Hi,
I've got almost the same setup, and got thumbnails fully working. The explanation is below.
The equipment:
- Samsung B650 (2009 series)
- Sheevaplug with Debian 6.0 (squeeze), 1.2GHz ARM processor, 512 MB ram
- Twonky Server 6.0.34
The basic setup:
I followed the instruction in the zip file for the linux (kirkwood) build. Only thing missing is a proper way to start twonky at the system start. The start/stop script is almost correct. Edit '/usr/local/twonkymedia/twonkymedia.sh' and change the start-stop run levels:
Code: Select all
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
Make a link to the init.d folder:
Code: Select all
ln -s /usr/local/twonkymedia/twonkymedia.sh /etc/init.d/twonkymedia
And make sure it actually runs at startup:
On the transcoding option page, only JPEG is selected.
That's the basic setup. Nothing special about that. Now for the thumbnail part.
First, better make sure Twonky is stopped, so do "/etc/init.d/twonkymedia stop"
You do need the ffmpeg package, which can be installed with "apt-get install ffmpeg".
You also need the program 'dtach', which can be installed with "apt-get install dtach"
Edit the file '/usr/local/twonkymedia/cgi-bin/ffmpeg.location'. It's content should be:
This tells twonky where it can find the ffmpeg program.
Next, edit the file '/usr/local/twonkymedia/cgi-bin/ffmpeg-video-thumb.desc':
Code: Select all
# generate video thumbs
#(c) 2010 by PacketVideo
exec: ffmpeg -itsoffset -30 -i $infile -vcodec mjpeg -vframes 1 -an -f rawvideo -s 284x160 $outfile
# capabilities
from=video/*
to=image/jpeg
videothumb
synchronous
Edit the file '/usr/local/twonkymedia/twonkymedia.sh'. On line 91, replace '"$TWONKYSRV" -D' with
Code: Select all
dtach -n /tmp/twonkymedia "$TWONKYSRV"
That should do it. Now you can start twonky again with "/etc/init.d/twonkymedia start"
Now the explanation what I actually did.
The default location for ffmpeg is set to "c:\ffmpeg", which is wrong, so I changed it to the actual location
The command to generate a thumbnail was wrong. In the default setup, there is a variable for the delay in seconds (-$videothumbtime), which is converted to -"30". However, the quotes give an error, so I replaced that with -30. The 30 is the number of seconds into the movie to take the screenshot. 30 seconds is not the best time, especially with series titles, because it will always show the same frame. However, a higher number (longer into the movie), would mean more things to calculate. So depending how fast your server is, experiment a bit with this number.
Be default, Twonky runs as a daemon (the -D flag in the startup script). However, transcoding does not work in daemon mode. dtach is a program (like the program 'screen') to run a process in an a separate screen/window, so it can run in the background. This is used to simulate the daemon option. As an extra bonus, it gives you the option to see what twonky is doing transcoding-wise. Type
and you should see the transcoding process. Use this to verify that transcoding is taking place. To exit, press ctrl+\ Transcoding will still take place in the background.
To verify that transcoding is actually working, first use the flash browser. Switch to the thumbnail view (top right above the folder/file pane), and browse to a video folder. After that, test on your TV, and you should see thumbnails.
One caveat: whilst twonky is still generating the thumbnail, browsing the folder structure on the TV is slow. Be patience, and let twonky do the bulk of the generating first. If you add a new video file, the thumbnail will be generated within minutes automatically.