A comparison of PS3 and 360 as media players

[Shifty Geezer]

I'm not willing to give up FF or the ability to hop around scenes fast ...

I'm curious; what are you doing when watching movies that warrants all this hopping around?! In typical use, isn't a film 'put in, play, watch to end' with the occassional break when you carry on where you left off? Outside of being a movie student, I can't think of any need to hop around a film often that it'd be a necessary part of a media device!

 

[joker454]

I'm curious; what are you doing when watching movies that warrants all this hopping around?! In typical use, isn't a film 'put in, play, watch to end' with the occassional break when you carry on where you left off? Outside of being a movie student, I can't think of any need to hop around a film often that it'd be a necessary part of a media device!

I guess I'm atypical then I rarely watch a movie start to finish a second time, but if I like a movie then I buy it so I can rewatch my favorite scenes. It's totally normal for me to come home one day and watch favorite scenes in a dozen different movies over an hour or so, then move onto something else. So I guess I'm a freak because I need FF/Rew. Just goes to show, different strokes for different folks. Ideally I'd like a bookmark system so I can bookmark my favorite scenes on my movie re-encodes, hopefully that will come one day.

 

[AlNom]

I'm curious; what are you doing when watching movies that warrants all this hopping around?! In typical use, isn't a film 'put in, play, watch to end' with the occassional break when you carry on where you left off? Outside of being a movie student, I can't think of any need to hop around a film often that it'd be a necessary part of a media device!

Not to say that joker has any part in what I write next, but there does exist a particular genre where most of the target market will skip most of the um... "story" for the money shots or what have you.

I gotta get my mind outta the gutter. lol

 

[patsu]

I can see you !

For those kinds of adventures, just do a custom AVISynth script to pull the right segments out. Dump them all together. PS3 will cycle or shuffle through all of them, FF or no FF.

Or better yet, find someone else who has done the job already. There must be someone who has done it. It has to be. Otherwise, mankind is doomed.

 

[joker454]

For those kinds of adventures, just do a custom AVISynth script to pull the right segments out. Dump them all together. PS3 will cycle or shuffle through all of them, FF or no FF.

Nah, my viewing habits aren't so predictable to where they can be scripted into little clips I'm happy with my current setup of a single re-encoded file per movie that I can browse at will so I'll stick with that. One day I'll switch to just using the native mt2s files but probably not anytime soon, support of them just doesn't seem up to par right now, at least not for my expectations.

It does look like PS3 Media Server has great potential though which is cool, it's always nice to have alternative options. I'll revisit it at some point down the road.

 

[patsu]

Yes, if your target gears do not support 5.1 audio, then you won't benefit much from "raw" m2ts files to begin with. 20Gb+ is too high a price to pay, not to mention they don't stream well over DLNA. I am curious whether the files will play if you copy them locally though. In any case, I will forward your posts to the PMS creator to make sure he sees the stability issue when handling extreme large video files. Hopefully, he can push it to the mencoder folks.

One can presumably settle on lower-spec'ed m2ts files. They should work just as well as 4Gb+ VC1 files (as your experiements showed). Asher's suggestion of using AviSynth is interesting too. I used to have a few AviSynth scripts to skip intro sections for my all-time favorite movies. It's a pretty neat tool.

 

[Asher]

Yes, if your target gears do not support 5.1 audio, then you won't benefit much from "raw" m2ts files to begin with. 20Gb+ is too high a price to pay, not to mention they don't stream well over DLNA. I am curious whether the files will play if you copy them locally though. In any case, I will forward your posts to the PMS creator to make sure he sees the stability issue when handling extreme large video files. Hopefully, he can push it to the mencoder folks.

One can presumably settle on lower-spec'ed m2ts files. They should work just as well as 4Gb+ VC1 files (as your experiements showed). Asher's suggestion of using AviSynth is interesting too. I used to have a few AviSynth scripts to skip intro sections for my all-time favorite movies. It's a pretty neat tool.

You don't even have to know how to use AviSynth. If it's installed, the AviSynth/MEncoder option becomes enabled in PMS. For whatever reason, this fixes subtitles for me and for HD videos, it's far more efficient CPU-wise. I didn't write anything for it to work.

 

[joker454]

You don't even have to know how to use AviSynth. If it's installed, the AviSynth/MEncoder option becomes enabled in PMS. For whatever reason, this fixes subtitles for me and for HD videos, it's far more efficient CPU-wise. I didn't write anything for it to work.

Ok, I'll try it late tonight. I'll also try the m2ts files locally on the PS3 just out of curiosity to see how they work.

 

[patsu]

Anyone gotten this to work from the Mac?

http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=78

To solve most problems we need to look at your debug.log, this file contains errors and debugging information we can use to find a problem or bug. Since it's a bit harder to find this file on OSX then on other systems here's how to get it (i'm assuming you have PS3 Media Server installed in your applications folder):

- Go to your Applications folder
- Look up PS3 Media Server and right click on it (or ctrl+click on single button mouse)
- Choose Show Package Contents
- Navigate to Contents/Resources/Java/
- The debug.log file should be there

The direct path is: /Applications/PS3 Media Server.app/Contents/Resources/Java/debug.log

I saw a few mencoder errors in Console log, but their own debug.log is probably more revealing.

You don't even have to know how to use AviSynth. If it's installed, the AviSynth/MEncoder option becomes enabled in PMS. For whatever reason, this fixes subtitles for me and for HD videos, it's far more efficient CPU-wise. I didn't write anything for it to work.

PMS may have bundled some (template) scripts with its AVISynth integration. Like you said, it's transparent to the users.

 

[joker454]

You don't even have to know how to use AviSynth. If it's installed, the AviSynth/MEncoder option becomes enabled in PMS. For whatever reason, this fixes subtitles for me and for HD videos, it's far more efficient CPU-wise. I didn't write anything for it to work.

Just tried this with the latest version of Avisynth (2.58). I tried playing back the AviSynth/MEncoder version of the Die Hard m2ts file and it plays, but only with 2 channel audio. FF locks up when I try it, and it thinks the file is only 26 minutes long so it gets the time wrong. Anyways no biggie, I've fiddled about as much as I'm willing to fiddle with mt2s, I'll check it again in the future.

I could not alas check playback of an m2ts file locally on my PS3. I sold my 160gb launch model so I only have a 40gb model now, not enough room on it to transfer the Die Hard m2ts to it

 

[patsu]

I was going to file a bug report against PMS 1.0.3. I realized that there are a few variables. joker454, could you kindly let me know your the version number of the ffmpeg program you used to generate the m2ts file ? Also is the command line options still the same (I remember you posted it earlier in this thread).

That way it's easier for the PMS creator to repro the problem.

 

[joker454]

I was going to file a bug report against PMS 1.0.3. I realized that there are a few variables. joker454, could you kindly let me know your the version number of the ffmpeg program you used to generate the m2ts file ? Also is the command line options still the same (I remember you posted it earlier in this thread).

That way it's easier for the PMS creator to repro the problem.

The m2ts files I was using on the tests were dumped straight from the blu-ray using AnydvdHD (latest version). So there was no re-encoding on those, AnydvdHD just does it's decryption and spits them out to a directory. Sometimes I run tsmuxer on them if the movie is split into multiple m2ts files so that I can merge them into one, but in this case both movies were already in a single m2ts file so I left them alone.

Now for my special small re-encoded versions I use TmpgEnc 4.6.3.267. I feed the m2ts file to it, and it spits out the VC-1 or AVC version on the other end.

 

[patsu]

One was VC-1 and the other was AVC. What were the audio specs for the 2 Blu-ray you dumped ?

 

[joker454]

One was VC-1 and the other was AVC. What were the audio specs for the 2 Blu-ray you dumped ?

Blader Runner (VC-1) was Dolby True HD, and Die Hard (AVC) was DTS-HD.

 

[patsu]

Woah, he's moving fast. PMS 1.04 released.

- Changes / Features

. New option to enable video copy on ps3
. RAW images thumbnail support: CR2/CRW/PEF/NEF/ORF/SRF/MRW/DNG/ARW/RAF
. New extensions supported: SHN/M2V/M2P
. tsMuxer engine can now mux or reencode in AC3/PCM all audio tracks in real time
. Add the experimental mencoder build for multicore on OSX
. DVR-MS remuxer now included by default in Windows package
. New translations: Spanish (thanks to Jose from playstationhoy.com), Dutch (thanks to Vincent Meylof), German (thanks to Jeuki), Russian (thanks to Peter Klassen), Polish (thanks to Maciej Bocian), Greek (thanks to Alexander Polichroniadis), Portuguese (thanks to Hugo Sousa), Finnish (thanks to Ove Sentlig), Norwegian (thanks to Ball80 and Topguy), Swedish (thanks to Dusan Ilic) and Japanese (thanks to Yu)

- Fixes

. tsMuxer's AC3/LPCM encode/muxing + Mencoder's LPCM remuxing now working on Linux
. Fixed LPCM seeking issue
. Fixed regression with PicasaWeb images feed
. Changes in subtitles loading / Fonts support (Default/ASS/Embedded Fonts)
. Fixed channels order with tsMuxer engine's DTS->AC3 option
. Transcode buffer wasn't fully released after end of video
. Fixed bug with shared folders selection on Windows
. Fixed periodic alive messages sent to ps3
. Better dvr-ms media info retrieval
. Updated ffmpeg/mplayer/mencoder/mt builds on Windows and OSX (slight H264 speedup for singlecore)
. Buffer issues with transcoded audio files lasting more than 10 minutes
. Fixed RSS parsing with some feeds

 

[Asher]

Yep. I've been monitoring the real-time changes, find them interesting: http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/source/list

 

[joker454]

Yep. I've been monitoring the real-time changes, find them interesting: http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/source/list

That's neat, seems like they are actively working on it, very cool! I think I'm gonna start encoding both vc-1 and avc versions going forwards in case I switch back to PS3 as my media player.

 

[AzBat]

PlayOn out of beta & save $10 till 2/8/2009...

http://www.themediamall.com/playon

Wii version coming early 2009.

Tommy McClain

 

[patsu]

They've sort of fixed DisplayShare. I'm going to give ago now, seems the problem is to do with the UPnP service not starting in Vista due to dependencies issues.

DisplayShare 1.1 is GM now. I need to find a Windows machine in the same subnet. Wonder what the fuzz is about (It sounds like a one-way remote desktop service ?)

 

[tha_con]

Question: Does the PS3 support BRD-R (I assume thats the abbreviation for Blu-Ray Disc Recordable?). I put the Super Bowl on my DVR (huge Steelers fan) and I want to capture it to the PC, and then burn it ot BRD to maintain the HD image quality (instead of having it stored on an HDD, etc).