DLNA format Requirements

To use DLNA on Samsung TV, there are a few things that are NOT clear in the documentation. If you use the information supplied and make sure that your files comply, they will work every time.

Not all DLNA Servers are the same.

Do your homework before you start. This will eliminate many hours of frustration. The Forums are the best place to find information If you have a Super-Duper Server, you may use one that supports transcoding, converting your files to a "Playable" format on the fly. On slower servers a non GUI based one is better to not drain your resources.

First, download MediaInfo - http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en This will give you all the information you need on your video files.

1. Samsung TV supports H264 – up to Level 4.1, Higher than that is not supported

  a. If your file is higher than 4.1 you need to re-encode the file, this is covered later.

2. High resolution @frame rate(MAX stored frames) – used Wikipedia link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Levels

  a. 1,280×720@68.3 (9)
  b. 1,920×1,080@30.1 (4)

3. There are some audio codecs (apart from the exotic proprietary ones) that are unfortunately not supported.

  a. AMR
  b. OGG
  c. FLAC
  d. DTS - I have found that DTS work on my installation.

4. Sub titles, Chapters and Resume

  a. Multiple sub titles are NOT supported. If you want sub titles, place them as a .srt file with the same name as your video in the
same folder
  b. Chapters are only supported from 2010 on and 6-Series and higher, so C6xx for LCD and C6xxx for LED.
  c. Resume, continue where you last stop watching a video, same as above.
  d. Note: Blu-Ray and Home Theatre players must also be 6-Series or higher to support "Chapters" and "Resume"

If you find that your video do NOT work, ignoring the ones where the audio is the wrong format-they are easy to fix, the video is either:

  a. Level is not 4.1
  b. Frame rate is more than 4
  c. Encoder used with “header compression”

If your video has:

  a. Wrong Level, higher than 4.1
  b. Sub-titles are embedded - ASS

You need to use MKV Cleaver - http://code.google.com/p/mkvcleaver/ With this you can extract the raw streams, Video, Audio, Sub-titles as you need

To convert your sub titles to .srt files use DSRT http://dsrt.boom.ru/down-eng.htm Use the following commands:

  Just drop a mkv-file (damaged MKV & ASS/SSA also accepted) into DSRT.
  Alt+Shift+I - Convert ASS to SRT
  Ctrl+F7 - remove overlaps and other errors or
  Alt+F11 - remove errors and... just try it.
  Ctrl+S - save. Ctrl+Shift+S save as ASCII.
   

MkVMerge - http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/ Use Ver. 4.0.0, newer versions do “header compression” and not all media players can support it. If you use a newer version disable header compression under File - Options.

  a. With this you can remove additional language and sub-titles
  b. Create new mkv file after you used MKVCleaver

XMediaRecode - http://www.xmedia-recode.de/

  a. If your file is completely wrong format, you can re-code it here.
  b. You can select to convert only Audio or Video, very powerful.
  c. Only down side is that it removes ALL sub-titles, encode your file and use MKV Merge to add your sub title after you are done

Stuttering Video

LAN Connection - 100Mbit

If your video "Overall bit rate" - Use MediaInfo - is greater than 10 000 Kbps, you are reaching the upper limit of the hardware capability. This is NOT related to file size - file size = bitrate * running time, but the stream size(bitrate) that is send to your TV/Player.

You can use XMediaRecode and reduce the Video Bitrate. Yes you will lose some quality, but at high bit rates you may not notice the difference.

WiFi

I do not have a Samsung WiFi dongle. If anyone have some experience with this, please be so kind and share your knowledge.