[MEncoder-users] Streaming media to PS3

[Angel]

Hi guys,
I've been trying to get mencoder to work as an external transcoder for mediatomb (A DLNA/UPnP media server). Basically, I need a command line which will convert files to some format that a MediaRenderer (in this case a playstation 3) will support.

I've tried searching the web, and found many, many conflicting lists of what containers/codecs the PS3 will play. Some people say that it only supports certain formats on local disks, not streaming, or that certain codecs are only supported in certain containers. I tried most of the formats that are recommended in various tutorials, and they all came up "corrupted" or "unsupported". I'm told AVI can't be streamed, so I didn't use it, but I tried every combination almost at random until I found one that will play at all :

mencoder $infile -ovc lavc -oac lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=mpeg2 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:acodec=mp2 $other_options -o $out_fifo

Now, I know this isn't probably the best set of options, but everything I've tried changing results in an unplayable stream. So I'm wondering what anyone else would suggest to optimise this.

Main priorities are not introducing artefacts (the source files are mostly pretty poor quality, and the TV is an old SD CRT one, but I don't want to reduce quality any further), and processing time on the transcoding machine (which is pretty slow, and needs to be able to transcode in real time). Network bandwidth is not usually an issue; we're either streaming over 802.11n or gigabit ethernet here.

I'm using Fedora 14, standard mencoder package (SVN-r31628-4.4.4), with whatever it is compiled with by default.
Available output formats:
    (avi mpeg lavf rawvideo rawaudio)
Available codecs:
    (copy frameno raw nuv lavc vfw qtvideo libdv xvid x264)
Available codecs:
    (copy pcm mp3lame lavc twolame)

I'd love to be able to hand the ps3 some format with switchable audio/subtitle streams, but I don't think it supports any. So I'm currently sticking "-aid 0 -sid 2" or similar in $other_options to give me a 'hard-subbed' version of the file.

So ... any advice would be much appreciated
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Sent from my Android phone with K-9. Please excuse my brevity.