After requiring a fresh install of Ubuntu on my media-serving laptop due to disc failure -- I restored all the configuration settings from a backup, re-imported my library into Mediatomb, restarted the daemon and wandered into the lounge to watch TV via the PS3, a ritual with the two evening coffees before the cricket starts.
However, last night -- something strange kept happening, I could browse the videos, they even had thumbnails, but when I attempted to play them, a black screen would appear with "Network Error (000000000)".
Checked the configuration, checked the router settings, checked the wireless signal strength, all fine. (then figured, "paul, you'd not be able to see anything if these settings didn't work ;)")
Googled, no luck there either -- hence this post.
Enabled debugging mode by editing the /etc/default/mediatomb file and changing OPTIONS="" to OPTIONS="-D" and restarted the daemon and loaded up the /var/log/mediatomb.log file to find:
2009-09-17 23:34:00 DEBUG: [../src/io_handler_buffer_helper.cc:224] staticThreadProc(): starting buffer thread... thread: -1267590256
2009-09-17 23:34:02 DEBUG: [../src/process_io_handler.cc:234] read(): process exited with status 256
2009-09-17 23:34:02 DEBUG: [../src/io_handler_buffer_helper.cc:227] staticThreadProc(): buffer thread shut down. thread: -1267590256
Hmm, status 256 you say? "Could be something to do with the encoding then?" I thought.
Running ffmpeg -i testvideo.wmv -target dvd -y testvideo-ps3.avi from the command line, indeed gave me my answer:
Unknown encoder 'mpeg2video'
Turns out, the default ffmpeg installation for Ubuntu Jaunty and Karmic have mpeg2video support in ffmpeg disabled.
Two ways to fix this, the first is to implement a much, much, much longer command to encode your videos -- I use a generic script to encode videos based on their content type, but the PS3 can play (from Firmware 2.61, 3.00 and 3.01 anyway) anything encoded with the DVD profile (which encodes to MPEG2 based AVI's via the aforementioned mpeg2video codec), so instead of:
ffmpeg -i "$input" -target dvd -y "$output"
You'd use:
ffmpeg -i "$input" -vcodec mpeg1video -mbd rd -trellis 2 -cmp 2 -subcmp 2 -b 1500 -g 250 -y "$output"
(note: those commands are the only ones that are essential for making the video output work on the PS3, it'll produce a standards-compliant MPEG file with 64k MP2 audio -- but the quality may look suspect, as long as you leave those commands in, you can add things like "-flags qprd", "-bf 2" or "-flags +ilme+ildct" (good for interlaced video like animation) to improve the quality slighly)
Or, you can install the alternative versions of FFMPEG by enabling the multiverse repository (System ⇢ Administration ⇢ Software Sources) and then installing the -unstripped versions of FFMPEG with the command:
sudo apt-get -f install libavcodec-unstripped libavformat-unstripped
... and continue using the transcoding scripts you're using now :)
How can I tell if I have a broken FFMPEG installation?
The simplest way is to run: ffmpeg -formats | grep mpeg2video from the command line, if you receive:
D VSDT mpeg2video
Then you're missing the 'E'ncoding aspect of the codec, meaning you need to install the unstripped packages to make everything work correctly.
If it returns:
DEVSDT mpeg2video
Then you're all set to go :)
