Java PS3 Media Server for dummies – chapter 5 Videolan- and Avisynth

In order to enable some engines you have to meet prerequisites.

Videolan / VLC

VLC (Videolan Codec) is a good choice for playing web streaming content. VLC is available for almost every platform including Windows, Linux and MacOsX. PMS is well tested with current version 0.99. You can download VLC here. VLC version 0.9.8a works well, later versions may have issues…

After installing VLC you have to restart PMS and enable the VLC engines. In PMS go to menu “transcoding settings”. Select “videolan video streaming” in the menu on the left side and press the plug-button to enable the engine. After that do the same with “videolan audio streaming”. You can use the blue arrow-buttons to change the priority of engines. I prefer VLC as default streaming engine. So I moved VLC to top position… After all press the save button and restart PMS.

Avisynth

You may think why bothering with transcoding when muxing is available… That’s absolutely right in most cases. But there are some video files which can’t be muxed because of special conditions. You may get for example a trailer with h.264 video codec but AVC level 5.1. PS3 doesn’t support that (yet). Maybe you don’t even use a PS3 for Playback but another streaming device like a modern TV which is only capable of playing MPG2. In that case you will need transcoding very often.

You can see that there are some reasons why people want to optimize transcoding. On Windows platform there is an additional method available for transcoding.

Avisynth is a frame server for free, available on Windows platform (developement of Linux version won’t be continued). Regarding PMS readme one should install Avisynth 2.5.7. I couldn’t detect any problems on current version 2.58 which you can download at Sourceforge. Latest Avisynth 2.5.8 seems to cause stuttering on certain files.

After installation of Avisynth you also have to install plugin vsfilter. Download it here. You have to decompress the 7z-file and copy the vsfilter.dll from unicode-subdirectory to your Avisynth plugin directory (C:\program files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins).

Decoding with ffdshow

Transcoding means decoding the video in the first step on the PC and in the second step encoding it to MPG2 and streaming it to your PS3. For decoding the free software ffdshow is commonly being used. In order to demux container formats ffdshow needs the free Haali Media Splitter. Both software are avialable as software packages, so called codec packs.

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack

Who wants to get an “everything included” package should consider K-Lite Mega Codec Pack which is available here. There are different variants available, from basic to mega but also a 64-bit variant.

After installing k-lite codec pack you may have to configure subtitles and your speaker setup.

Change to Windows Start menu “programs > K-Lite Codec Pack > Configuration > ffdshow audio decoder”. In menu “mixer” you have to set your speaker config. In order to get 5.1 surround sound (speakers: 4x surround, 1x center, 1x subwoofer) on your PS3 you have to set “3/0/2 – 5 channels”.

After that run “programs > K-Lite Codec Pack > Configuration >Haali Media Splitter” and change to options tab. Choose menu “languages” and select your language priority:

Audio language priority: ger,eng

Subtitle language priority: ger,eng

audio and subtitle languages: ger,off;eng,ger;*,ger;*,eng

Trackset languages: ger,eng

The example above is optimized for German language. Here is an example for English language:

Audio language priority: eng

Subtitle language priority: eng

audio and subtitle languages: eng,off;*,eng

Trackset languages: eng

The settings above are only vaild when avisynth video engine is used for transcoding.

Go to menu compatibility and set “autoload VSFilter” to “Yes”.

CCCP Codec Pack

For those who prefer minimal installations CCCP codec pack is the right choice. It is available here. Read FAQ for configuration. It should be similar to setup k-lite codec pack.

activate Avisynth-engine

After installing and configuring Avisynth, ffdshow and Haali media splitter you can enable both engines Anisynth/MEncoder and Avisynth/ffmpeg.

tuning performance of transcoding: decoding of h.264 with coreavc

With CoreAVC there is a very fast decoder for h.264 HD-videos available but it’s not for free. You can get a trial version which is valid 14 days. So you can try out…

First of all you have to disable decoding for h.264 in ffdshow. If you have installed k-lite codec pack goto Windows start menu “programs > K-Lite Codec Pack > Configuration > ffdshow video decoder”. Select menu “Codecs” on the left side and change format H.264/AVC from “libavcodec” to “disabled” and press o.k..

Now you can istall CoreAVC:

Haali Media Splitter is already included in codec packs and therefore doesn’t have to be installed once again.

You should enable CUDA if possible. Goto Windows start menu “programs > CoreCodec > CoreAVC > Configure CoreAVC”. Check “Prefer CUDA Acceleration” and press o.k.. Please consider that CUDA is only available for NVidia based graphics cards. You also have to install an up to date driver (at least version 181.64!).

There is no GPU-support planned in ffdshow. So CoreAVC is best choice for transcoding performance at the moment.

Update: regarding Windows7

use preferred filter tweaker for Windows 7 to change from preferred Microsoft DTV/DVD Decoder to another

Update: regarding VLC and streaming web videos

Using VLC for streaming web videos like youtube doesn’t work well anymore. I suggest to use pmsencoder, a PMS addon which works as a wrapper for mencoder, instead of VLC. Read pmsencoder readme for installation howto.