PS3 Open Platform - some big news

[popper]

So which codecs and at what resolution is PS3 under Linux able to decode now?

not sure what you mean but if your refering to software based video decoding , then EVERYTHING that has an open decoder for a given format the new AVC/h264(mpeg4-P10), and the old ASP/divX/Xvid(mpeg4-P2),mpeg1/2,etc being the major runners.

but people should really start using the best options for their encoding as of now and that being AVC for your future needs not least because its got a lossless option that the others dont, snow also has a lossless mode but is less advanced in the commercial fields as yet, and theres no free vc1 encoder yet but no great loss there (VC-1 is just divx derived with bells added on).

the simple fact is, AVC is the codec to use if your intent is to show off your gaming clips to the best possible quality and you get far lower bitrates as an added bonus, use it.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=96059

basicly if its got an Encoder/Decoder in the free FFshow etc codebase then its supported.
http://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk/libavcodec/ppc/
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=98600&page=171

as for resolution, i assume you mean viewable on the display then thats dependent on the current settings so its all the way upto the current Hi-Def display you set it to , i assume most people will have that set to probably 720P but 1080P should work fine (currently upto 1920*1200 i think).

theres a new easy way to find your testing [HD]clips if anyones interested
http://www.zudeo.com/az-web/app
its an updated Java Azureus v3.0 beta thats got a nice fancy front end that makes it easy to find and download HD clips for testing, you can also easly upload your avc clips for others to try and share, (iv not tryed that bit yet, anyone tryed it?).

to make life easyer if you have some windows box around for re-encoding your content then this extreamly easy to use
'MEncoder-Frontend for x264 encoding' app will serve you well http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=108934

it does an extreamly good job of re-encoding some UK DVB-T mpeg2.TS (Transport Stream) files to AVC and even auto removes the black bars if you want it to (read that thread) and outputs them to the old .avi or the new .mp4 A/V container for now...
http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?f=74

the best software based commercial AVC decoder (because you need to pay the AVC/H.264 commercial fee) by far is the coreAVC codec but you are going to need to convince BetaBoy to port it to PPC (powerPC)under linux , a simple enough thing if you go here http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=104277
somewere in there LOL...., i asked about a PPC version in linux, and the outcome was if you convince him that PPC is a high agenda then he will port it to PPC and by extension the PS3 under linux, so tell him you have PPC/Altivec and/or Cell/ps3 PPC linux and want coreAVC there too....

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This whole idea of 'what codecs are supported' really does annoy mean. Just how many damned codecs are really needed?! They all do the same job. There need only be one or two - the best possible implementations for intended use. All these rival formats just mean pointless extra code is needed to do the same task.

In a way, I'd be pleased if hardly any codecs were supported, and people encoding video stuck with the few that were!

 

[patsu]

You think they will support Bluetooth on YDL ?

I was at http://nxt.ivorycity.com/ looking at Lego Mindstorm NXT tools. Wanted to see if I can use my PS3 to process sensor data and control robots. The tool needs Bluetooth to talk to the NXT robots (Well... USB is supported). Sony should really allow the Linux side to read the motion sensing controller.

Here's some more waiting... patiently.

In the mean time, I'll poke around NXT some more, or may be head over to pure software play such as optimizing a statistical package (like R), or hook up Cell to MS Excel (http://www.palo.net/index2.php). Man, I want to settle on something fast. This new Resistance patch is not helping.

 

[popper]

You think they will support Bluetooth on YDL ?

I was at http://nxt.ivorycity.com/ looking at Lego Mindstorm NXT tools. Wanted to see if I can use my PS3 to process sensor data and control robots. The tool needs Bluetooth to talk to the NXT robots (Well... USB is supported). Sony should really allow the Linux side to read the motion sensing controller.

Here's some more waiting... patiently.

In the mean time, I'll poke around NXT some more, or may be head over to pure software play such as optimizing a statistical package (like R), or hook up Cell to MS Excel (http://www.palo.net/index2.php). Man, I want to settle on something fast. This new Resistance patch is not helping.

perhaps im not understanding your question? theres loads of bluetooth stuff under ppc linux
http://fr.rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/mandriva/9.1/contrib/ppc/bluez-utils-2.3-1mdk.ppc.html for the first thing i found...?

 

[patsu]

perhaps im not understanding your question? theres loads of bluetooth stuff under ppc linux
http://fr.rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/mandriva/9.1/contrib/ppc/bluez-utils-2.3-1mdk.ppc.html for the first thing i found...?

Huh ? I thought Bluetooth is not supported in YDL ? I'd be very happy if proven wrong.

 

[popper]

Huh ? I thought Bluetooth is not supported in YDL ? I'd be very happy if proven wrong.

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/support/hardware/breakdown/index.php?hw_cat_id=15

"S u p p o r t e d C o m p u t e r s
PS3 2006
Notes * Graphics Card ** Wireless ***
Bluetooth **** Keyboard *****

* You will require a USB keyboard, USB mouse, and USB drive ('thumb', 'jump', or drive) or memory stick (Sony, SD, Compact Flash) in addition to a PC or Mac from which you will download and transfer the bootloader and bootloader installer to the PS3. Details of this process are given in the YDL v5.0 Guide to Installation.

** The Nvidia graphics card is not supported beyond framebuffer mode. This does not reduce the quality of the image, but does not provide accelerated video nor OpenGL support. Refer to the this HOWTO for information about HDMI, Multi-Out and associated TV/Monitor connections.

*** Not supported at this time. We are working with beta code provided by Sony to gain this support. Stay tuned ...

**** Bluetooth devices are seen by Linux, but not easily enabled. At this time, Bluetooth is considered unsupported on the PS3.

***** We have received a report that a PS2 USB keyboard 'sticks' sometimes under Linux, but works with the PS2. For this person, a different keyboard worked well ...
"

http://ps3mods.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-to-use-bluetooth-devices-with.html
"Wednesday, December 6, 2006
How to use Bluetooth devices with Yellow Dog Linux
These instructions are for Yellow Dog Linux 4.0 - if you are adventurous these may work with YDL 5.0 but it is untested.

Procedure
Install the BlueZ packages, the official Bluetooth for Linux utilities:
yum install bluez* [ENTER]
Reboot your system.
Your Bluetooth keyboard/mouse should be detected automatically.

source: Terra Soft Solutions
Posted by ken_vs_ryu at 8:25 PM "

i cant say if it works as i dont have ps3 yet being UK based 8(
but you can try it and report back for other readers info! perhaps.

 

[patsu]

The last article you posted has a comment:

1 comments:
Anonymous said...
I tried this out, but am unable to get linux to see my bluetooth keyboard and mouse. After rebooting, I ran the discover sequence on my keyboard, but it never synchs up.

Is the a way to mangage bluetooth devices in YDL?


But I will give it a try tonight.

 

[popper]

The last article you posted has a comment:

1 comments:
Anonymous said...
I tried this out, but am unable to get linux to see my bluetooth keyboard and mouse. After rebooting, I ran the discover sequence on my keyboard, but it never synchs up.

Is the a way to mangage bluetooth devices in YDL?


But I will give it a try tonight.

im wondering if its just a slight bug they missed first time round so it will get/got patched.

but non the less perhaps one of the other ppc linux might be better, what about the source/hackers gentoo option http://overlays.gentoo.org/dev/lu_zero

if it doesnt work there then you could provide lu or one of the other devs on irc with a remote ssh
(thats how he got most of his real kit testing done as he too doesnt have a ps3 yet LOL) and work it with you to improve/remove any problems for everyones benefit....

the PPC gentoo lads are usually happy to provide realtime instant fixs if they can get on the real kit and have some fun.

there doesnt seem to be a ps3/cell liveCD/DVD http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell yet for gentoo but there might be others to make life easyer somewere, perhaps one of the readers here might put something together?, a http://slackintosh.workaround.ch/devel.html based live cd might be very fun if someone makes the effort.
http://slax.linux-live.org/forum/vi...stdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=ppc&start=15
http://www.slax.org/

and then you would be able to use the windows based app to pull any of the self contained modules together to make your own livecd/dvd
MySLAX creator http://myslax.bonsonno.org/
"MySLAX creator allows you to create your own customised Slax live cd in Windows. This program can add modules to the /modules or /optional directory (.mo or .img), remove modules from the original ISO image, add some permanent boot options (for example start SLAX in GUI mode), Create your own SLAX ISO image and Burn your ISO image"

 

[popper]

I think Sony is working on a slower/longer term time-table.

Right now, it needs as many software developers involved as possible. It is not meant for end users (yet). So I'm ok with the multiple distro approach. Eventually (probably 1-2 years later), they can start to streamline/consolidate based on the support and acceptance of these OSse. I fully expect some Real-time OS to make it to PS3 too.

well theres already QNX RTP running off Genesi's Firmware HAL (the reason you can take any x86 PCI66 gfx card and use it on their ppc boards as standard)so it could just as easly run on any other hardware that is licencing that same Genesi Firmware in basic PPC mode or a more advanced Cell configuration if they were given an incentive to produce such a thing......

the likelyhood for a general rtp running off ps3 isnt likely OC, but its possible to do right now and with minimal effort on the part of QNX as the works already been done (interesting fact:rtp6.0 was created originally to go on the ppc amiga).

if any turnkey companys were to finance such a thing then they need to talk to just these 3 companys and be up and running in a few weeks for all intents and purposes.....

 

[popper]

what would be very cool IMO is to have the GameOS able to overlay different OSes or applications, and have an Amiga-like pull down screen. Being able to pull down the XMB screen and see Linux in the background would just be funky in a nostalgic sort of way!

ha i knew you were an Amiga guy Shifty.

i take your other points about diluteing the userbase GUI etc but they dont have unifyed Eprom installed shell/cli/GUI like the Amiga did, so its hard for them to take carls OS idea's (keep it small, keep it fast) they can take his Rebol core/view though

a simple small rebol bbs script running off this
http://62.142.193.236/apache2-default/cgi-bin/rbbs.cgi
http://www.rebol.net/


it would be nice if one day all the linux variants took the Amiga ideals and unifyed into a fixed set of librarys/devs/etc and coded these *'in the small' as carl says ,take a look how AROS (see above)can take a full OS and keep its total size down to below even one of the larger linux apps....

now thats progress if they worked to that goal...

OC are we to assume the 'game os' is infact mostly modifyed linux and is also using the large linux librarys ?,if so then anything that brings general linux into the old *smaller is better will also bring benefits to that 'game os' over time.

the key point to all this though is to remember that 'its all to sell the cell...'.

* by small i dont mean strip the librays and related OS out, but rather, find a way to make these massive librays etc far smaller yet as/more powerful as they are now.

 

[popper]

Shouldn't post before I've had my morning caffeine - the 100 is for a 1.6GHz G5 running Mac OS X, the scores in the article are for a 1.6GHz G5 running Fedora Core 4. That actually makes me think the benchmark is pretty poor as a measure of raw CPU performance - there is a pretty big difference in some tests between the same processor under the two different OSs which you wouldn't expect if the benchmarks were good measures of straight CPU / memory performance. He doesn't say in the post what compiler he's using or what settings - is it the same version of GCC on all platforms? Given the G5 under Linux scores as much as 168 vs the G5 under Mac OS X's 100 in one test and as little as 55.6 in another you have to question the value of these benchmarks as a measure of CPU or memory performance.

The PS3 PPU and 360 cores are much more dependent on compiler optimizations than the G5 and presumably the version of GCC used on the PS3 is just a general PPC version and not specifically targeted at the PPU so it's going to give significantly worse results than if you used Sony's version of GCC that ships with the devkits.

its been a month since you posted that but i dont see anyone else putting the point yet.

the fact your seeing the drop is easy to explain, the MacOS has masses of PPC Altivec (x86 mmx*) optimisations wereas the PPC linux does not in any way shape or form take advantage of Altivec as yet.

will someone please,please get some Altivec vector code patches submitted into the core Kernel code /linux librarys GlibC etc for everyones altivec capable cpu benefit... ASAP.

this massive engine has been sat there for ages but noones ever turned the key to start it, the x86 lads are happy to ignore it as they dont want the Altivec showing people it could outperform the x86 MMX* clock for clock every time.

the apple lads are not going to submit patches to make linux actully use Altivec, as then its going to make general PPC linux far better and they dont care for that, the PPC lads have been boged down with other pressing matters to become experts in Altivec and submit the NEEDED patches .

perhaps finally now we have ps3 (and 360/Wii will also benefit dont forget if they can run linux one day) and some game coders wanting to play and help out generally then we MIGHT get some movement at long last.....?.

 

[alt_nick]

So which codecs and at what resolution is PS3 under Linux able to decode now?

...

Seemed to me like what he was asking was what codecs, at what resolution, can the PS3 decode and display in realtime/at full fps right now.

Not that I've looked into this whole thing, since it'll be at least half a year before I get one , but I wouldn't think the PPE would be fast enough to decode a 1080p25 AVC stream without the help of SPEs.

Multiple codecs are useful for when you already have a library of movies in different codecs. Transcoding will of course work, but with multiple transcodings the quality of the (probably already horrid) videos will just get worse.

 

[popper]

Damn! I was just thinking last night that that would be the first thing I would try to do once I got linux up and running on it - compile Q3!

thats OK inefficient you can be the first to try using that freevec library and your coding skills to get a better framerate out of the SoftwareGL and other bits.....

if you video it please try and keep the cam still and give us some forward movement and some action shots for a few mins...
if you put sound in it you might be good enough to make a comment about enabling Altivec etc and point them to B3d incase they dont know this place exists and link to the video clip from elsewere ,good to get the word out

PS
im just looking through the changelog after doing a 'svn co svn://svn.icculus.org/quake3/trunk quake3'
and it seems that theres lots of scope to improve the basic speed on PPC linux as they only seem to
have a JIT set for the 'x86_64 JIT bytecode compiler no longer disabled by default'
(for the new readers: JIT being 'just-in-time' and the thing that makes 'UAE' [Unix Amiga Emulator] far better/faster in both PPC linux and x86 windows) and only check for MacOS X Altivec, theres that assumption of Altivec there but not on PPC linux again....

http://www.imgmagazine.com/news/story.php?ArticleID=1866
"Friday, January 12, 2001 Send mac games news to:
news@insidemacgames.com
Update on Q3 and Altivec
9:13 AM | Andy Largent | Comment on this story

Wednesday id Software's Graeme Devine made a post to the Quake3World forums regarding some enhancements he was making to the Mac version of Quake 3: Arena. Specifically, he was working on Altivec instructions which should give G4 owners a significant boost. Here's his first post on the subject:

I finally got around to programming in Altivec support for Quake3 1.27h. If you have a G4 you'll certainly want to flex that velocity engine! I think this safely puts the G4 ahead of the PC. I'll probably post this tomorrow.

We have in the office a G4/533 with a GeForce2 card. It's a very very nice setup.

He mentioned he might have something available as early as Thursday, though now it looks like the update will be delayed in order to do some more tweaking. Here's his second post:
Still working away on it. I've been encouraged to add more than a sprinkling of altivec operations into the code, so I'm about half way through with a larger overhaul. I'll carry on.

We're sure Mac G4 owners will be willing to wait in order to get even more optimizations in the code. On a related note, if you haven't already, check out our Macworld stories regarding framerates for Q3A and the new G4 towers. Considering they were running a pre-Altivec version of Q3A, these numbers could improve even more. We'll let you know once a new patch with the Altivec code is finally released."


i wonder if the svn.icculus.org free Q3 is based on that pre-Altivec version of Q3A code-base, if so then this gives you a massive clue as to how it might improve if people find the time and effort to add these Altivec improvements in again..... and thats before you even add-in any SPU stuff.

it seems its based on an even earlyer pre-Altivec version as the changelog says this
"2001-04-06 Timothee Besset <ttimo@idsoftware.com>
* merged back the core linux parts to make 1.27g linux build from the Source Safe tree again "

Graeme (Devine) are you here and reading?, perhaps you can find all these old Altivec optimisations etc and give it a try on a PS3 or help add them back into the core svn and comment/advise here?, thats got to be werth some Hi-profile PPC linux advertising for you and your companys wish to help advance PPC linux etc....

and/or perhaps a current PPC AOS4, MorphOS or AROS Altivec Q3 patch and/or optimised JIT etc already exists to base a far better speed on?, anyone know!, url?.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Multiple codecs are useful for when you already have a library of movies in different codecs. Transcoding will of course work, but with multiple transcodings the quality of the (probably already horrid) videos will just get worse.

Too much legacy support just drags you backwards though. I'd say it's time to set the standards. Like DVD versus VHS. DVD had no BC at all, and the end result is people just had to turn away from their VHS collections...which they did. The alternative would have been a VHS compatible digital system that would have had big, bulky, slow tapes instead of the convenient discs.

Progress, people! Progress! (and by progress, I mean a simple life. Moving forwards should mean reducing complexity, not adding more.)

 

[popper]

first PPC liveCD for PS3 arrives

the Gentoo G5/PS3 liveCD beta has now been added
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?p=897528#post897528

 

[Bobbler]

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but I'm not really sure it warrants yet another thread...

YDL is on public servers now for free DL -- even the 1208 version.

 

[StefanS]

Does anyone know which filesystem PS3 uses? Would be interesting to know.

 

[SPM]

Does anyone know which filesystem PS3 uses? Would be interesting to know.

I haven't used YDL, but I think it's default filesystem is ext3. Most Linux distros use this. The exception is SuSE which uses ReiserFS, although it is rumoured they will also change to ext3.

 

[StefanS]

I haven't used YDL, but I think it's default filesystem is ext3. Most Linux distros use this. The exception is SuSE which uses ReiserFS, although it is rumoured they will also change to ext3.

Yeah, I knew that YDL uses usually ext3. But I was wondering what filesystem the PS3 media menu thingy is using. Shouldn't that be the same as the filesystem for YDL? Can you mount the PS3 partition, if there's even a different partition, in YDL? If so, we'd know what filesystem is used per default by PS3.

 

[Npl]

Yeah, I knew that YDL uses usually ext3. But I was wondering what filesystem the PS3 media menu thingy is using. Shouldn't that be the same as the filesystem for YDL? Can you mount the PS3 partition, if there's even a different partition, in YDL? If so, we'd know what filesystem is used per default by PS3.

Why should it be the same as YDL ? All the PS3OS does is preparing a partition, the "other OS" can use any filesystem on that partition (which it will likely see as single harddrive).
I`d be surprised if you`d see other partitions from Linux.