Vlc progress slider not working

[dbfranz]

Hi,
I've been using ums for a few weeks and it works great, and with my mobile at first I couldn't use the progress slider for videos, then here I read about using mediainfo.exe on windows10.
I installed it and now with my mobile (Realme 9 5g) it works perfectly.
Using another phone (Redmi 12 5G) however I have the same problem as the other phone, i.e. I can't scroll forward through the movie and also mp3 files don't start.
Yet mediainfo.exe is there, the server is the same.
What's going on?
Thanks in advance

[mik_s]

Not being able to use the slider to seek on videos is due to the videos being transcoded as UMS thinks that the format that video is in is unsupported on your device.
UMS uses mediainfo to determine what format a video uses and then compares its result to the conf file for that device to see if it is supported, if there is no match then it is transcoded instead of streamed.

Mediainfo should have been installed alongside UMS as you are on windows, it can be different for linux. I'm not sure if the version UMS uses is a special build or not, or if the one you installed was an older one.

If you are using VLC on both phones then UMS should be using the VLC conf for both of them, and as VLC can play just about anything nothing should be transcoded.

It could be that UMS is not using that conf file for the Redmi phone for some reason or something is causing everything to transcode. To be able to see why I will need to see logs (see the section in red above)

[dbfranz]

I added two debug files:
_ums_dbg_2023-10-06-09-20(sliding realme 9).zip
started ums, acessed with realme 9 5g, went to the movie folder, played movie file and moved slider forward : everything went ok.

_ums_dbg_2023-10-06-09-25 (not sliding redmi 12).zip
started ums, acessed with redmi 12 5g, went to the same movie folder, played the same movie file and moved slider forward: nothing happens, movie screen closed and back to list of items in folder

Hope it can be useful
Thanks

[mik_s]

OK I see that the first one was correctly using the VLC-for-desktop.conf but the other one was using the Pigasus.conf.
This is because the way the redmi 12 is identifying itself is different and the first match is the pigasus conf.

The problem is more to do with the pigasus.conf as that is being matched first so is taking priory. Its matching criteria is very broad so anything with "android" in the user-agent string will get matched. The redmi 12 sends "android" as this as part of its user-agent, but the rest should match the VLC conf.

For now just delete Pigasus.conf from "C:\Program Files (x86)\Universal Media Server\renderers" and it should work. I'll let the devs know about this so they can change that conf as I have see it cause problems for others too.

[dbfranz]

Thank you for your reply, but unfortunately it did not work. I deleted Pigasus.conf from the position you told me, but the slider does not move forward when I try to drag it.

[dbfranz]

I also tried using the pigasus.conf file but with the contents of the VLC-for-desktop.conf file, but it did not work

[mik_s]

Try adding

Code: Select all

LoadingPriority=2

to the VLC-for-desktop.conf as I think some other confs also look for the word "android" and they are loaded first so more likely to be matched first and given priority.

If that does not work could you do new logs with this change and with pigasus.conf deleted so I can see why its not working.

[dbfranz]

With this solution now the slider is working, but the video does not show well, at some moments it is pixelated and you can see it as if it were shaking. As if the codec was not the right one.
Asap I'll send you logs.

[dbfranz]

OK, this is the log file.
Just started server, browsed the movie file and played it. Sliding was ok, but the video could not be seen well.

[mik_s]

I can see that UMS is now using the right conf and almost all your files will be streamed instead of transcoded. There was one that uses PGS subtitles that I'm not sure VLC uses so that won't be streamed.

The pixelation you see is probably due to the network speed to that device. UMS runs a speed test and and shows you it is just over 3Mb/s which is not fast enough for some files. Those that have a higher bitrate are marked to be transcoded at a lower quality so can be played.

Even those that are being streamed may be too slow for VLC so that is why they are showing like that too. Either that or traffic on your network is creating a bottleneck that UMS cannot keep up with.

The problem will have to be with your network but I'm not an expert with networking to know exactly what to check for.
I checked the speeds you were getting for the other phone in your previous logs and that was low too.

I see that you are using wireless on your computer to connect to the router. This may not be fast enough and taking up bandwidth that can be used to connect to you phones. Also where your router is placed can cause reduced speeds, ideally it needs to be in line of sight with devices for best speed.
Try a wired connection from computer to the router and see if it improves.