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DLNA

Note: Right now, all of this is specific to my Sony Blu-ray players that have DLNA support. See file formats supported by Sony.

What works

  • MP4: baseline, medium, high profile; levels 3.1+; title tag
  • MKV: baseline, medium, high profile; levels 3.1+; VOBSUB, closed captioning, AC3 audio, chapters
  • Resume playback on titles, during same power session
  • On MP4 and MKV, Sony Blu-ray players will drop the extension, so you can have some kind of a naming scheme.

What doesn't work

Note: This is actually my Sony BDP client that doesn't do this, not minidlna

  • MKV: title tags :(
  • Resume playback on titles (after power-cycle) :(

Matroska title tags

Note: This is actually my Sony BDP client that doesn't do this, not minidlna

I tried tagging the title in these places:

  • Movie name
  • Title tag
  • Track name

Tried using mmg and mkvpropedit to set the tags. None of them worked, sadly. :(

MP4 worked natively.

minidlna hacking to do

  • Store more details in SQLite database – number of times played, which media device is requesting, etc.
  • Figure out how resume-playback works – I'm guessing that the DLNA server makes a request for a starting point

Best Practices: DLNA

When it comes to encoding video with x264 for embedded devices that do playback (Blu-ray players, Roku, etc.), your safest bet is to use little to no advanced H.264 features. The reason being is that you have to assume that the playback software could be dumb as rocks, and throwing some advanced stuff its way may only make playback poor.

General testing with various encoding settings is a reasonable approach, but if you want to keep it safe, focus on changing the CRF or constant bitrate, or the preset, and that's it. That'll give you good quality without taking risks for playback.


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