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Panasonic VieraCast DLNA issues

post #1 of 12
1/24/12 at 11:44am
Thread Starter 
I've been copying my DVD collection to MPEG-4 now that I have this DLNA device- the Panasonic Viera P60S30 with VieraCast. But I'm appalled at the issues I'm having with in-screen playback: several videos that play fine on my computer have audio a second or two ahead of the video on the Plasma.

Iron Man started fine, but about 7 or so minutes in, there was a glitch and the sync drifted. Legend of the Guardians, off by over a second- unwatchable. Tested watching Gone With the Wind, disc 1, and after a few moments, it quits out and I'm watching TV without pressing a button. I tried several times, fast forwarding to different places to try and test for audio sync. Each time, kicked back out to watching the RF input.

As I said, I open that same Legend of the Guardians file on the computer and it's perfect. So I don't know what the TV is doing differently, or what it is having trouble with.

I'm using Handbrake to rip my DVD's. I think I'll have to raise the bitrate for my MP4 rips because the color banding in the skies/darks is aweful at under 2 Mbps. But how do I fix the audio sync problems in the screen? The audio drift is not constantly off by the same amount. And the quitting out of playback has me stumped.

I've been using the standard Normal profile in Handbrake, that makes an H.264 m4v file. Some movies are more widescreen than others. Should I not have Handbrake crop the movie & leave the black in the ripped video? Should I be making an MKV file?
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post #2 of 12
1/31/12 at 2:20pm
Thread Starter 
Really? No one else having problems?
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post #3 of 12
1/31/12 at 6:32pm
My VT30's implementation of mkv's sucks also. I don't know why manufacturers insist on including broken 'features' like this. No problems with PS3 Media Server, by the way.
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post #4 of 12
2/1/12 at 9:05am
mkv and various other formats are merely "containers" for combined a/v. The specs of the files within them can vary (esp audio). Anybody who expects a TV to playback the dozens of different combinations perfectly is daydreaming. Anyone who has a serious collection of a/v files, etc uses a media pc which can have dozens of codecs and software that insures the proper one is used.
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post #5 of 12
2/2/12 at 9:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by adone36 View Post

mkv and various other formats are merely "containers" for combined a/v. The specs of the files within them can vary (esp audio). Anybody who expects a TV to playback the dozens of different combinations perfectly is daydreaming. Anyone who has a serious collection of a/v files, etc uses a media pc which can have dozens of codecs and software that insures the proper one is used.

OK, so explain to me why my LG Bluray player can play all of my mkv's yet the tv cannot?
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post #6 of 12
2/3/12 at 7:43am
It has a matching codec. How's the picture on it?
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post #7 of 12
2/4/12 at 9:05am
I'd say a media server is the only sure way to go if you if you want reliable performance. It doesn't have to be a dedicated PC. I run it off one of my workstations using serviio because I am lazy and the pc has a lot of extra disk space. Eventually, I'll get around to building a dedicated unit. I use .vob but it will run any format with no problems so far, as long. As long as the codec library is up to date I don't expect any issues.
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post #8 of 12
2/4/12 at 10:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonybme View Post

I've been copying my DVD collection to MPEG-4 now that I have this DLNA device- the Panasonic Viera P60S30 with VieraCast. But I'm appalled at the issues I'm having with in-screen playback: several videos that play fine on my computer have audio a second or two ahead of the video on the Plasma.

Iron Man started fine, but about 7 or so minutes in, there was a glitch and the sync drifted. Legend of the Guardians, off by over a second- unwatchable. Tested watching Gone With the Wind, disc 1, and after a few moments, it quits out and I'm watching TV without pressing a button. I tried several times, fast forwarding to different places to try and test for audio sync. Each time, kicked back out to watching the RF input.

As I said, I open that same Legend of the Guardians file on the computer and it's perfect. So I don't know what the TV is doing differently, or what it is having trouble with.

I'm using Handbrake to rip my DVD's. I think I'll have to raise the bitrate for my MP4 rips because the color banding in the skies/darks is aweful at under 2 Mbps. But how do I fix the audio sync problems in the screen? The audio drift is not constantly off by the same amount. And the quitting out of playback has me stumped.

I've been using the standard Normal profile in Handbrake, that makes an H.264 m4v file. Some movies are more widescreen than others. Should I not have Handbrake crop the movie & leave the black in the ripped video? Should I be making an MKV file?

The DNLA on my ST30 is a crap shoot. I never know what format it's going to play. It plays some .mov files and then does not play others, same with .avi and .mkv

Very frustrating.
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post #9 of 12
2/4/12 at 2:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mfrey0118 View Post

The DNLA on my ST30 is a crap shoot. I never know what format it's going to play. It plays some .mov files and then does not play others, same with .avi and .mkv

Very frustrating.

I use a dedicated HTPC. No issues with playback of any container. However, on a lark I tested out the DLNA feature. The only way I could make it work consistently was by using a DLNA server that handles Transcoding. Best of the lot was Twonky Media Server. Played anything I threw at it with zero issues. The menu system is still wife unfriendly, so we'll stick with mediabrowser for now.
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post #10 of 12
9/16/12 at 10:49pm
I use http://www.videohelp.com/tools/PS3Muxer to convert the mkv into a m2ts which is then visible in Windows Media Player/DLNA and play in my TC-P55GT30. Takes less than a minute to convert.
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post #11 of 12
9/17/12 at 5:56pm
I gave up on trying to make my GT50 & BDT310 work right with DLNA. I couldn't get them to even see my computer, they could see my husband's but not mine (Windows 7 Pro issue?) So I switched to Tversity and I at least got in there, but couldn't watch anything. I'm now back to Roku and using Plex. I looooove Plex! It's like running Netflix with very little organizing work at all.

I think Samsung and LG both offer Plex. What is the problem with Panasonic?
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post #12 of 12
1/29/13 at 7:58pm
Same issues here with my VT30. The only way to get reliable audio is to not pass the mp4 or m4v files straight through but to force the server to transcode on the fly. The video quality doesn't look as good as when the files go straight through but it works. Fortunately I have a PS3 which handles the mp4 and m4v files with no transcoding required and they look and sound fantastic. Given how long my TV has been around since the last software update I'd say Panasonic doesn't care about how well DLNA works, just that it's a feature you can select so they can check off another feature box.
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