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Streaming mkv in Mediatomb to PS3

November 27th, 2008 in Tech
12 Comments

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.

12 Responses to “Streaming mkv in Mediatomb to PS3”  

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  1. 1 DJ Evans Dec 23rd, 2008 at 02:34

    Your settings are what finally got my mkvs to work properly. Thanks

  2. 2 Matt Feb 3rd, 2009 at 12:07

    Thanks very much for this. This got me up and working.

    One point however, you talk about making sure you use the unstripped dependencies for ffmpeg, the following address points out how to install those (working in Intrepid)

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=986534

    Cheers

    /Matt

  3. 3 Soo Wei Feb 3rd, 2009 at 12:12

    Glad to be of help.

    I’ve found PS3MediaServer (http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/) to be quite good too as a quick solution. No setup needed provided you have the required libraries it needs.

  4. 4 soowei Mar 29th, 2009 at 09:14

    hi there, i was just wondering if you still want to use the url soowei.blogspot.com ? if you do not want to use it, can i have it instead? please do let me know ya… thank you so much! :)

  5. 5 Lucas Jun 13th, 2009 at 00:20

    Thank you,

    Worked for me.

    Additionally, I have worked out a way to get mediatomb to server movie posters to the PS3.

    http://www.dedmeet.com/software-projects-mainmenu-12/mediatomb-movie-posters.html

  6. 6 user Jul 25th, 2009 at 13:26

    Hi,

    just found your article. Streaming mostly works…but I can’t scan or pause the playback.
    Andy idea?

  7. 7 user Jul 25th, 2009 at 13:50

    and second: it seems to crash on large mkv-files.
    Like an 8GB 1080p File.

  8. 8 user Jul 25th, 2009 at 13:52

    sorry, hit the button too early. This is the error in the logfile:

    Duration: 00:01:18.66, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
    Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264, yuv420p, 1280×720, PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn, 47.95 tbc
    Stream #0.1: Audio: dca, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16
    Output #0, mpegts, to ‘pipe:’:
    Stream #0.0(eng): Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 1280×720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], q=2-31, 4096 kb/s, 90k tbn, 25 tbc
    Stream #0.1: Audio: 0×0000, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16
    Stream mapping:
    Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
    Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
    Press [q] to stop encoding
    [NULL @ 0x8b9e780]error, non monotone timestamps 4320 >= 4320
    av_interleaved_write_frame(): Error while opening file

  9. 9 Soo Wei Jul 25th, 2009 at 17:35

    Scannig and pausing won’t work, as ffmpeg is transcoding on the fly in the background. There is no way for it to scan back and forth for you.

    I haven’t seen any issues with running large files, although I have not tried a 8GB file. I find ffmpeg is a bit flaky with newer MKVs, I have a whole bunch that don’t work and just spit out that error you mentioned.

  10. 10 user Jul 26th, 2009 at 00:50

    Ok, so we have to wait to get a fix in ffmpeg for this error?

    And the reason why pause/scan won’t work hit me yesterday after posting ;)

  11. 11 Soo Wei Sep 27th, 2009 at 01:40

    I gave up and used Handbrake to convert them to .mpg.

  12. 12 Joel Jan 20th, 2010 at 01:47

    Transcoding on the fly? Ouch. My little file server weaps.

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