PS3 Scene Search on some streaming VOB's and not others

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jfourman
Posts:2
Joined:Sun Aug 31, 2008 8:01 pm
AV Hardware:Buffalo Terastation Live, PS3
PS3 Scene Search on some streaming VOB's and not others

Post by jfourman » Tue Nov 11, 2008 4:39 pm

The newest PS3 firmware 2.50 adds a "Scene Search" feature that displays thumbnails of a video at user-determined time intervals (1 minute, 2 minutes, etc.). You can then select the thumbnail to jump to that spot in the video. However, the feature shows as "This operation is not available here" in many of the VOBs I rip and stream.

I rip all of my DVDs using the same software and settings: DVDFab 5.1.0.0 - VOB Passthrough - Main Movie Only. This creates a single VOB that I stream from my Buffalo Terastation Live using Twonky 4.4.6.

For the VOBs that have the Scene Search feature available, I am able to advance through a movie far faster than the VOBs in which Scene Search doesn't work. In the latter, after a long FF, I may have to wait several minutes for the video to restart at the new spot. With Scene Search, the video begins to play almost immediately after advancing.

Can anyone tell me why Scene Search would be available for some ripped movies and not others? Does this have something to do with indexes that are/are not encoded into the original DVD?

Thank you in advance for your help/suggestions.

jfourman
Posts:2
Joined:Sun Aug 31, 2008 8:01 pm
AV Hardware:Buffalo Terastation Live, PS3

Re: PS3 Scene Search on some streaming VOB's and not others

Post by jfourman » Tue Nov 11, 2008 6:47 pm

For anyone interested, here is a reply post from COMPLICATION to the same question that I posted on the DVDFab forum:

"I'm just guessing, but there are two likely culprits and both have to do with the original DVD encoding.

On many DVD titles, the movie is made up of multiple segments added together. The problem is that the different sections don't have time codes that are continuous so when you stitch them together with VOB passthrough the PS3 isn't able to give you a good time reading. This type of problem can usually be fixed by using tsMuxer to generate a M2TS file and then rename it to VOB but sometimes results in the audio being out of sync.

Another factor is the number of I-Frames in the stream. These are key points where the fast forward and rewind can stop at. If these are far apart then it will take the streaming device a while to serve up the specific frame at the 2-min mark that the PS3 is asking for. Keep in mind that these streaming devices usually have very limited memory and CPU.

I rarely bother with trying to correct the time code issue since the latest PS3 firmware(s) seem to play everything without trouble. When the streaming device stalls, what works for me is to just press stop and then play again rather than wait for the device to catch up."

arizonabay
Posts:4
Joined:Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:01 am
AV Hardware:PS3
Western Digital Mybook II World edition (1tb)

Re: PS3 Scene Search on some streaming VOB's and not others

Post by arizonabay » Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:32 am

(Sorry this is a partial x-post... but I'm as stuck as others and a bit miffed...)

So... why do I get one set of behaviour from Twonky and different from "another well known media server" (Me-iato-b...)

I have 2x Western Digital Mybook World II (1tb each), 1 runs twonky, 1 runs the other media server that I can't mention.

I recently tested a blu-ray rip of goodfellas (13-14 gig) on each. The mpg was converted from MKV using mkv2vob.

On Twonky
when I hit scene search... no pictures at all.
when I fast forward 10 minutes... it seems to take ten minutes to get there
when I fast forward an hour... I have to go do something for at least fifteen minutes (which is borderline useless)
All HD Mpegs have total times of 99:99:99...

On (The other server)
when I hit scene search... 50% pictures... 50% "?"
when I fast forward... it takes up to 30 seconds to get me to anywhere in the movie... which is a nuisance... but bearable.
All media has correct times

So... if it's the conversion... why different behaviours on different servers?
My guess is it's a software issue... in the server somewhere... :-(

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