[MEncoder-users] Streaming media to PS3

[Andrew Berg]

On 2011.01.30 09:39 AM, Angel wrote:
> 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.
PS3 Media Server uses MEncoder to transcode on-the-fly to the PS3 and
you don't need to configure a command line to get it to work. It will
let you configure the quality options as well.
> 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 :
You must be reading some very outdated information. AVI is completely
supported and you can stream it just fine assuming it's holding MPEG-4
video (there's a certain version of Divx that isn't supported, but
anything else should work) and MP3 audio.
I don't think I've ever had problems with MPEG-2 video, but then again,
I don't deal with it much. MPEG-2 video is supported inside MPEG-PS and
MPEG-TS containers.
I don't remember all the specifics, but almost all AVC streams that are
level 4.1 or lower will play. AVC video is supported inside MPEG-TS and
MP4 containers. It might be supported in an MPEG-PS container, but I
would recommend MPEG-TS over it anyway.
> 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.
If you're transcoding low resolution videos, speed shouldn't be an issue.
> 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.
The PS3 doesn't support subtitles outside DVDs and BDs, but it does
support multiple audio streams.