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.
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Hi, good post. I have been woondering about this issue,so thanks for posting. I’ll definitely be coming back to your site.
Hi, GREAT tutorial, i love it, keep up the good work. But when I changed from 1.10 to 1.20 i started having performance problems, could you meke an example of your configuration so we could now if we are messing up with some of the options, thx in advance!!!
Disable “HTTP Engine V2″ and try again. That might help…
Hey mate, firstly thanks for the english translation and excellent write up. We need to get a “how to” section happening in the ps3ms official forums. This post should be stickied there.
Start a thread in PMS forum for this topic. Maybe someone else is also interested. I will agree to start a documentation project because I already suggested that some time ago.
As far as I know the developers don’t see PMS as a “ready to use software for everyone” yet. There are still lots of changes in possible settings and the GUI isn’t really user-friendly. I mean lots of people don’t want to know anything about transcoding engines, mencoder parameters and so on but easy to use GUI which just works “as is”. So I think the problem is that the developers aren’t very interested in documentation of work in progress software.
Still i think with the popularity of it, there needs to be some form of documentation. Otherwise people end up asking the same questions over and over again.
On another note Otmanix, I was wondering if you could help me, I have followed eveything by the tutorial you wrote up. The problem I am having is that I cannot get the CoreAVC icon to show up when I disable the FFDShow H.264 decoding. I get two haali icons and a FFD(audio) icon but just no CoreAVC one. Any ideas??
@jharry
read latest post on this blog about GraphStudio
Well done mate, you jumped at the first oppurtunity to finally have get all your guides in one post and from the response it looks like it was really appreciated. Thanks for the graph studio article will follow it tonight and let you know…cheers.
I tried AviSynth 2.5.8 and it caused one of my mkv video to lag. Revert back to 2.5.7 make it smooth again.
o.k. that’s interesting. I don’t transcode a lot and for my few tests it was fine with 2.5.8.
Yeah, i’ve always used 2.5.7 and no probs with that
K, so I just spent the past 5 hours or so trying to get this working. I bought CoreAVC, but when I play the file the icon appears for a second then disappears. It’s an mkv h264. When i run the graph utility, forcing Core as its codec isn’t even an option… help…:|
@Matt: You don’t have to buy CoreAVC before it’s working. There’s a trial version available…
If you use GraphStudio for your example mkv file you have to look which filter/codec is used for video input. If it isn’t “CoreAVC Video Decoder” you have to set the merit for the current filter to “do not use”. Then search for “CoreAVC Video Decoder” in the list and change merit to “NORMAL”. Leave Graphstudio, reboot Windows and have a look at the file once again. The chart in Graphstudio should have changed and CoreAVC should be used for playback of this file.
That’s the think, the graphstudio doesn’t show coreavc at all in the list under dd(120 items). nothing with the word core in it=(
@Matt: That’s strange. On WindowsXP you have to open the mkv-file via “File > Render Media file”. Then click on the box for your current “video in” filter/decoder. After that choose “Graph > Insert filter”. Select “direct show filters” in the left dropdown menu and “All filters” in the right one. Then select the current filter/decoder in the list and press change merit – change it to “do not use”. After that select “CoreAVC Video Decoder” in the list and change merit to “NORMAL”. Leave Graphstudio, reboot Windows and have a look at the file once again. The chart in Graphstudio should have changed and CoreAVC should be used for playback of this file.
If there’s no “CoreAVC Video Decoder” in the list then sth really strange happened to your Windows Direct Show filter configuration… Maybe on Windows Vista or Windos 7 you have to select another list in the drowndown – I don’t know…
It’s not in there=( I’m on Win7, the video decoder that’s in there by default is Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder, dunno if that helps.
@Matt:
O.k. It seems to be Windows 7 related… Using Google I think I found the solution: http://windows7news.com/tag/coreavc/
So Windows 7 has different behaviour regarding codecs…
I finally got it working with Win 7, only to find out 8800 GTS 640mb isn’t supported, sigh. ah well.. guess i won’t be watching stuff on my tv.
@Matt: You need >= series 9 Nvidia GPUs to support CUDA afaik. Nevertheless you can run CoreAVC without CUDA but much better h.264 performance than most other decoders like ffdshow.
Yeah, they had 8800 in the list(Core did) but it was 512 only, and it has CUDA support, (8800 GTS 640mb), it just doesn’t have something core needs apparently.
@Matt: You don’t need a specific NVidia card as long as you don’t enable “prefer CUDA acceleration” in the CoreAVC options. So in your case you should disable this option in CoreAVC and h.264 decoding should run fine on your CPU (and not on your GPU!). Have a look at the CoreAVC requirements: http://www.coreavc.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=1
Well that’s what I wanted, GPU accelerations:) My CPU can’t quite handle streaming to my ps3 or xbox=( Not at 1080p at least.
@Matt: Even without CUDA you can save up to 20% CPU load compared to other codecs. But I have to admit that’s no guarantee for playback of 1080p without stuttering… Regarding CoreAVCs statement you need at least a P4 CPU with >= 2,8GHz for local playback. For PMS you need additional CPU power for encoding and streaming…
Yeah, my CPU is my pc’s choke point, I’ll be upgrading to i7 920 soon, but for now i have a 4200 AMD x2 64 bit. 6 gigs of ram, and a 8800 GTS:P I couldn’t get any settings to not stutter on PMS, i tried like cranking settings way down and it didn’t seem to change anything.
@Matt: You seem to have an XBOX and PS3. The PS3 has an advantage in supporting h.264 video codec. If you are able to not transcode but mux your videos (subtitles enforce transcoding!!!) to your PS3 your CPU may has sufficient power. Choose tsmuxer engine in #transcode# folder for testing. Watch at your CPU-load while playback, none of the 2 cores should have more than 90% load. If it is still stuttering you may exceed your network bandwith which is a totally different problem and can’t be solved without quality loss by more CPU power…
It does have subtitles though=( I think its x264 actually too, not sure how different that is. I have a gigabit network so that shouldn’t be a problem.
@Matt: So you have to sit and wait for your new hardware… or enjoy the sound of foreign languages without subtitles
I will probably just carry my computer into the living room and watch it from there, I believe my computer handles normal watching the video fine. just won’t have the 5.1 sound, which isn’t too big of a deal.
@Matt: This solution is out of the question because it doesn’t include PMS and will work out of the box
It’ll have to for now, until I buy an i7! It’s that and a 46″ 1080p TV + comfy couch or a 22″ monitor and bed:P
Ordered my i7 today!:)
@Matt: good news… that seems to be a quick decision of someone who could’t wait any longer
Eh, I was planning on it for a while. And i’ve been getting tired of my CPU throttling everything i do/play.
This is a great tutorial.
Thanks for doing this, really appreciated the help!
I got a athlon 64 x2 dual core 5000+ 2,6ghz, 4gigs of ram and a geforce g100.. But playback of hd stutters, not all the time, but after the first buffer has run out, it happends over and over again that it starts stuttering.. Got like 90-99% cpu load with mencoder
Tsmuxer works really nice, with a cpu load of 3-8% when playing 1080p, but it has no subtitles:( anyone know what makes the mencoder use so much cpu?
@anders:
The answer is: power is needed for decoding hd-video and encoding to MPG2, aka as transcoding. You can either buy a new CPU, do overclocking or trying CoreAVC (which will reduce power for decoding hd-video).
Mabe you simply have forgotten to enable multicore support for hd in mencoder settings.
@Greg:
Thanks for your response. I’m glad that this tutorial helped you…
Hi guys,
I’m having a problem with older standard quicktime files (.mov) not playing. It starts up then just pauses. The weird thing is i have higher quality hd newer hd video that plays just fine as do .iso and other files. What would the problem be?
@Gimp: Post your problem in PMS forum, attach debug.log and mediainfo-output for that older standard quicktime file.
I have a problem. The AVI engines show enabled in PMS. however when I attempt to locate them in the #TRANSCODE Folder on the PS# the only ones that show are the tsmuxer and MEncoder.
How can I set them up to be “discovered” on my PS3. They are also the primary engines on the PMS
There is no need need to do sth special if everything is setup regarding howto above. If it doesn’t work as expected please open a new thread in PMS forum including your debug.log.
My PS3 can see the PMS and I can see the avi files that I have pointed it to in the Shared Folders. Selecting the folder it says “#–TRANSCODE–#” select that I get the file names of my movies, select a folder, and they all says ” there are no tracks”.
I have 0.9.8 VLC installed and selectedon top in the transcodding settings.
Thanks in advance,
Pete
I have figured it out!! i was looking in the wrong place! Your the best for doing this!!!
Hi Otmanix!!
Great tutorial! Very well done. Quick question. How do we know that PMS is using CoreAVC and CUDA acceleration? How do we set it as the priority, since CoreAVC is not listed under ‘Video File Engines’
Another thing, I’m not a big fan of installing too many codecs on my system. Is there a minimum configuration that you can recommend that would use CoreAVC without installing too many extra codec packs? For instance, I haven’t installed AviSynth/FFmpeg.
Keep up the great work!! (BTW, since I’m fallen upon PMS and your tutorial I’ve convinced 3 friends to pick up the PS3 Slim. Sony should be paying you!!!!)
PS. I’m using Windows7 64bit
Just to make things complicated for you 
You have to install at least Avisynth, Haali, ffdshow and vsfilter-plugin to get complete functionality. Install CoreAVC and disable h.264 video decoding for ffdshow. After that enable avisynth/mencoder engine. You can then select this engine in virtual folder #– Transcoded –# in XMB.
You should see less CPU load when streaming h.264-content compared to ffdshow.
Please visit PMS-forum for further questions…
I don’t have personal experiences with Win7/64bit, so please ask your questions in PMS forum. Maybe some other PMS users may share their knowledge regarding this certain setup.
Update:
Now I tried Win7 64bit and PMS myself and wrote a new article about it in this blog…
Quick question otmanix, did you say that it’s currently impossible to pass live streams from the latpop to the ps3 using psm? Is there any steps on how to for example pass a live soccer stream from the laptop to the ps3?
@firststone:
Did I actually say that?
The functionality of live streams doesn’t depend on a latop or desktop pc. The biggest problem is that most internet tv stations make it difficult to get the URL of the stream because of copy protection. In addition to that there are not solved problems with VLC and mencoder as streaming engines. PMS also has not the ability to capture video/audio from browser/soundcard like tversity does.
So does internet streaming work? There is no simple answer, it depends on the content. If streaming internet video content to your PS3 is your main focus PMS is not a good choice. Only few streams will work. Tversity will be a better experience in this case but you won’t be able to stream every content with this software as well.
hi Otmanix,
I appreciate your time and effort in listing all these guides on both your blog page and over at ps3 media server page. I truly admire your genuine intention with helping and sharing knowledge. Cudos to you my friend and keep up the good work!
/regards
tofurkey