I’m having exactly the same troubles that jhanson is reporting and I can make a sample video available to someone who can help troubleshoot why this happens.
“pjoshua5000” wrote:
Try DVD DecryptIts out of Developed, so I don’t think it will work with Windows vista or 7.
Using OSX Here.
“bcl” wrote:
“pjoshua5000” wrote:
Try DVD DecryptIts out of Developed, so I don’t think it will work with Windows vista or 7.
Using OSX Here.
All you have to do is…
Install Windows 7 Pro vitalized on your Mac.
Then run the XP Vitalization copy that comes with Windows 7 Pro (and higher)
Download and Install DVD Decryption 
Just joking of course. Any way. Best of luck.
I too would like to stream my DVD because I like the best quality. And as you know tranencoding loses quality. You could use Handbrake (which I believed runs on a mac) to rip your “unprotected” DVD (of DVD that somehow becomes unprotected, for what ever reason). I think the new version even supports 5.1 surround sound for when the roku open that option to everyone.
DRM is very bad for business. :evil:
I converted a DVD to h.264. I used DVDFab to do this.
The weird thing is I used dvdfab v6 and Roku would play about 30 sec and buffer for a long time then play 30 sec. and rebuffer.
I then used DVDFab v5 and reencoded it with default setting and everything plays fine. So, the question is what is the best bitrate setting for h.264 encoding. I think that is the right question..
When I look at the properties of these files, here’s the data
DVDFab v6
Video
Frame width - 720
Frame Height - 400
data rate 1348 kbps
total bitrate - 1538kbps
frame rate - 23 frames/sec
Audio
Bit rate - 190 kbps
Channels 6
Audio Sample rate 48khz
DVDFab v5
Video
Frame Width - 704
Frame Height - 296
Data Rate - 832 kbps
Total Bitrate - 895kbps
Frame Rate - 23 frame/sec
Audio
Bit Rate - 64 kbps
Channels - 2
Audio Sample rate - 48 khz
Obviously the answer is somewhere between the 2 setting, but I didn’t know if anyone had any suggestions..
Thank you
EDIT – I have done some experimenting and it doesn’t look like my issue is with the bitrate, but its actually with the audio… If I encode with 6 channel (5.1) then I have issues otherwise it plays fine regardless of the bitrate.
“bcl” wrote:
“pjoshua5000” wrote:
Try DVD DecryptIts out of Developed, so I don’t think it will work with Windows vista or 7.
Using OSX Here.
Have you taken a look at Mac The Ripper? I used to use it with great results to do a rip, but it seems like free development on it has stalled. RipIt looks like a nice alternative as well. After the ripping it’s either handbrake or MPEG Streamclip for the encoding, depending on my needs.
There is also another tool for OS X called Fairmount
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/27162/fairmount
I use handbrake or RipIt myself depending on my needs …the free version of MTR is so outdated it doesn’t work half the time. Version 4 of MTR just came out …but you have to contact the developer directly (with a donation) and he makes a special key to unlock it. A very weird business model.
I hope its ok to post this question on this thread.. but, what is the largest mp4 file that I can reference in the http stream? It looks like 2GB but I wanted to see if that is correct…
I wanted to keep the bitrate high so I created a file that is 5GB in size. When I put the url for it in the simplevideo example, it doesn’t come up.. I put that url in my browser and it also doesn’t come up. But if I reference a 1.6GB file everything seems fine…
Assuming that 2GB is the limit, Is there a way around what ever the base limit is aside from parsing the file into smaller mp4s?
thank you
The Roku box doesn’t impose any limit on the size of MP4 files. We have played files larger than 4 GB. If the URL doesn’t work in your browser either, then most likely your HTTP server is having a problem with large files. What server are you using?
–Mark
I am using an apache server.. I think its version 2.0.54.. Is there some parm on config file that I need to set to allow it to go over 2gb limit? I can see the large files in Windows file share… It just looks like when I try to get to it via http it doesn’t come up.
Thank you for the help…
“RokuMarkn” wrote:
The Roku box doesn’t impose any limit on the size of MP4 files. We have played files larger than 4 GB. If the URL doesn’t work in your browser either, then most likely your HTTP server is having a problem with large files. What server are you using?–Mark
Upgrade to Apache 2.2, 2.0 has a 2G limit.
Yep.. I just googled it.. Now I need to figure out how to upgrade in linux.. I have a NAS which has linux on it. Any words of wisdom on how to upgrade.. I am a simple windows person.. I am using Openmss on my nas..
“bcl” wrote:
Upgrade to Apache 2.2, 2.0 has a 2G limit.
You’d need to cross compile it for the processor in the NAS, which you’d probably have to do on another linux box. How’d you get httpd on the NAS in the first place?
At the OpenMSS website someone has created a firmware .bin file which I used to replace the factory firmware… here’s the thread that hosts the custom firmware
http://www.openmss.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1150
I don’t think I know how this cross compile stuff works… So its not as simple as downloading a unix version of apache and the typing a:setup… 
I will google, maybe someone has done this cross compiling stuff…
EDIT 12/30 – I figured out a way to upgrade to 2.2.13 and I can see the larger files.. Thank you
“brunson” wrote:
You’d need to cross compile it for the processor in the NAS, which you’d probably have to do on another linux box. How’d you get httpd on the NAS in the first place?
Yes, definitely not that simple. It’s unlikely your NAS uses an x86 processor, more likely an ARM architecture. You NAS forum would most likely be the best place to ask about a newer version of httpd.
This is an old thread, the the issue with not playing 1hr long videos is due to audio interleave. I had the same problem with some videos playing from the web. The audio buffer overruns and causes the problem. You can download mp4box and fix the problem. This is how I did it with my h264 encodes with an .mp4 container:
mp4box -hint myfile.mp4 -out mynewfile.mp4
This will set the interleave to half a second. You can also leave the -out command off and it will modify your existing file in place. If you want a longer interleave, do this:
mp4box -hint -inter 1000 myfile.mp4 -out mynewfile.mp4 (this sets the interleave to 1 second).
This should solve your playback issues.
Thanks, I’ll give that a try.
I would expect that you could set audio interleave with handbrake – it can do everything else, but I haven’t looked yet.
I’m a Newb so apologies around if I post this in the wrong forum. I had some good success streaming from my NAS (Western Digital World Edition (Blue Ring, not White Light)). I installed Mongoose web server on my Windows 7 desktop to act as the server since I have the Blue Ring WD World drive. I then opened TCP ports 80 and 443 on my windows firewall. Although I have my NAS mapped, I found that I needed to use the network path in the Mongoose config to get this to work (ex., \192.168.1.x\public (note, I have Video, Photo and Music subfolders under the Public directory on the NAS)). Mongoose is very easy to configure and I found that my PC isn’t taking much of a hit when streaming. I then added Roksbox as a channel and followed the Roksbox directions. All in all it works quite well. I have not written an .xml file yet so Roksbox is just using my file structure as the menu. I’ve streamed a 1.41G file but I do not have any 2G files so I don’t have the ability to verify that limit. Hope this helps someone else looking for a quick and easy way to stream from a NAS. There’s a lot of info out there for the White Light WD World Edition, but I haven’t seen anything for the Blue Ring yet.
-lomonster
“lomonster” wrote:
I installed Mongoose web server on my Windows 7 desktop to act as the server since I have the Blue Ring WD World drive.My “blue ring” is happily serving files directly to my Roku - no webserver on the PC needed
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=26058&p=192036#p191999
How did you get it to stream directly from the blue ring? I ran into issues trying to get it to do so.
