Renderer specific transcoding

[simoncn]

(11-06-2015 10:07)n3mmr Wrote:  My current need is audio files to send to a small number of renderers that cannot play flac.

There's a Reciva based radio, Argon inet 1, and a sony Bluray. Neither can play any lossless format except linear PCM, lpcm.

Most of my enthusiasm for the argument came from having the feeling you simply hadn't thought the issue of server side transcoding profiles thru. It is quite the normal thing in my world, and I just didn't like to agree to "it cannot be done, legally" as I knew there must be something I missed, and you too.

It would be nice to have, it can be immediately moderately useful, but it is by no means a pressing issue.
I have seen others asking about it in these forums.

Can we agree that there IS a way to do it, w/o breaking any compliance related restrictions???
You should ask, and take a poll, and decide if it's worth trying, or maybe asking somebody else to write some module?

I can think of two remaining issues with serviio's way; a renderer's IP might change, and there might be more than one, totally different, renderer at one address (think apps in a phone). Serviio seems (not sure) to solve the IP change issue by polling for type name just before starting a stream. I don't know if that could handle different renderer apps in one device.

Thanks for the clarifications and the additional information.

The issue with standards compliance is that most renderers need to know the stream type in advance from the control point before they request the stream from the server. If the server returns a different type from the type the renderer is expecting, this is a violation of the standard and many renderers would refuse to play the stream, though some might play it anyway. A solution that depends on MinimServer sending an incorrect stream type and the renderer playing the stream despite a type mismatch would not be acceptable for MinimServer. This was the basis for my statement that this can't be done in a standards-compliant way, and I have not changed my view on this. I don't know whether this is what Serviio is doing and it will be interesting to find out.

It might be difficult for me to do the test that I was planning because I don't have any renderers that can't play FLAC. I will investigate whether I can configure Serviio to force FLAC to LPCM transcoding for a renderer that is able to play FLAC as well.

When I have an opportunity, I will try to conduct a FLAC to LPCM transcoding test with Serviio to see what protocol messages are being exchanged between server, control point and renderer. If this provides some new information that could provide a solution to the problem I described above, I will post back here. This won't happen in the immediate future because I am working on a number of user problems that need to take priority.

For now, MinimServer offers a flexible approach to transcoding that allows the server to advertise multiple streams to the control point so that the control point can select a stream based on renderer capabilities. This should provide provide enough flexibility to handle almost all cases and I hope it will enable you to do what you need.