Transcoding Media Server for Linux?

I've been using mediatomb but they were just in the planning stages for transcoding support last time I looked. For transcoding support, TVersity is still the best choice for me. I haven't tried transcoding with MythTV.

Right now I'm waiting to see what codecs Sony adds to the PS3 before I dig into this problem much further.

MythTV's upnp server doesn't transcode. My tv recordings show up on the PS3 and I can play the mpeg2 SD stuff fine. The HD over-the-air captures play the video but no sound. My Myth Music stuff shows up too but it is all oggs so it won't play on the ps3. I image mp3s would play fine. You might also want to look at fuppes which has some transcoding support. (http://fuppes.ulrich-voelkel.de/)

To fix you no sound problems from your HD recordings add a user job with the following and it will play properly, only thing I have noticed is it take about a minute for the video to start playing after this on the PS3 but it works normally once it starts. Here is the code:

My user job also rips out the commercials at the same time. I haven't used this much yet but I did test it and it does work. I would recommend verifying that your commercial cuts are in the correct locations before running. Also the user job does make a backup of the original just in case. Here is what each step does:

/usr/local/bin/mythcommflag -c %CHANID% -s %STARTTIME% --gencutlist - this copies the the commercialflagging marks to the cutlist

/usr/local/bin/mythtranscode -c %CHANID% -s %STARTTIME% -p autodetect -m -e dvd -l - this transcodes the file into a DVD compatible format, don't worry it doesn't affect resolution at all

mv /media/mythtv/Recordings/%FILE% /media/mythtv/Recordings/%FILE%.old; mv /media/mythtv/Recordings/%FILE%.tmp /media/mythtv/Recordings/%FILE%; : these two steps create the backup and mv the transcoded file in place of the original

/usr/local/bin/mythcommflag -c %CHANID% -s %STARTTIME% --rebuild --clearcutlist : this rebuilds the seektable so you can jump around and also removes the cut list since there are no more commercials

I created this directly in the database using phpmyadmin and had to restart mythbackend after so it would be picked up, it is located in the settings table, there is room for up to 4 jobs. Once done you can run this from the watch recordings screen or from mythweb.

Hope this helps! I picked this up from the mythtv users list and modified it slightly for my use.

Kevin

Looks sweet. I'll check it out, thanks!

I forgot to add that to enable a user job you also have to edit the JobAllowUserJob#(# is the number of the user job 1-4) from 0 to 1. And I guess you should also edit the field UserJobDesc#(again # being 1-4) so you know which job is which if you have multiple user jobs. These fields are all located in the settings table, you can probably also edit these from the mythtv-setup or maybe from mythfrontend. I didn't really look to be honest as I am comfortable just editing through the database for most things. As I said previously I found I had to restart the backend after editing these.

Kevin