Download PMS rev. 348

• Windows
• Linux
• there are no recent binaries for Mac OS X, please check here…

More infos regarding revision 348 are available at Google Code.

Plugins

Installation

You get plugins as zip-archives. You have to download and extract them and then copy the conent to C:\Program files\PS3 Media Server\plugins. You will either find a config file for your plugin in the directory mentioned before or you can configure it in PMS in general settings tab.

last.fm

The last.fm plugin has to be configured in PMS. You have to fill in username and password. Scrobbling isn’t working at the moment because of a bug. But I think this will be soon fixed. “now playing” is working fine.

Movie Info

The movie info plugin is configured in file movieinfo.conf. You have to setup your movie info database and you can chose to download covers or not.

You can download PMS 1.20 (rev.343) here:

• Java PS3 Mediaserver 1.20 beta (revision 343 / 13.06.09) for Windows
• Java PS3 Mediaserver 1.20 beta (revision 343 / 13.06.09) for Linux

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.

common transcoding settings

• transcode buffer maximum size: This value is about how much temporary space should be used for buffering a video before sending it to PS3. Default is o.k..
• Number of cores used for transcoding (dropdown): This value is bout how many cpu cores should be used for transcoding. The maximum value depends on the physical available count of “real prpocessor cores”. That means hyperthreading virtual cpu cores don’t count! If you’re not sure analyze your cpu with free tool cpu-z on windows systems. On linux have a look at the virtual proc-filesystem. In file /proc/cpuinfo you will find more details about your cpu. You also get much infos about CPUs from AMD and Intel at the wikipedia-articles. Nevertheless PMS should be able to detect and set the correct amount of cores.
• number of audio channels (dropdown): If you have a surround A/V-receiver or amplifier connected to your PS3 select 5.1, otherwise 2 channels stereo.
• AC3 audio bitrate: Here one can set the quality of digital audio sound. Your AV-receiver or amplifier has to be capable of playing this quality. Default is o.k..
• Keep DTS audio in stream: This enables playback of DTS digital surround sound via optical digital audio output (toslink) of your PS3. Keep in mind that this increases network traffic. Your AV-receiver or amplifier needs an integrated DTS-decoder for playback.
• DTS/FLAC – LPCM-remux: This enables playback of DTS digital surround sound via HDMI output of your PS3. Keep in mind that this increases network traffic. Your HDMI connected device (TV or AV-receiver or amplifier) needs an integrated DTS-decoder for playback.
• remux when audio track is AC3: Transcoding of audio will be avoided when it is AC3 (Dolby Digital). AC3 digital audio track will muxed into PS3 compatible container if necessary. This should be activated if your PS3 is connected to a TV or AV-receiver or amplifier which has an integrated Dolby Digital Decoder. This feature is not supported when using Avisynth based transcoding engines.
• maximum bandwith: This is some kind of network throttle. One may think it’s a brilliant idea to reduce network bandwith in order to get HD videos streaming via WLAN. My experience is that it won’t work as expected. You need lots of CPU power for transcoding. If that’s not a problem you will get really poor video quality when stream HD videos on low network bandwith. So better leave the default value 0. You should also note that this etting won’t affect muxed videos. You may have to enforce transcoding by choosing another transcoding engine.
• MPEG2 video quality settings (dropdown): If PMS isn’t able to stream directly or mux the audio/video to a PS3 compatible container it will transcode to MPG2, which is PS3 compatible. This costs lots of CPU power. This also will increase the network traffic because MPG2 compression isn’t very good for HD videos. You will need a 100MBit/s LAN or DLAN for playback of transcoded HD videos – WLAN won’t work (mabye some 720p videos will do). You are able to control the quality settings of MPEG2 encoding which corresponds to needed network bandwidth. So there are some parameters available to control MPG2 quality. Keyint means keyframes, keyint=3 means that every third frame is a keyframe which is a complete picture. In between there are two pictures which only contain differences to the predecessing picture. A high value for keyint will result in a lower network bandwith but will also cause bad quality in fast action scenes in movies. There are also so called quantizer values (vqmqx, vqmin, vqscale). High values result in low quality. I suggest to try out some of the Values available in dropdown.
• Definitly disable subtitles: Displaying subtitles will automatically enforce transcoding. If you won’t to avoid transcoding and definitly don’t need subtitles enable this feature.
• skip transcode for following extensions: enforce direct playback for certain filetypes
• force transcode for following extensions: enforce transcoding for certain filetypes

video files engines: MEncoder

• emhanced multicore support for h.264 HD content: Enable usage of special multicore version of mencoder tool. This will improve performance on multicore systems.
• skip loop filter deblocking for h.264: disable deblocking filter for h.264 HD videos
• A/V sync alternative method: If video and audio get out of sync disabling this might help.
• use video scaler / width / height: Usually the TV or PS3 is used to upscale the video to optimal video resolution. MEncoder is also able to do that for you which will cost additional cpu power.
• force framerate parsed from ffmpeg: If framerate isn’t recognized correctly (video is running too fast/slow) change this setting.
• deinterlace-filter: Enable deinterlace filter which will usually is done by your PS3 or TV.
• switch to tsmuxer when video when h.264 video is PS3 compatible: Enable this! When MEncoder transcoding engine is used and PMS recognizes a PS3 compatible video it will switch to transcoding engine tsmuxer. The video will then be streamed directly or muxed but not transcoded! This setting will dramatically reduce the need of transcoding. Matroska video (mkv) for example aren’t supported on PS3. Mostly the contained audio and video stream is PS3 compatible. So tsmuxer creates a PS3 compatible m2ts container which contains the original audio and video stream and the PS3 is able to playback. This feature reduces both network traffic (because of better compression as MPG2) and CPU power needed for playback.
• audio language prority: Fill in the abbreviation of your native language so that PMS will automatically select the right audio track.
• subtitles language priority: Fill in the abbreviation of your native language so that PMS will automatically select the right subtitle.
• audio/subtitles language priority: I think this language selection is special for DVD playback.
• subtitles codepage: The codepage should match the codepage setting on your PS3. cp1252 should be default.
• FriBiDi mode: enable FriBiDi GNU implementation of Unicode algorhithm
• ASS/SSA subtitles: support for ASS/SSA subtitle format
  
• autoload *.srt/*.sub subtitles: support for SRT subtitle format

video files engines: tsmuxer

• force fps parsed from ffmpeg: If framerate isn’t recognized correctly (video is running too fast/slow) change this setting.
• mux all audio tracks: Enable it in order to get all audio tracks muxed

FFMPEG DVR-MS remux

• alternative ffmpeg path: This feature is for users of Microsoft Windows Mediacenter Edition. If you have recorded some tv shows and want to watch the DVR-MS files with PMS/PS3 you need a special version of ffmpeg.  Download and unzip this file in your PMS installation directory and restart PMS.

additional infos

Engines are located on the left side (see screenshot above) under common transcoding settings. Activated engines are displayed with a green triangle icon. You can select an engine and use the arrows up/down buttons to change priority. The power plug button can be used to enable or disable an engine. Don’t forget to use save button and restart PMS if changing anything…

Some engines (videolan and avisynth) require additional software!

Attentention! To save changes in configuration permanently you have to press the Save/floppy-disk icon. You need to press Quit icon and start PMS once again to activate changes.

Most default values are chosen wisely by Shagrath, some of them can be optimized. In the following text important values are marked green, less important values are marked blue. Values which you can leave untouched in most cases are default black color..

General configuration

• language: choose your native language if available
• start minimized (checkbox): apply if you want PMS start to tray (window minimized)
• install as a windows service: press if you want to run pms as a service, further configuration needed, doesn’t work properly on every system regarding PMS forum
• force network on interface (dropdown): Perhaps PMS sends network broadcasts on the wrong network card. If PMS doesn’t detect your PS3 choose your correct network card.
• force port of server: if TCP/IP port 5001 already is in use set a free alernate port number like 6001
• Use IP-filter: set IP-address of allowed streaming client (PS3), all other will fail to connect
• HTTP Engine v2: brand new feature which is very experimental – a new code to communicate for PMS which should be deactivated when communcation problems appear (new engine should improve network performance and better support for alternate streaming clients)
• prevents OS from sleeping when streaming: you can make sure that your computer won’t go to stndby while streaming

Navigation/Share settings

• thumbnails generation: activate for automatic creation of thumbnail pictures of your media files
• thumbnail seeking position (in seconds): Most video files begin with some seconds of a black background before the movie starts. You can set the time in seconds for the video thumbnail position.
• Use mplayer for video thumbnails: the tool mplayer sometimes gets better results for thumbnail creation then default way, so just try it…
• audio thumbnails display (dropdown): You can chose default behaviour (search for thumbnail pictures in filesystem) for audio thumbnails or let PMS download album art from Amazon or Discogs.
• alterate video cover arts folder: chose your folder in filesystem which contains cover art
• browse .rar/.zip/.cbr archives: If activated PMS is able to show content of archives. If a media file in archive is chosen for playback it will be decompressed before streaming starts
• hide # video settings # folder: There is a virtual folder available called # video settings #.  You can navigate to this folder on your PS3 and change some values for PMS online. You can hide this folder if you don’t want to confuse your girlfriend.
• hide file extensions: some people might get confused if they see file extensions like jpg or avi, so you can hide them
• hide transcoding engine names: PMS can stream your media file with different technologies. You can chose the technology (transcoding engine) in virtual folder # transcoded #. The default transcoding engine for playback is displayed after the name of each media file. You can hide that of course.
• enable media library: When you browse folders on your PS3 PMS scans each folder in real time and displays the results on your PS3. Additionaly there is an builtin media database which can be activated. If you scan your hard drive for media files additional infos for each file will be collected, e.g. MP3-tags (title, album name, …) for MP3 audio files. You can browse the media library in a virtual folder on your PS3 after scanning.
• reset media library: If the media database is corrupt you can use this feature to reset the content of the database.
• sort file method (dropdown): chose if you want your file list on PS3 sorted by name or date
• shared folders: All local drives are made available to PS3 by PMS. In a more secure environment you might want to chose the folders which are presented to your PS3. Press green + icon to add folders for access by PMS/PS3. Select folder and press red – icon to remove access to a folder. Press up and down arrows to change order of these folders.
• magnifying glass: Start first scan on your hard drive for media files to collect infos about them in a media library.

You can download PMS 1.20beta here:

• Java PS3 Mediaserver 1.20 beta (revision 335 / 17.05.09) for Windows
• Java PS3 Mediaserver 1.20 beta (revision 335 / 17.05.09) for Linux

Latest builds for Linux and Windows are also available at a thread in PMS forum since march.

MacOs betas are also available since April.

PMS latest official release can be found at code.google.com project page.

Java / JRE

Java programming language is a requirement for PMS. Therefore you need to install Java second edition runtime environment, at least version 6. You can get latest JRE here.

Installation and start of PMS on Windows XP

After installing Java Runtime you can install Java PS3 media server. Double click the setup file “pms-setup-windows-1.20.exe” and follow the instructions.

Installation and start of PMS on Linux

You also need JRE installed on Linux. You should set environment variable JAVA_HOME to JRE installation path. After that you have to decompress the setup archive for Linux with  tar xzf pms-linux-1.11.tgz. You have to install mplayer, mencoder, ffmpeg and tsmuxer. If you like to stream web content also install VLC. Make sure that all binaries of these tools can be found via PATH variable. Start a shell, cd to your installation directory and start PMS with ./PMS.sh. Check permissions and set them if necessary with chmod 770 PMS.sh .

You can either use packages from your Linux distrubution or compile the tools by yourself. Sometimes distributors don’t set important compiler options, e.g. scaling support for ffmpeg. So I recommend you to compile it from source…

PMS first start

Please start up and login to your PS3 first. After that start PMS. Perhaps PMS doesn’t detect your PS3:

In that case change to general configuration tab:

In the majority of cases there are 2 problem causes:

• Port 5001 is already in use by another software like Azureus Vuze
• PMS uses the wrong network card as default

You can solve the problem by choosing the correct network card and type in an unused port, e.g. 6001. After that save and quit, start PMS once again.

You should now see this message:

PMS has detected your PS3. PMS should appear in XMB on your PS3:

You are now able to browse the filesystem of your PC or Mac and play media files.

attention!

You can only view that type of media files which is corresponding to your XMB entry point. That means you have to chose photo in XMB to see photos via PMS, … You can see all folders but only the type of media files which match your entry point.

network foundations

Before installing and running PS3 one should get an overview of the network topology. The Playstation 3 communicates with the PC or Mac. If one wants to see web content like youtube videos an internet connection is required. Most used technology for accessing the internet is an ADSL- or cable-internet-connection. You connect the socket with a modem (ADSL or cable) which will later do the dial in. The modem can be connected directly to the PC or Mac. But most people use a WLAN-router to connect. The router is then a gateway to the internet for PS3, Mac and PC.

WLAN

In most WLAN-routers nowadays there is an integrated modem and WLAN-accesspoint. The PS3 and notebooks both have integrated WLAN-NICs and can therefore communicate via WLAN when logged in into the access point. The integrated WLAN  network card of PS3 is compatible to standard 802.11 b/g. This means a maximum network speed of 54Mb/s. To log in into the WALN-accesspoint you need the following infos:

• WLAN network name (SSID)
• WLAN network password (PSK)
• encryption standard (WPA, WPA2)
• radio channel / frequency

All these settings are defined on your WLAN router / accesspoint. If there are a lot of WLAN-networks in your range try to change to a radio channel with the biggest frequeny distance regarding the other cannels. Otherwise you may experience poor network quality and speed. Another quality factor is having walls with much ferroconcrete.

You can reach an average speed of 35Mb/s. For streaming HD videos this might be not enough…

LAN

What is the advantage of LAN (wired connections)? Its maximum bandwith of 1000Mb/s. One big disadvantage is you have to wire all devices, so you need physical access. The devices (PC, Mac, PS3) have to be wired with Cat5e S/FTP with RJ45-plugs. All devices have to be connected to your router integrated switch. Of course you can extend the switch ports of your router with an uplink to an external switch. If your router switchports are 100Mb/s you can tune up maximum speed with an external 1000Mb/s (1Gb/s) switch. The link speed and duplex mode should be handled automatically via autonegotiation. Sometimes it doesn’t work correctly and you have to change settings on your PC or Mac by yourself.

example screenshot for changing linkspeed and duplex mode in Windows XP:

DLAN

If it’s not possible to wire your devices but you need an higher network transfer rate there is a solution available called DLAN aka powerLAN. In this case you use your power line for sending data accross it. Market leader for this technology is devolo. You can get DLAN adapters with up to 200Mb/s.

Update:

Now there are new 1Gb/s powerline adapters available from Belkin!

TCP/IP, DHCP, ICS, DNS and firewall

The router is default gateway for all devices in your home network. The communication is done via TCP/IP protocol. In such a network every device needs an identifier called IP-address. More than one program on your PC can use network at the same time. Therefore these programs also use an identifier called port number. PS3 media server uses port 5001 as default. You can change that if it is already used by another software. Your home network is a private network and therefore uses special IP-addresses. The IP range is limited by the so called subnet mask (e.g. 255.255.255.0). Because nobody can memorize a large numbers of IP addresses (like 74.125.67.100 for google.com) you need another network service called DNS which translates IP addresses into domain names and vice versa. The router forwards DNS requests to a dns server of your provider and sends the answer to the requesting device.

Setting up an IP-network is not a simple task. There was also a need for automation. DHCP solves this issue. Your router has an integrated DHCP server which sets up every network device (PS3, PC, Mac) automatically. You mustn’t use DHCP and internet connection sharing (ICS), a windows feature, at the same time. ICS has to be deactivated.

It is possible that your PC or Mac has more than one network card builtin. If you use vitualization software (VMware, Virtualbox, …) additional virtual NICs are created.

For security reasons a firewall is integrated in your router. The firewall restrics communication with the internet. Most router integrated firewalls do not restrict communication in your local network. It is also possible that there is a personal firewall software running on your PC or Mac. To get PMS running you have to open port 1900 (UPNP discovery) and 5001 (PMS). If you change the port for PMS in configuration you have to change  your firewall settings as well.

UPNP

Windows only discovers UPNP devices in your home network when SSDP service is running. Here is an Microsoft kb article how to enable SSDP.

machine power

You can stream media files with quite old PCs and Macs. If PS3 doesn’t recognize the video container format and has to remux you will need some additional CPU power. A 2GHz CPU should be sufficient. When transcoding a video on full HD resolution an up to date dual core processor from Intel or AMD with at least 2,6GHz is necessary. It is also necessary to have enough network bandwith available when streaming HD videos. It is nearly impossible to stream a full HD video via WLAN, even when restricting network bandwith and setting video quality very low. You should also have enough free RAM, which means about 512MB. There is also some space needed on your systems hard drive for buffering videos. 500MB free disk space is enough. If you want to stream media files from an external hard drive please consider that an USB1.1  connection is too slow for videos.

O.k. so let’s start the ultimate complete idiots guide to PMS

First of all you have to know that there are a lot of streaming servers available which can be used to communicate with a Playstation 3. Here is a small selection: Windows Media Player, Twonky Media, TVersity and MediaTomb.Windows Media Player works well out of the box but isn’t able to transcode or remux and has poor performance at a huge media database. Twonky media is not for free, so it was no choice for me. Twonky media has its advantage in supporting a lot of different streaming clients, even NAS systems. TVersity is an average media server and has some advantages in streaming internet content. But this advanced feature isn’t included in the free version. Mediatomb is often used on open source operating and embedded systems. You can customize it extremely if you’re a experienced shellscript guru. So it’s not a good choice for beginners.

Java PS3 Media Server, often called PS3 Media server or PMS, is available for Windows, Linux and MacOsX. A prerequisite is the installation of Java Runtime Environment (JRE) because PMS is programmed in Java. Some features require installation of additional software.

PMS is extremely optimized for use with Playstation 3. But you can also use XBOX360 or Popcorn Hour as streaming clients. PMS most stunning feature is transcoding and muxing.

transcoding, muxing?!?

PS3 supports different audio and video codecs and container formats, depending on installed firmware version. Doing an upgrade to the latest version of system software is an advantage for playing multimedia files.

PS3 supported formats: audio, video, photos (links to Sony)

When you try to play a multimedia file on your PS3 and the format is not supported you get a “data corrupted” message. PMS is able to help in this case. PMS is able to change the container format online if it’s not supported (e.g. mkv). PMS extracts the audio and video stream and puts it into a supported m2ts-container. This is called muxing. If the video codec isn’t supported PMS can convert the video stream to PS3 compatible mpg2. This procedure costs a lot of CPU power and is called transcoding. These technologies make it possible that PMS can stream almost every multimedia file to PS3.

Some guys use mkv2vob and connect usb hard drives with converted files to PS3. This is the stone age way of playing multimedia files on PS3. With PMS there is no need for converting files anymore. If it’s necessary PMS does this for you – online…

There’s also a possibility to stream web content like Youtube and Picasa. That’s experimental and not the main focus of the developers at the moment.

Links to official PMS sites:

• blog
• forum
• project with download area for official releases

P.S.

chapter 2 coming soon…