Where is the technical documentation on transcoding?

General discussion about the media server. Feature requests. Hints, tips and tricks.
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slizzap
Posts:1
Joined:Tue Dec 14, 2010 7:18 am
AV Hardware:HTPC, Xbox 360, Directv DVR
Where is the technical documentation on transcoding?

Post by slizzap » Tue Dec 14, 2010 7:25 am

Why is there no information anywhere regarding how transcoding works or is configured? After digging and digging I figured out how to enable the options, but nothing is being passed to my Xbox 360. When I select a video that I know it shouldn't be able to play, the Xbox still shows a line over it denoting it can't be played. If I select it, it beeps to register but acts like I never did anything...but then I check the PC and I can see the ffmpeg process kicking in. It's transcoding, but to where I have no idea...and it's definitely not being served anywhere. After more digging I think something needs to be done with the clients.db file...possibly including extra extensions and media types for the Xbox 360 definition. But I don't know how that works, because there is no documentation.

Is there any help out there anywhere?

siobhanellis
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Joined:Mon Dec 27, 2010 1:37 am
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Panasonic Viera TH-P50VT20A

Re: Where is the technical documentation on transcoding?

Post by siobhanellis » Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:24 am

Likewise, I'm looking for the definition of clients.db

What does MT or TR mean, for example? How are they used?

Siobhan

dholldorff
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Re: Where is the technical documentation on transcoding?

Post by dholldorff » Thu Dec 30, 2010 6:19 pm

Oh yes! I would love to have access to such technical docs. I am frustrated trying to get "weird" stuff to stream...
NAS: Synology Disk Station 107+ 2 TB, Firmware DSM 3.1-1613, TwonkyServer 6.0.32
TV: Philips 37PF9731D/10
8" Philips Wireless Digital PhotoFrame 8FF3WMI/00
DVD Home Entertainment System: Denon S-302
Blue Ray Player: Philips BRD 7500/S2

PeeBee
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Re: Where is the technical documentation on transcoding?

Post by PeeBee » Thu Dec 30, 2010 10:57 pm

siobhanellis wrote:Likewise, I'm looking for the definition of clients.db

What does MT or TR mean, for example? How are they used?

Siobhan
Take a look at the top of the clients.db file as there is some info there.

PB
Samsung LE37B650T2WXXU; Liteon 5055GDL+ HDD/DVD Recorder; Playstation 3; Iomega Screenplay HD 500GB; Buffalo Linkstation Pro LS-320GL (running Twonky 6.0.30, SqueezeBox Server 7.6 and acting as a Print Server)

siobhanellis
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Re: Where is the technical documentation on transcoding?

Post by siobhanellis » Thu Dec 30, 2010 11:10 pm

yep, did that. Got "some" info.

doesn't seem to be enough. :-(

fistynuts
Posts:1
Joined:Sat Jan 01, 2011 9:29 pm
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Xbox 360 250Gb

Re: Where is the technical documentation on transcoding?

Post by fistynuts » Sat Jan 01, 2011 9:49 pm

I'd also appreciate some documentation. After struggling for a few hours trying to get any sort of transcoding working on 6.0.30, I'm nearly at the end of my tether. I'm trying to transcode WAV to MP3 for playback on my Xbox 360. Once that works I'll move onto flac and then some video formats.

I've created a wav-mp3.desc file containing a callout to lame to do the conversion, via a script that will log what is called and when.

I've also modified clients.db to add MP3 as a destination transcoding format for the 360.

My music share consists of a single .wav file that I'm using for testing. Transcoding to MP3 is enabled in the twonky web interface.

I restart twonky and rebuild the content database. The 360 is off at this point.

Immediately, twonky converts my wav file to mp3 and stores it in /var/twonkymedia/twonkymedia/db/cache/52bdcf5ef051872f5a4a3fb2e0538bc0/MP3/. This seems strange to me because I haven't asked for the file to be played yet.

Starting up the 360 and browsing to the twonky share shows the music file with the correct duration. Trying to play the file shows the 'no entry' error icon due to the format being invalid. No logs are generated by my script - this proves that transcoding is not being attempted by twonky at the time of playback.

Here's the relevant part of clients.db:

>>
NA:XBOX 360
HH:Xbox
DD:Xbox
DX:WMC
XM:DLNA15
DB:FIX
TR:JPEG4096x4096,WMV,MP3
MT:aif,aiff audio/aiff
MT:avi,divx video/avi
MT:flac audio/flac
MT:lpcm,pcm audio/lpcm
MT:m4a,mp4.a,3gp.a,m4b audio/mp4
MT:mp1,mp2 audio/mpeg
MT:ts not-supported
MT:wav audio/wav
MT:mpg not-supported
DF:devicedescription-xbox.xml
XM:FORCE_4TH_FIELD
XM:UNLIMITED

wav-mp3.desc:

exec: abc $infile $outfile
# capabilities
from=audio/x-wav
to=audio/mpeg
asynchronous
priority=idle

abc.location:

/share/HDA_DATA/.qpkg/TwonkyMedia/cgi-bin

abc:

#!/bin/sh
echo `date` abc called with params $0 $1 $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9 >> /share/HDA_DATA/.qpkg/TwonkyMedia/cgi-bin/abc.log
/opt/bin/lame --nohist --cbr "$1" "$2" >> /share/HDA_DATA/.qpkg/TwonkyMedia/cgi-bin/abc.log 2>&1


So - why is the file converted to MP3 as soon as the content database is rebuilt, and why isn't the transcoding script called when the file is played from the 360? Thanks if anyone can help with this.

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