Hello,

I am trying to use transcode with mediatomb to stream unsupported formats to my dvd player/network player: a jvc dd-3. The supported formats on that player are few, but it does play avi (divx), asf and wmv from a upnp media server. I set things up on my freebsd 7.2 box, and it streams the supported formats just fine using mediatomb. Any unsupported format at the moment i transcode with ffmpeg, which actually works nice for mp4, mov, flv and so on using a commandline looking like this:

ffmpeg -i "$input" -target dvd -y "$output"

$input is the filename handed down by mediatomb, $output is the FIFO buffer mediatomb makes.

Now, i am trying to get something together to be able to play a dvd iso on the jvc through mediatomomb using transcoding.

I tried different transcoders like ffmpeg, vlc and transcode. Ffmpeg can't handle it (as far as i can tell), and on freebsd there's a problem with vlc in that the transcoded video does play sound but somehow the videostream is missing or not playable (not even if i use it on command line and store the feed in a file, which in then in turn try to play with vlc on a windows machine using samba to get at the file..).

With transcode, i can, or at least, it will transcode the iso. I installed it from the ports, and compiled and installed without any errors. I managed to get it transcoding in it's most simplest form to a file using:

transcode -i test.iso -x dvd -o test.avi -y xvid

When i open test.avi (using vlc on a windows machine), it has the main title on the dvd transcoded and plays just fine. So I configured mediatomb to send a mimetype video/x-msvideo for any iso file it can find. the jvc player thinks this is playable, so it shows it on the list. Next, to get mediatomb to start transcoding, i entered a profile for it in config.xml:

   <profile name="video-iso" enabled="yes" type="external">
      <mimetype>video/x-msvideo</mimetype>
      <first-resource>yes</first-resource>
      <hide-original-resource>yes</hide-original-resource>
      <accept-ogg-theora>yes</accept-ogg-theora>
      <agent command="mediatomb-transcode-iso" arguments="%in %out"/>
      <buffer size="1048576" chunk-size="131072" fill-size="262144"/>
    </profile>



Last, i made the shell script mediatomb-transcode-iso :

#!/bin/sh
transcoder="/usr/local/bin/transcode"
input="$1"
output="$2"
exec "$transcoder" -i "$input" -x dvd -o "$output" -y xvid


After that, what i end up with is:
- the jvc player does show the iso, so apparently it thinks it can play the given mimetype
- it tries to start to play the 'video file' when i click it
- it takes a couple of seconds, but then reports that it can't play the file afterall (no errors given, just a stop sign..)
- on the server side, i do see transcode getting started using ps -ax
- i added > /tmp/transcode.log in the script after the exec of transcode, and see it recognizing the dvd, starting things up and actually start transcoding - after a couple of hundred frames (i guess up to the point the fifo buffer of mediatomb is filled) it stalls and mediatomb can't kill the process.

I tried switching things around a bit but no luck so far:
- mimetype in the profile to video/mpeg, and transcode -y mjpeg
- mimetype in the profile to video/x-msvideo, and transcode -y divx5

What i am thinking at the moment is that maybe the output stream muxing isn't correct for the given format (avi or mpeg)..

So i am wondering:
- is what i am trying to do at all possible? (meaning: using transcode under mediatomb to transcode things) - if so, what options do i have to give transcode to make it export either a standard avi or mpeg stream which the player recognizes? - did anybody get this running with mediatomb and if so, what's the config for it in config.xml and the script that starts the transcoding? - also, what happens if a dvd has 2 movietitles on it? For example, i have made an iso of my band of brothers dvd's which has 2 episodes on every dvd..

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated..



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