movies to WTV format. This allows me to get consistent quality on my xboxes that I primarily use for media watching. My issue is I'm using the same conversion tool and MB seems to get the detail out of some and not others. Example I did a short snip of Godzilla yesterday and it would add it /w meta data but knew no details of format, length etc. Lara Craft Tomb raider is another. After I bought the full conversion tool, I did Godzilla again (full length) and it sees the detail now. Lara Craft Tomb Raider still cannot get detail. The secondary issue is if the details are not known it seems to cause a transcoding error. I can play the media via xbox and HTPC via MBC and MBT. However cannot play via web or Android I use Plex for some family members and Plex recognizes the format 100% of the time. BTW: The WTV is formatted in Mpeg2 AC3 5.1 https://app.box.com/s/soevfeyipdbph1imnf2w Edited December 15, 2014 by ab123ga Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 16, 2014 Author Share Posted December 16, 2014 Any thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37066 Posted December 17, 2014 Share Posted December 17, 2014 can you provide a sample file? by the way, i don't want into the game of telling you how to setup your ecosystem, but in 2015 i think the choice of wtv as an underlying format for a media server is a little questionable. all of those devices you mention should handle mp4 no problem, many with no transcoding. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 17, 2014 Author Share Posted December 17, 2014 I'm going to have to do several and clip to no more than 2 minutes and test then load one. I say that b/c last night I did Capt. America: Winter Soldier and it was not recognized. Box will not let me upload large files so I took my original and did a 2 minute version. This time, MB recognized the contents. Same tool just shorter version. I'll load that up /w one that does not work (2 min worth). I'll keep trying 2 min clips until I get one that does not work and will load and post a response. BTW: I would love have loved to keep all of my files in MP4 but could not get what I wanted. I always had one issue or another /w the Xboxes and the streaming formats noted. Either stutter, no surround, etc. And I have all the right network and universal paths set. Just never can get what I want. Since I have 3 xboxes and that is my primary viewing system, going to WTV gives me the best experience. As we know WTV can stream at very high rates (if I choose) and this works 100% for me on that system. Since my invitees of my media transcode anyway (most use plex), I'm not losing anything from that angle...but I do understand Thanks much Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 17, 2014 Author Share Posted December 17, 2014 Took a while to realize that Google let's you upload large files. I've uploaded Laracraft ... I tried to do 5 min versions of movies but they were readable everytime. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-BTG8UIIpFvcEFXa0gzZ3pJOTA&usp=sharing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37066 Posted December 17, 2014 Share Posted December 17, 2014 i can reproduce it. it is probably just an issue with the ffmpeg build that we are using. next time we update it i wouldn't be surprised if it's resolved. the ffmpeg group has always had difficulty with wtv. in fact, just a couple months ago they fixed an issue that was reported by members of this very forum. i suppose you can try looking for older or newer version and replacing the version in our data directory with that. this is a good source for windows builds of ffmpeg http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 18, 2014 Author Share Posted December 18, 2014 Thanks much... I'll look into that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 18, 2014 Author Share Posted December 18, 2014 Luke... question. Do I just swap out the ffmpeg executable or do I replace the entire directory structure at the 20141111. Example ffmpeg is in the directory below. C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\MediaBrowser-Server\ffmpeg\20141111\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37066 Posted December 18, 2014 Share Posted December 18, 2014 well, you should replace both executables because ffprobe is actually waht does the analysis. then refresh from the metadata manager edit page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 18, 2014 Author Share Posted December 18, 2014 Update: I picked about a dozen versions (both new and some really old) and got the same result. It would be ok on some and not on the other. I used the command line version to quicken the process and consistently got "unknown error" on the same file and it would successfully read the ones that have worked. I'll try a few more versions then will just live with it as-is. Thanks much for your help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 19, 2014 Author Share Posted December 19, 2014 Luke...question. I found a version that appears to scan the files correctly. After trying many it appears that WTV was supported starting around July 2013. I would test against 5 files that originally failed and they all worked. Around late Oct of this year, some of the same tests would work and some would fail. November and beyond, all tests fail. With that I selected the October 10th version and ffprobe command on all of my samples work. I posted the ffprobe and ffmpeg into the appropriate directory and did a restart and the ones (example Lara Croft) still did not show the container contents. To ensure it was doing scan of what MB would think is a new file, I had a 1 minute version of a movie and renamed it to the Lara Croft movie name and posted in the directory. MB saw it correctly as a 1 minute movie. I put the original back and performed a rescan and it goes back to unrecognized. ffmpeg being used: http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/win64/static/ffmpeg-20141010-git-19b4c0c-win64-static.7z Output of LC movie = https://app.box.com/s/4lfdd77fiwoim0hvrcr9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 19, 2014 Author Share Posted December 19, 2014 One more update. I converted an additional 15 movies this morning and all newly converted ones are being read properly. Seems like the ones already scanned before changing out the FFprobe/FFMpeg (that worked) are not showing the container information...all new ones are working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techywarrior 688 Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 You can force MB to rescan the movies that didn't work in the metadata manager in the web client. Click the refresh button for the movie and it should rescan it with ffprobe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 19, 2014 Author Share Posted December 19, 2014 @Techy. I tried that around 2:55PM E and no change. I scrolled through the log file to see what I could find for one that was newly added and this is what I see. 2014-12-19 14:15:25.5971 Debug - MediaEncoder: C:\Users\brown_a\AppData\Roaming\MediaBrowser-Server\ffmpeg\20141111\ffprobe.exe -i file:"\\SPAREROOM\RDrive\media\2D Movies\Sex and The City\Sex and The City (2008).wtv" -threads 0 -v info -print_format json -show_streams -show_chapters -show_format When I look at Lara croft after doing a refresh the is the ffprobe statement I could fine. There are others like the above but those would have been before I replaced the ffprobe app. I'll try it again in a bit with another movie to see what I get.. The latest log file is below as well. If the best option is to remove the movie and start over I can do that as well. 2014-12-19 14:55:08.3224 Debug - App: Running FFProbeProvider for \\SPAREROOM\RDrive\media\2D Movies\Lara Croft Tomb Raider\Lara Croft Tomb Raider (2001).wtv https://app.box.com/s/soevfeyipdbph1imnf2w Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techywarrior 688 Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 Hm, you said you tried at 2:55pm but the log shows that ffprobe ran at 2:15pm. Although that could simply be that your server time is wrong, and if that time is after you replaced the ffprobe file anyway it wouldn't matter. If that is the version of ffprobe that worked fine for the other movies then the problem may not be in ffprobe but something in this WTV file. Perhaps whatever you are using to create the WTV files now either has a fix in it or is using slightly different settings which are working better with ffmpeg/ffprobe. Either way, the refresh is triggering ffprobe, so now I think you may be sort of back to the first issue where WTV isn't always working Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 19, 2014 Author Share Posted December 19, 2014 The server time is accurate. I run a periodic task job to keep the time as perfect as possible. At the 2:55PM timeframe that was when I went to the web tool and did the refresh. The earlier one was a new conversion moved into the folder. I don't know much about how it all works but it looks like a "refresh" is not the same as posting a new version of the file and ffprobe hitting that. On the point of ffprobe version. When I do my own run of ffprobe via command line, it gives me the info in the container. Since it look like now the new conversions are working all the time, I'll find another method like remove the movie or something. We shall see. Thanks for your help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techywarrior 688 Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 That would be strange. I've replaced a movie with a new copy before and I just do a refresh and it probes the new file (I can verify because the media info updates.) If you don't care that much you can always move the folders from the library, run a library scan, move the folders back and do a scan again. I think that would completely update it (or better yet just move the WTV files and delete the folders so the nfo/xml files are removed as well) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution Luke 37066 Posted December 20, 2014 Solution Share Posted December 20, 2014 try deleting the programdata/cache/ffprobe-video folder. the media info is cached for a period of time. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ab123ga 11 Posted December 20, 2014 Author Share Posted December 20, 2014 That did it. Once I deleted that folder a refresh now shows the contents being read. Thanks much!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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