Problems with Mezzmo, Panasonic BD75 and .m2ts files with DDTrueHD

[Kelson]

I'm looking to convert a spare Win XP box to a DLNA server. So far Mezzmo is the best DLNA server software I've tried -- I'm in the trial period. I have only 1 issue that I would need to resolve for Mezzmo to be a keeper.

My need for Mezzmo DLNA is only to stream BD.m2ts files over my network to my players. No other file types, no transcoding. I rip the main title of my BluRays to an .m2ts file with the HD audio using Clown_BD. My rips are full bitrate, no compression. All my players support .m2ts.

So here is the problem: I have a Panasonic BD75 player hooked into my network by CAT-6. I have the profile in Mezzmo set to "Panasonic BDP (MPEG-TS)". The BD75 sees Mezzmo and all the BD.m2ts files without problem. It plays all BD.m2ts files with a DTS-MA audio track perfectly -- not a hint of stutter for even the 40Mbps rips -- and passes the DTS-MA to my AVR. On the other hand, all BD.m2ts files that have a DD TrueHD audio track stutter badly right from the start. The True HD is passed to my AVR just fine, but the stuttering video and audio make it unwatchable.

So that's what I'm looking to resolve before I can commit to Mezzmo. Is there something in the profile that could be tweaked?

[Paul]

It's possible that the latter files are being transcoded, thus the stutter. One thing to try is to turn off transcoding and see if that works. If it doesn't, please right-click on one such file in Mezzmo and post the output of the "Get FFmpeg Information" command, so that I could see what the file is technically.

[Kelson]

Thanks for the reply. Transcoding was already turned off. I did it while I was configuring before I tried playing anything. I turned it off in two places. First in the Device Settings window for the BD75, the Transcoding tab -- I unchecked the checkbox for transcoding. Second in the Media Server/Transcoding Settings menu, I checked the box to turn off transcoding for all connected devices. Here is the FFmpeg information you requested for StarTrek.m2ts.

ffmpeg version N-36036-ga40f43d, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the FFmpeg developers
built on Dec 22 2011 13:44:49 with gcc 4.6.2
configuration: --enable-memalign-hack --arch=x86 --target-os=mingw32 --cross-prefix=i686-w64-mingw32- --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-zlib --disable-postproc --prefix=/media/ffmpeg --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --extra-libs='-lx264 -lpthread' --enable-runtime-cpudetect --extra-cflags=-I/home/dennis/cc/include --extra-ldflags=-L/home/dennis/cc/lib --pkg-config=pkg-config --disable-w32threads
libavutil 51. 32. 0 / 51. 32. 0
libavcodec 53. 46. 1 / 53. 46. 1
libavformat 53. 27. 0 / 53. 27. 0
libavdevice 53. 4. 0 / 53. 4. 0
libavfilter 2. 53. 0 / 2. 53. 0
libswscale 2. 1. 0 / 2. 1. 0
[NULL @ 01e779c0] start time is not set in estimate_timings_from_pts
Input #0, mpegts, from 'E:\BluRay\StarTrek (2.06) 39.5Mbps (nfs).m2ts':
Duration: 02:06:50.31, start: 599.958300, bitrate: 39484 kb/s
Program 1
Stream #0:0[0x1011]: Video: h264 (High) ([27][0][0][0] / 0x001B), yuv420p, 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 90k tbn, 47.95 tbc
Stream #0:1[0x1100](eng): Audio: truehd (AC-3 / 0x332D4341), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), s32
Stream #0:2[0x1100]: Audio: ac3 (AC-3 / 0x332D4341), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), s16, 640 kb/s
Stream #0:3[0x1200](eng): Subtitle: hdmv_pgs_subtitle ([144][0][0][0] / 0x0090)
At least one output file must be specified


---> DB Level Info: 41, 100
---> Frame rate: 23.98
---> Aspect ratio: 16:9

If it helps you any, here is the corresponding output from MediaInfo

General
ID : 1 (0x1)
Complete name : P:\BluRay\Not Watched -- burned\StarTrek (2.06) 39.5Mbps (nfs).m2ts
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 35.0 GiB
Duration : 2h 6mn
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 39.5 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 35.5 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 2h 6mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Maximum bit rate : 34.5 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
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

Audio
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Format profile : TrueHD / Core
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Muxing mode : Stream extension
Codec ID : 131
Duration : 2h 6mn
Bit rate mode : Variable / Constant
Bit rate : Unknown / 640 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 5 376 Kbps / 640 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossless / Lossy
Language : English

[Paul]

It could be a mime type or a DLNA profile description issue. Does any other server play these files on your BDP natively without stuttering?

[Kelson]

It could be a mime type or a DLNA profile description issue. Does any other server play these files on your BDP natively without stuttering?No.

Serviio will play all the DTS-MA .m2ts files on the BD75 but gives an "unsupported format" error on all the TrueHD .m2ts files and won't even play them. It does this for not only the BD75 but my other players as well (WDTV Live+ and WDTV Live-SMP). Mezzmo is far ahead in this case because it serves the TrueHD .m2ts files to all the players. The two WDTV Live players play the TrueHD .m2ts files perfectly without a hint of stutter and pass the TrueHD to my AVR. It's only the BD75 that has the stuttering problem.

TVersity is a train wreck. There must be something messed up in the profiles because the WDTV Live players report "unsupported format" for any .m2ts files (DTS-HD or TrueHD) and won't play anything. Worse yet, TVersity causes the BD75 to lock up with a blue-screen as soon as I push the play button. I have to pull the plug on the BD75 to power cycle it in order to regain control.

Mezzmo is so close, just this one issue. Another big, big plus for Mezzmo is that I can add folders from my NAS units to the library -- and it works!!. Mezzmo can pull the .m2ts files from the NAS unit and send it back out to the WDTV Live players perfectly (didn't try it with the BD75 yet). Serviio could not do that.

FYI -- I'm using a freshly installed Win XP SP-3 OS on the box I'm installing these DLNA servers on. No other software including no anti-virus to get in the way. I have the fresh OS partition imaged so when I decide I'm done with testing a DLNA server and want to flush it, I don't just uninstall it, I blow away the whole partition and reload a virgin copy of the OS image. That way I know there are no stray .DLL files left over from the previous server that might load and get in the way of the new server install. So, Mezzmo is running on a virgin OS.

Thanks for the support, Dennis. If we can get this resolved I'll buy Mezzmo immediately.

- kelson

[Paul]

My guess is that the device cannot handle that audio track via DLNA. I'll see if we can get a test unit here and do some in-house testing, but it's very likely that the built-in player cannot decode audio properly.

If you remove the "truehd" audio from that same file, does it play ok?

Also, not sure if you tried this or not, but if you try playing this file from a USB stick plugged into the BD75, does it play ok? If it does, it still doesn't mean that it'll play over DLNA, but if it doesn't play from USB, then we've confirmed that the firmware cannot handle it.

[Kelson]

Dennis,

Thanks again for the support. I will try the things you suggest. I can run TSmuxer on the file and downgrade to core AC3 audio. I'll also run it back through DVD Fab and pull out just the first chapter so I can fit it on a USB stick.

This should not take me long, so I'll get back to you then.

The player does handle True HD when played from a disk. And for the heck of it, I tried all the other Panasonic profiles with the same result of stuttering on a TrueHD .m2ts.

[Paul]

The player handling True HD from disk is different to its ability to play the same via USB as well as via DLNA, unfortunately. See how your testing goes and please let me know.

[Kelson]

My guess is that the device cannot handle that audio track via DLNA. I'll see if we can get a test unit here and do some in-house testing, but it's very likely that the built-in player cannot decode audio properly.

If you remove the "truehd" audio from that same file, does it play ok?

Also, not sure if you tried this or not, but if you try playing this file from a USB stick plugged into the BD75, does it play ok? If it does, it still doesn't mean that it'll play over DLNA, but if it doesn't play from USB, then we've confirmed that the firmware cannot handle it.Dennis,
I've completed the tests. I used StarTrek 2009.m2ts as the test file (40Mbps).

I used TSMuxer to remove the TrueHD and leave the AC3 track (640Kbps). It played just fine with no stutter on the BD75 via DLNA from Mezzmo.

I used DVD Fab to extract chapter 1 of StarTrek (containing TrueHD). The .m2ts file was just under 4GB. I put it on a memory stick and plugged it into the BD75. The bd75 played it perfectly with no stutter.

Is it really necessary for the BD75 to decode the TrueHD audio? It's just supposed to be bitstreaming it to my AVR which does all the decoding.

[Paul]

Is it really necessary for the BD75 to decode the TrueHD audio? It's just supposed to be bitstreaming it to my AVR which does all the decoding.
This really depends on how their DLNA client is implemented - I cannot say for sure if their player is trying to decode everything which comes via DLNA or if it's smart enough to extract the audio stream and pass it on without decoding. If the file fails to play with TrueHD, I'd say that most likely the former scenario is more relevant.