Is this possible? (Re:Video conversion)

Alien18

Alien18

Alien18

Associate
Joined
2 Jan 2005
Posts
189
Hi All,

I've been posting the odd question here and there recently, I'm trying to install Linux with Vista (dual boot) at the moment because I want to learn how to use it before building a media server (to serve video, music and photos to my PS3).

The reason for the post is find out if what I want to do is definitely possible.

At a minimum this is what I would like to be able to to do:
  • Bung a video or a few videos into an folder, lets call it "Input".
  • Then have a a video converter, that would be monitoring the "Input" folder every so often, convert it to a specified format (i.e. the most ideal format to stream to the PS3). And then put the converted folder into an "Output" folder.
  • The "Output" folder will be the source folder for the media streaming software, so it would appear on my PS3 (I've read MediaTomb is probably the way to go?)


Ideally this is what I'd like to do, but this is much more complicated:
  • Have my media server connect to the internet and, according to a manually create schedule, download a video from the News group I'm subscribed to.
  • Once downloaded, do all the stuff as above.
  • I'd also like to Tag the videos (like you can in TVersity, to make it easier to navigate on the PS3), the tag could be preset in the schedule.

I'd also be interested in converting most of my DVD collection as well, so I can store my DVDs away in the loft or something.

If it helps at all the Newsgroup I'm subscribed to has the ability to save searches as an RSS feed, the only problem being trying to narrow it down to one result (as I'm sure you can imagine).

If any of this is possible, I'd be very grateful for any direction/help provided.
 
Just to clarify (after re-reading what I posted). I'm not asking anyone to tell me exactly how to do it (unless you want to :)).

Moreso, I want to know if it's possible, and just a little nudge in the right direction.
 
Hmmmm...OK, perhaps my ridiculously long post scared people away, lol.

I've been doing lots and lots of googling and it seems that Handbrake will be able to do my DVD converting with relative ease, but I'm still struggling to find the best tool for normal conversion. Perhaps I should start by finding one, and worry about my automation woes later?

Again many thanks for any help provided.
 
In short, yes it's all possible I should think. You can script just about anything in linux.

The dvd encoding is something I've done a lot of, mainly using handbrake but there are other alternatives...I always ripped the DVD to an iso and converted that but direct from DVD should make no difference.

For streaming I've haven't converted formats (I don't want two copies of everything clutering up my disk) but transcoded on the fly using vlc, you'll need a fairly quick PC to do something like that and I'm not sure how it'll get on with a ps3 but it worked great for me.

EDIT: Give people a while to respond, linux forum can be quite quiet some days....

EDIT2: Mencoder is almost certainly what you want for format conversion...
 
Last edited:
Yes it is perfectly possible with the right tools... I don't know how you want to convert, but I convert films for my PSP using a command line in Arch... I can't remember much about it at the moment, but I can post it when I get back to the UK... Obviously you would need to find a conversion technique suited to your desired output, but the rest is perfectly do-able in a simple shell script.
 
Ah, cool thanks for your responses. Think I'll be teaching myself some "simple shell script".

I've been doing a fair bit of googling and found an article about the uses of ffmpeg and mencoder. It suggests that ffmpeg yields better results in general. In simple terms what is the difference between these two, erm, commands (if that's what I call them in Linux).

Just for the record I wouldn't have two copies of everything on my disk, I'd delete the original file (either automatically, after X days, or manually after checking the conversion had worked ok and the quality was good).

Since I want a low power, low heat Media Server I don't want to transcode - I've been playing with transcoding in Vista/TVersity with mixed results. I'd rather have a decent H264 .MP4 file that I can stream to my PS3.

I'm tempted to have my DVD ripped in PS3 format and PSP format too (since the size would be quite small) so that I can easily transfer movies to my PSP when travelling.

Apologies if I came across as impatient, I'm jsut quite excited to try and get this working as I'd like, I'll try and calm myself, lol.

As a little side question (don't want to go too off topic) - How to Linux (and, more importantly, the video conversion tools) handle Dual Cores? I've had a quick google and see that Ubuntu can/does (out of the "box"?) utilise dual cores, but haven't read into it yet.
 
Perhaps I should have continued reading the article before mentioning it, lol. There is a 3rd method called Tovid which uses ffmpeg, mencoder, transcode, and dvdauthor. I think that might be the way to go.
 
Linux handles dual cores far better than windows in my experience, the SMP code is very good and most linux programs use it pretty well. For video encoding performance you might want a look a thread i started a while ago, about encoding video using handbrake. My question was specifically about clustering but it showed the sort of performance I was getting.

Which was a average of 370fps going from DVD ISO to high quality mpeg. That was on a 4x 3Ghz machine (2x dual core xeons but roughly equivilent to a qx9650) with 8GB of RAM. The linux build was stripped down to CLI only and uneeded services removed, I also customer compiled handbrake (before, with a GUI and off the shelf handbrake I was getting 310fps or so...so optimisation matters)

I wouldn't give up on transcoding without a decent look at it, any transcoding done is vista is going to take at least twice the power it does under linux so a quiet MCE capable of transcoding should be possible. It also give the undeniable advantage that your media files are kept in their highest quality version so I can (for instance) transcode and stream the same file to my desktop at work to watch over lunch (medium resolution and quality) or send it to my HD tv to watch at 720p
 
Last edited:
OK, you've spurred me on to look at transcoding again, but this time for Linux, do you have any recommendations for Linux software, that would be suitable for transcoding? (To PS3 that is)
 
Alien18 said:
OK, you've spurred me on to look at transcoding again, but this time for Linux, do you have any recommendations for Linux software, that would be suitable for transcoding? (To PS3 that is)
Click to expand...


I was considering looking at ps3 transcoding but I got tied up with other things first. All my transcoding was done with vlc (and obviously vlc as the player as well)

I can't see after a quick look how easy it'll be but it shouldn't be too hard I wouldn't think
 
Probably not, apparently the ps3 will work with any upnp media server, so what you want is a upnp server capable on transcoding. Mediatomb doesn't do it yet (but it's planned), neither does twonkyvision. Mythtv does but is a heavyweight solution unless you want it anyway.

However fuppes does support transcoding, and supports the ps3. So thats likely your best bet.
 
I will indeed have a look at Fuppes - but what I need most of now is time! lol.

Perhaps, trying to learn Linux, in the hope of creating a media server, isn't the best thing to try adn do when you're gearing up to move home!
 
Last edited:
Hi all,

I finally got Ubuntu 7.10 installed and dual booting on my Vista PC. I haven't had much chance to play yet! Need to figure out how to get it into 1680x1050 but I dont think that should be too hard.

I have a quick question - I'm going to look into converting my DVDs first because I think it'll be easier/nicer than the transcoding/streaming of media - what I'd like to know, is, is it possile to have a script that runs when a DVD video is inserted into the drive, that would firstly, recognise the disc as DVD Video, then run my script (which would have some options/questions along the way - the first question being "Would you like to convert this DVD?")

Hope that question makes sense and I haven't waffled.
 
Probably possible, I'm not quite sure how you'd trigger on a disk being inserted off the top of my head (or why you'd want to if you'll just ask for confirmation). Why not just a shell script with the handbrake command on your desktop instead - much easier!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom