Air Video Server 2.1.8-beta8 released

Thanks for the description. I am able to reproduce the problem.

Offline conversion will be fixed in next beta. However I'm not able to reproduce the problem with live conversion yet.

Well, shoot. The video played all the way through with Live Conversion. It sometimes does that. It doesn't error as reliably as it does with Offline Conversion. Although, it did have this error at the very, very end:

LiveConversion: [libmp3lame @ 0x165b660]lame: output buffer too small (buffer index: 9216, free bytes: 576)
LiveConversion: Audio encoding failed

I was actually talking with my roommate, and there's a possibility that the erroring of Live Conversion might be more with my wifi dropping and not an error on Air Video's part. We think there might be someone microwaving their dinner around the same time at night, which is also around the same time at night that we like to watch movies together (I hitch the iPhone up to my TV). The reason I think this may be the case is because, unlike how the Offline Conversion errors, with Live Conversion I never have to quit out of the program in order to make the video start encoding again. Instead, it just magically starts buffering again after 30 seconds or so. If I get the error again, I'll definitely copy down the log and post it in here.

I'm sure you probably have everything under control, but I'm wondering if maybe the fact that Offline Conversion errors while the Live Conversion doesn't seem to may have something to with writing to the disk? *shrug*

The libmp3lame error should be pretty harmless. The buffering problem might be related to lack of bandwidth.

The problem with offline conversion wasn't really related to writing to disk. It was related to an inter process buffer not being flushed properly.

Admin wrote:The libmp3lame error should be pretty harmless. The buffering problem might be related to lack of bandwidth.

The problem with offline conversion wasn't really related to writing to disk. It was related to an inter process buffer not being flushed properly.

Yeah, I feel silly but the Live Conversion is probably my own issue. Sorry about that.

Anyway, thanks for this program. I'm really looking forward to the next beta where this is fixed.

Also, I see that you said in the features for beta 8 that MicroDVD subs should work. That's .sub/.idx, right? I can't seem to get them to work for some reason. It doesn't seem to matter whether they're external or put into a .mkv container. Am I overlooking something?

Actually, MicroDVD subtitles do have .sub extension, but are simple textual files. The .sub/.idx combo are usually subtitles ripped from DVDs that hasn't been converted to text yet (subtitle images). Air Video doesn't support those.

Aw darn. I guess I'll just have to stick with my method of using mencoder to hardsub them before tossing them to Air Video. Oh well. They're pretty rare anyway.

I think that should be tool that can transform .sub/.idx subtitles to text using OCR (although it usually does require some additional corrections).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 12/31/2009 01:42:04

Yeah, there is. I use one called SubResync (part of VobSub) to do it. However, occasionally you get these really annoying subs--like the one on this Evangelion movie that I want to watch--and the letters blend together and really confuse the OCR. The end result is that you either get subs with spaces in the middle of words, or no spaces at all.

So what I do in that case, since mplayer/mencoder can play file with .sub/.idx subtitles, is re-encode the movie with the subtitles hardcoded onto the video. Then I use Air Video to either stream it or encode.

By the way, I should also mention that I love the fact that Air Video offline encodes videos. The quality is really amazing and I like just putting the .m4v files right onto my phone so I can watch the videos at work. I love it. I have successfully been able to do the same with mencoder, but the video quality isn't as great as what Air Video produces.

Edit: BTW, while I'm on the topic, do you think you'd be able to make a version of the iPhone/iTouch app that would let you select subs for a video rather than just having it select, I dunno, the first one? (I'm not really sure how you have it work.) For instance, I have a .mkv anime episode which has both .srt and .ssa subs embedded in it. The .ssa subs are *really* nice looking, but the .srt subs are really plain (like usual, since they aren't stylized). Anyway, the Air Video app chooses the .srt subs by default and doesn't give me any way that I see to choose the other ones, which I'd prefer. I mean, subs are subs, so I really shouldn't complain, but I'd much rather use the pretty ones if I had the choice.

Beta 9 was released. Locking topic.