Streaming MKV to PS3

[SpEnTBoY]

Ok so I'm trying to work on streaming recipes for twonky on my iMac using mencoder and the 5 beta 1 release of twonky. I can not for the life of me even have a scan show that mkv is a valid format?? Anyone have any insight or tips on how to get the mkv file format recognized so I can try to get streaming working???

For reference here's what I have in my cgi-bin for .location and .desc files:

mencoder.location

Code: Select all

 cat mencoder.location && ls -l /usr/local/bin/mencoder 
/usr/local/bin
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  6898972 20 May 13:27 /usr/local/bin/mencoder

Code: Select all

 cat mencoder-mkv-divx.desc 
# transcode video (mkv to divx)
exec: mencoder $infile -oac copy -ovc xvid -o $outfile
# capabilities
from=video/x-matroska
to=video/x-divx
asynchronous

Like I said though I'm missing something because I'm not sure how to specify to twonky that mkv files are a valid video format. Anyone??

[meimeiriver]

This board is not excelling in replying to folks, lol; but I'd like to know how this is done, too, please.

[SpEnTBoY]

This board is not excelling in replying to folks, lol; but I'd like to know how this is done, too, please.

damn! I thought the reply was a solution lol ... yeah replies are slow going but here's hoping there's at least more than just us trying to get this going ... If it takes longer than a month I'll just contact support again and see if they have some pointers

[meimeiriver]

I have my PS3 over two weeks now, so by now I know you can't stream mkv files (yet). Has got nothing to do with Twonky.

You can, however, easily concert an mkv file (which is just a container) to something the PS3 will recognize. Just extract the H.264 stream (if that's what's in it, which is likely) with tsMuxeR by selecting "Remux to m2ts". And select an AC3 audio stream also (PS3 won't take DTS over a streaming connecting). And presto, you have a PS3-streamable file.

P.S. As for the Twonky folk not responding, I'm beginning to find that an issue. Come the end of the 30-day trial period, I'll likely not buy it: no support, no check.

[SpEnTBoY]

I have my PS3 over two weeks now, so by now I know you can't stream mkv files (yet). Has got nothing to do with Twonky.

You can, however, easily concert an mkv file (which is just a container) to something the PS3 will recognize. Just extract the H.264 stream (if that's what's in it, which is likely) with tsMuxeR by selecting "Remux to m2ts". And select an AC3 audio stream also (PS3 won't take DTS over a streaming connecting). And presto, you have a PS3-streamable file.

P.S. As for the Twonky folk not responding, I'm beginning to find that an issue. Come the end of the 30-day trial period, I'll likely not buy it: no support, no check.

Actually it does have to do with Twonky ... what we're talking about is on the fly transcoding. Twonky can (in beta) transcode the files on the fly for you rather than you having to transcode them prior to streaming. I've done a mess of transcoding to make files natively viewable on PS3 but I would much rather have the streamer use the host machines resources to transcode the file for me _while_ streaming. I hacked together some code a long time ago to create the files for the PS3 but It takes a while to convert files no matter what method you use

Scroll through THIS thread for anyone looking to do this in Linux. There are many revisions but lots of it is still workable

[meimeiriver]

Actually it does have to do with Twonky ;) ... what we're talking about is on the fly transcoding. Twonky can (in beta) transcode the files on the fly for you rather than you having to transcode them prior to streaming. I've done a mess of transcoding to make files natively viewable on PS3 but I would much rather have the streamer use the host machines resources to transcode the file for me _while_ streaming. I hacked together some code a long time ago to create the files for the PS3 but It takes a while to convert files no matter what method you use :(

Real-time transcoding, it almost sounds too good to be true. Using RipBot264, with insane high settings, transcoding a 1080p VC-1 source takes about 15 hours, leaving all my 4 cores, at 3.2Ghz, at full burn for the duration. Seeing how this is done at ~4-5 fps, you'd need at least a dual octa-core board (non-existent yet, of course) to make it happen 'real-time' at 24 fps.

But I guess if you go for a somewhat less rigorous x264 profile, you could get near 24 fps with the current hardware -- although I keep thinking it's a stretch. But it's an encouraging development nonetheless. :)

[SpEnTBoY]

Actually it does have to do with Twonky ... what we're talking about is on the fly transcoding. Twonky can (in beta) transcode the files on the fly for you rather than you having to transcode them prior to streaming. I've done a mess of transcoding to make files natively viewable on PS3 but I would much rather have the streamer use the host machines resources to transcode the file for me _while_ streaming. I hacked together some code a long time ago to create the files for the PS3 but It takes a while to convert files no matter what method you use

Real-time transcoding, it almost sounds too good to be true. Using RipBot264, with insane high settings, transcoding a 1080p VC-1 source takes about 15 hours, leaving all my 4 cores, at 3.2Ghz, at full burn for the duration. Seeing how this is done at ~4-5 fps, you'd need at least a dual octa-core board (non-existent yet, of course) to make it happen 'real-time' at 24 fps.

But I guess if you go for a somewhat less rigorous x264 profile, you could get near 24 fps with the current hardware -- although I keep thinking it's a stretch. But it's an encouraging development nonetheless.

Well live stream content can work a couple of different ways which is why I was hoping to get more clarity here lol .... another method is to have the host machine stream the content live using it's own player but making it appear to be a supported format on the other end. In other words your NAS or mediaserver actually plays the content (no real transcoding) and supplies the feed to the PS3 appearing to be an AVI rather than MKV. Much like remote play works ... the PSP in a remote play session isn't actually playing the content ... it's just acting as a display and the PS3 does all the work. Media servers would act the same way. The media server provides the content and the PS3 displays the feed.