Transcoding not available

[davidmgray]

Hi all,

A few quick newbie questions:

Transcoding is not available for video & music. Do I need to use a third party product such as
ffmpeg or VLC as some of the posts seem to suggest.

On the TV I can browse to the video folders which contain AVI files but then they can't be played. Do
AVI videos not simply just play.

The Twonky server is running on Vista - Yes I know!

Thanks in advance
Dave

[xorzizten]

You need to have ffmpeg or some other program with conversion functions.

Then you need to setup the location to the program you are going to use in the <program>.location file, which you'll find in the cgi-bin directory.
Take it that you have ffmpeg installed.. Open the ffmpeg.location file and edit so it'll point to the location where you installed ffmpeg.. Only the directory path to where the ffmpeg.exe are

[mgillespie]

To clarify, there are 2 transcoding systems in TMS5.1

Background Transcoding
Occurs when the system is idle, it will convert files in the background, this is what the transcoding webpage is all about

On-Demand Transcoding
Transcodes when a file type is not supported by a client that requests it, this is what the.desc files are used for.

That's my understanding of it anyway. I certainly got the on-demand transcoding working for me, to convert FLAC to PCM on demand to send to the PS3.. (nice lossless streaming setup).

[davidmgray]

You need to have ffmpeg or some other program with conversion functions.

Then you need to setup the location to the program you are going to use in the <program>.location file, which you'll find in the cgi-bin directory.
Take it that you have ffmpeg installed.. Open the ffmpeg.location file and edit so it'll point to the location where you installed ffmpeg.. Only the directory path to where the ffmpeg.exe are

Ah thanks, I get it. Right so cgi-bin contains a load of files which are pointers to various apps used ny Twonky.

Right so next question is ffmpeg or VLC or both?

[davidmgray]

To clarify, there are 2 transcoding systems in TMS5.1

Background Transcoding
Occurs when the system is idle, it will convert files in the background, this is what the transcoding webpage is all about

On-Demand Transcoding
Transcodes when a file type is not supported by a client that requests it, this is what the.desc files are used for.

That's my understanding of it anyway. I certainly got the on-demand transcoding working for me, to convert FLAC to PCM on demand to send to the PS3.. (nice lossless streaming setup).

Thanks for the info. Did you manage to to get on demand working for .avi & .mkv?

[mgillespie]

To clarify, there are 2 transcoding systems in TMS5.1

Background Transcoding
Occurs when the system is idle, it will convert files in the background, this is what the transcoding webpage is all about

On-Demand Transcoding
Transcodes when a file type is not supported by a client that requests it, this is what the.desc files are used for.

That's my understanding of it anyway. I certainly got the on-demand transcoding working for me, to convert FLAC to PCM on demand to send to the PS3.. (nice lossless streaming setup).

Thanks for the info. Did you manage to to get on demand working for .avi & .mkv?

I don't transcode video for 2 reasons.

1) it will stress my little server too much
2) seems a pointless excercise, as the 2nd transcoded copy takes up discspace (due to caching), may as well convert it offline to the right format, or better still rip it in the right format in the first place.

[ThyMaster]

For all Linux buffs:
The .location files won't work for Linux systems.
Instead just create symlinks of the needed programs (like ffmpeg or any2mp3) into the cgi-bin directory. Voilà all transcoding options are available after a restart!
BTW, I have two questions on the .desc files settings:
1. Does anyone know what the difference between "asynchronous" and "synchronous" is?
2 .Does anyone know other parameter settings for priority than idle (like normal or high)?

TIA
ThyMaster

[ThyMaster]

I don't transcode video for 2 reasons.

1) it will stress my little server too much
2) seems a pointless excercise, as the 2nd transcoded copy takes up discspace (due to caching), may as well convert it offline to the right format, or better still rip it in the right format in the first place.

For 1) I understand.
For 2) I only agree on videos. But for music that's another story. I'd like to store my most beloved music rather in a lossless format (FLAC) than in any lossy format (MP3 et al) or in WAV.
Reason: Apart from quality (lossy) it boasts ID-tags (WAV doesn't). So for lossless music I still would use transcoding (into WAV) and rather have a script cleaning up the cache directory if it grows too big (on my server even a 15 min FLAC song takes only 3-4 secs to be converted into WAV!)

Just my 2 cents
ThyMaster