Features, settings & updates

[John2019]

Roku Model: 3931RW Roku Express+
SW ver: 13.1.4, build 1510-AE
Roku Media Player (RMP) ver:  5.5, build 13
Twonky DLNA Server ver: 8.5.2-20210413
WMP DLNA Server ver: Win 11 22H2

I would like to play previews while FF/REW in RMP; but I'm having trouble getting the "trick play" (hereafter called "scan preview") to work. There are so many variables and unknowns for me to figure it out alone. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Does RMP even have a scan preview functionality? I see many references where people "have gotten it to work" (e.g., here), without providing steps on what they did to do so.

If RMP does have scan preview, does it require the creation of a BIF file? There are plethora of references in the forums about how to create one, the time delay issues, etc., but nearly all of them refer to channel devs and not, specifically, a home user using RMP.

I am a regular user of ffmpeg and have successfully created and verified my thumbs from a video. I created my BIF file using the following steps:

• 1.  I created an imgs folder containing snapshots from sample.mkv using the following command (gleaned/altered from an example in StackExchange to fix the time delay issue):

ffmpeg -loglevel error -hwaccel cuvid -hwaccel_output_format cuda -c:v h264_cuvid -i "sample.mkv" -filter:v "scale_cuda=w=320:h=180,thumbnail_cuda=2,hwdownload,format=nv12,select=bitor(gte(t-prev_selected_t\,10)\,isnan(prev_selected_t))" -vsync 0 -color_range 2 imgs\%08d.jpg

I fixed the dimension to HD, as per the biftool man page because this sample is HD and I only watch in HD.  This is one thing I did not try, is to change to SD or other thumb dims.

• 2. I generated a bif file, or I "think" I did, using the following command (gleaned from the dev forum):

biftool -t 10000 imgs

The name of the generated BIF file is "imgs.bif". It is a binary file, so I cannot really parse it; but it is big enough to assume that the thumbs are embedded.

I moved the sample.mkv and imgs.bif to my DLNA servers for both Twonky and WMP. When I try to scan preview sample.mkv in RMP, served by either my Twonky DLNA or WMP, it does not show a preview in REW/pause/FF. The man page for the biftool was no help.

Other things I have tried:

• I tried renaming the imgs.bif to sample.bif to match the movie name (like the SRTs and Poster images have to be in RMP).
• I tried moving the imgs thumb directory to the same path as the movie/bif file. I doubt this was necessary; but did it in case the BIF file is pointing to the directory.
• I re-generated using "sample" as the image folder name, to match the movie name.

It's hard to find information/tutorials on how to get this working, so I am not even sure it's a legitimate RMP function for a non-channel, home-streamed video. I would just like to have the feature implemented for my home library.

Thank you in advance for your response.

[renojim · Accepted solution]

The problem is probably the DLNA server.  RMP only knows there's a BIF file out there if the server reports it and I'm not even sure that DLNA servers support such a thing or not.  Putting movie.mkv and movie.bif on a USB drive and plugging it into a Roku device that supports one would certainly get you trick play images.  I know @atc98092 uses Serviio, but I don't know if he uses BIF files.  I'd be willing to bet that Plex supports them, but that's just a guess and it probably requires running their server and not any old DLNA server.  Emby may be another option, but I know even less about that than Plex and I know very little about Plex.  🙂

[atc98092]

I have to admit I've never heard of BIF file s, so I have no suggestions there. I will say that RMP has a bug that might be causing the problem you describe. RMP will not perform any trick play functions, including pause, with TS/M2TS files. It doesn't matter the video or audio codecs in the container. If the media is in a TS container, RMP will not pause, FF, rewind or resume from the last time it was stopped. It's possible this same bug is impacting the BIF container. 

From a quick web search, it does appear Emby supports BIF files. I have no idea if Serviio might also, but it might be something that is supported at the player level so that would still require using RMP, so probably a no-go.

[John2019]

Thanks to both of you for your responses.

I am steering clear of Plex, for now, for a lot of reasons.  Primarily, it slows my WD MyCloud NAS to the point of unusability and, believe it or not, I prefer the "cleaner" interface of RMP.  RMP has its issues, sure, but it has worked for me for a long time without many failings.

I cannot install Emby on my NAS w/o a ton of admin work, and my Linux knowledge is more than 15 years old.

All of the vids in question are matroska (mkv), so I do not believe that is the issue.

This is not a very important feature, for me.  I just read a little about it on the dev forum and thought, "Why not?"  Well, after a full day's troubleshooting, it may very well be that I cannot serve the BIF file with either of my DLNA servers.  I will investigate further and report any findings.

[AvsGunnar]

@John2019 

How about Jellyfin?  https://jellyfin.org/

Starting with v.10.9, Jellyfin added Trickplay to the libraries (will automatically create them for you in a BIF format.).

Since Jellyfin has a channel/app for Roku (https://channelstore.roku.com/details/cc5e559d08d9ec87c5f30dcebdeebc12/jellyfin), you can access it directly from the Home Screen or use it via DLNA through the Roku Media Player.

I actually use the channel/app more than I use the DLNA although both ways work fine (just different features in the channel/app version).

---

I haven't tried 10.9 yet so can't say how it works with Roku Media Player re: trickplay but maybe I will try an upgrade from 10.8 tomorrow on a spare machine just to see for myself.

[John2019 · Accepted solution]

Thanks, it looks like Jellyfin might fix my RMP issue; but it's as cumbersome as Emby to install on my NAS (WD My Cloud).  The only instructions I found were dated (i.e., are for OS3, I'm on OS5).

I think renojim is correct.  I cannot find anything about BIF for either WMP or Twonky.  At this point, I am reasonably sure they don't support serving them.

Plex creates and serves its own BIF files, which would save me the time of doing it myself; but I am not wanting to move to Plex.

I believe it's a closed issue for me, as I am not ready to risk bricking my NAS by trying to manually install another DLNA.  As I said before, this issue is not that important to me.  It was more of an intellectual exercise.  Since it looks like there is too much risk for not enough reward, I am accepting renojim's response.

Thanks.

[John2019]

For the future edification of all who might find this post, I am looking into abandoning my built-in Twonky to run a different DLNA server (like Jellyfin or Emby) on another machine and just point it to my NAS for storage.  There is a dearth of information on Twonky server's site, forum, etc. and its use is [seemingly] not ubiquitous.

It should also solve some other issues I have experienced with RMP (e.g., missing metadata display).  By switching to Jellyfin, for instance, I could implement this RMP trick play feature.

Thanks.

[atc98092]

I have Jellyfin installed on my test server. I just tried it with my Premiere 3920, the lowest performance Roku I have. It's playing my TS files and permitting trick play (FF, pause, rewind) that RMP won't. And the user interface is nicer than RMP. But one thing I did notice is that it won't display the text captions that are embedded in the video. These were all recorded OTA TV broadcasts, and they all have EIA-608 captions. RMP will display these captions, but for some reason Jellyfin doesn't see them. It does see SRT files, so at least that works. 

[John2019]

Thanks for the info.  Looks like I will start investigating Jellyfin as my alternative.  I only use .mkv or .mp4 containers (or convert to them with Handbrake), so that should not be an issue.  I typically keep my srts external so that I can edit them (OCD on spelling/punctuation errors).

Thank you for all of your help, here and elsewhere.  You are a very active, knowledgeable, and prevalent poster on this forum.  I usually seek your responses first.

[atc98092]

I know what you mean about the captions. Sometimes even on DVDs and Blu Rays it's almost comical what some show compared to the actual speech on screen. 😄