mindless ramblings

Mediatomb is a great UPnP server that generally works with the PS3. Regular AVIs seem to work but MKV support out of the box is not very good.

Here’s how I got MKVs transcoding in real time to the PS3 (with 5.1 passthrough!) on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.

• Install Mediatomb
• Install ffmpeg
• Make sure you are using the *-unstripped libs as dependencies for ffmpeg (See here for details)
• Follow the instructions here and here to setup basic support for the PS3.

Edit /usr/bin/mediatomb-transcode-video with your favorite text editor. This is the script that I am using:

#!/bin/bash

FFMPEG_PATH="/usr/bin/ffmpeg"
INPUT="$1"
OUTPUT="$2"
VIDEO_CODEC="mpeg2video"
VIDEO_BITRATE="4096k"
VIDEO_FRAMERATE="25"
AUDIO_CODEC="copy"
FORMAT="mpegts"

exec "${FFMPEG_PATH}" -i "${INPUT}" -vcodec ${VIDEO_CODEC} -b ${VIDEO_BITRATE} \
-r ${VIDEO_FRAMERATE} -acodec ${AUDIO_CODEC} -f ${FORMAT} - > "${OUTPUT}"

Notes:

• The audio codec is set to “copy”. This simply forwards whatever audio stream is present. This successfully forward Dolby Digital 5.1 to the PS3, through the TV and out to the speakers!
• The format can one of several things. It was originally set to “dvd” but that caused buffer underflow errors to spew forth during transcoding. “mpegts” seems to maintain compatibility but without the errors.
• I’m not sure if the framerate is truly neccessary.
• I tried using 8192k as the bitrate but it didn’t seem to make a big difference.

Got 3 quarts of Castrol Syntec ($8.99 * 3), ended up adding 2 quarts in…

Oil pressure warning light came on while driving just now. Dipstick indicated no oil! Added 1/2 qt and still no results. Will go to Canadian Tire and grab more oil later.

Odometer is at 13200km or so.