PS3 Video Server, Media Server Preliminary Setup and Tests

[bob1029]

Ok, ive been messing around with a lot of x264 encoding tools, and so far the quickest and least buggy one is handbrake. During my preliminary tests, I encoded minority report (2:25:04 length) to a 2000 meg file, which includes a 320 kbps (44.1kHz) 5.1 channel audio track. The video quality was more than acceptable in my opinion, but that is for everyone else to decide. The best part about it is that the encode time was about half the movie run time. I am unable to confirm that the generated mp4 file actually plays on a ps3 as I do not have one available right now, but it plays back wonderfully on a pc, so if you simply have a htpc setup, this is still something to seriously consider.

A quick cost analysis (assuming the 2000 meg file avg):

To store 1000 dvds on a hdd setup:
4 drive esata enclosure: 200$
4x500gb: 520$

720$ for enough storage to maintain a 1000 dvd collection seems to be a fair deal to me. If you dont need the external enclosure and can mount the drives internally, you could cut the cost to 520$... This sounds very tempting to me. If you are concerned about data integrity, you could always store 500 dvds with the assurance that your collection is 100% safe by using raid 0+1 on the external enclosure.

I will post more details later.

[mechman]

Excellent work Bob! The only thing that would convince myself would be how it looks on my 100" screen. That's where any problems with the video compression would reveal themselves to me. I'll have to give it a shot sometime and report back.

[wbassett]

My son came home to visit for the week and him and a friend are over tonight playing games on the big screen. His friend happens to have an XBOX 360!

So of course I had to hook up the USB drive to it and check it out. It detected the drive and we were able to navigate through the directories, but it won't playback mpeg2 files. I'll have to check what format the 360 uses, but it can also be used as a media server with an external HD.

My son's friend though said after seeing the PS3 running through a 1080p set and how easy it was to put flicks on the external drive that he may sell his 360. I told him I wouldn't if I was him, but if he does to let me know and I might buy it!

Format neutral and console neutral!

wbassett wrote:

if he does to let me know and I might buy it!

Format neutral and console neutral!

yeah, let us know if he decides to sell, I wouldn't mind having a 360 around too!

I broke down and picked up a PS3, loving it so far, although from an integration standpoint, I still want a way to power it on without using a controller or the bluetooth remote.... I am using the USB-PS2 adapter with the PS2 remote and it works great, learned all the codes into my T2+ and can do pretty much everything, except I need that stupid PS code that allows you to power on and off the unit and such.

I could see the PS3 becoming a main hub for entertainment in the HT realm, with some minor tweaks and whatnot.

I was able to get my photos and music streaming via the net with no big issues, so I am happy with that.

[wbassett]

What did you use for the server streaming side?

I haven't gotten that far yet, but I will most likely just use my external HD and plug directly in to the PS3 to watch any stored movies.

As for my clients, I will stick with using either KScapes or other DVD management devices for movies. The whole encoding process would be too much for them.

did my first one pn my ps3 . all i can say is awsome.

thank you so much

[ALIENWARE]

Thanks for the tutorial,is the best thing I ever learn,but you skip one verry good thing,when I played the movies on PS3,they have 5.1 dolby digital sound,I was impresed.I will never use any convertrer again,they only convert sound to 2.0 stereo.I have a 2.01 firmware ps3 upgraded w/a 115 GB HDD (not to mention my FAT32 formated 150GB external HDD)

[wbassett]

You're right Alienware, I didn't mention that it retains the original sound track that the DVD has. Essentially it is just like watching the DVD but without the menu just the movie.

I've loaded up more and it's a breeze to do.

[ALIENWARE]

I have one problem,I rip and renamed the anime movie APLLE SEED,but on ps3 plays with no sound and I can't fastfoward (it freezes).I rip the movie 3 times and have the same problem,but in the pc plays fine.I'm doing evrething as you explain in the tutorial and this is the first time that have problem.
(sorry for my bad english,Im a spanish guy)

[wbassett]

Check and make sure it's not over the 4GB fat32 restriction. Also check your PS3 sound settings.

I had one that just would not play either, and not sure why. It was a Bond special feature bonus disc that Best Buy gave away awhile back. Other than that I haven't had any problems.

Has anyone else had mixed results with this process? I came across a similar approach at another forum. The only difference is instead of copying to a external USB drive I use TVersity to copy it directly to the PS3's HD. About 1/3 of the movies I copy work great. The other 2/3 have either no sound or show an incorrect time length and won't play all the way through. Multiple re-rerips all show the same issue. The confusing part is that they work fine on the PC. So I am thinking it is somehow getting messed up in the copy. I don't have access to a USB drive so I thought maybe someone else had some insight.

Rich

[wbassett]

That's interesting Rich. I only put them to a USB drive, and put audio CDs on the internal drive. I'll try checking it out and see if I get the same thing.

[ALIENWARE]

Well,well,well...with the new update the PS3 gets DivX support.DivX have a converter that converts movies in HD,with less of a gig per hour,and the same video quality of the movie you convert.I will delete all my 4g per movie and satrt converting in DivX..

[EQDruid]

I have about 3,500 DVD's that i want to convert, and watch on my PS3, and Computers on the fly, I was wondering if anyone knows what i will need?

Hoping to get DVD quality for a 65 inch HDTV.

Want to keep the files down to a resonable size to help save cost on the Hard drive/ Drives.

What software would be the best to convert all these DVD's.

Currently only hae a budget of about $10,000. Wife won't let me spend more then that =/

Currently have a Quad Core running a Duel Boot XP/Vista with 8 Gigs ram, and over clocked to 4.2 Ghtz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAqNy...eature=related

So wondering how long all this would take to complete.

Thanks for your replies, and information. New to doing this, so I'll be the first to admit I'm a Noob.

EQDruid

PSN EQDRuid

[wbassett]

Hi Charles and welcome to The Shack!

As you know I am a fan of the .vob rename since it remaind DVD quality, but the files are of course larger.


DivX is popular, but I think you've seen over Sony's PS3 forum there are some more more steps, mainly with conversions. What concerned me was one comment that it's 'close' to DVD quality, and I personally don't want close.

It sounds like you're planning on streaming, is that correct? You might want to test DivX though and see if it's acceptable to you as far as PQ. I'm not really familiar with it though and can't comment on whether it retains the same audio tracks.

With that many DVDs you want to make sure of a method before getting half way in and deciding to change! You're looking at 14TB if you go vob rename and I see why you want to save some space.

What converter are you planning on using? Have you tested it out to see what the encoding time is?

[wbassett]

I am with drauch... curious to hear your reports back. If it works and the quality is the same as DVD, I'll switch over too, as long as it doesn't take 20 hours to do one movie!

[ALIENWARE]

DivX is the best converter I tried,it converts a 2 hour movie in 1 hour(thats 30 min per hour).Just testit for yourself,go to Divx homepage,the converter is free,and have support for hd,

[wbassett]

does this need 2.1 or will it work with 2.01?

[ALIENWARE]

2.10,and I think is the best update.Also I discovered today that if you rip a dvd movie and copy to the ps3 at it is (.vob)with the new update it will play,so you dont have to reneame to .mpeg.THE PS3 NOW PLAYS .vob FILES,YEA BABY....

[eugovector]

wbassett wrote:

Hi Charles and welcome to The Shack!

As you know I am a fan of the .vob rename since it remaind DVD quality, but the files are of course larger.


DivX is popular, but I think you've seen over Sony's PS3 forum there are some more more steps, mainly with conversions. What concerned me was one comment that it's 'close' to DVD quality, and I personally don't want close.

It sounds like you're planning on streaming, is that correct? You might want to test DivX though and see if it's acceptable to you as far as PQ. I'm not really familiar with it though and can't comment on whether it retains the same audio tracks.

With that many DVDs you want to make sure of a method before getting half way in and deciding to change! You're looking at 14TB if you go vob rename and I see why you want to save some space.

Divx will allow you to keep the unaltered AAC (which will obviously take up more space). I like FairUseWizard because it's what I've used in the past, but I'm sure there is better software out there.

I think DIVX is your only option if you really want to do every movie you own.

[wbassett]

ALIENWARE wrote:

Well,well,well...with the new update the PS3 gets DivX support.DivX have a converter that converts movies in HD,with less of a gig per hour,and the same video quality of the movie you convert.I will delete all my 4g per movie and satrt converting in DivX..

Weird, I made a post earlier today but now don't see it...

Anyway, ALIENWARE can you test something for me?

I got a game that said it needed a firmware update, 1.9x I think but they are now up to 2.1 as we all know. I read the update and it stated a video playback file size restriction of 2GB. It read like this pertained to DivX and WMV formats, but I was leery about if it would also be for mpeg2 files. Could you test an mpeg2 video file that's over 2GB and let me know for sure? I played it safe and updated to 2.01 but if I get an actual confirmation from someone that tested this I'll be updating to 2.1

Thanks!

[wbassett]

Well this first try was a bust.

The process was easy enough. I downloaded the trial package from DivX.com and all you have to do is drag and drop a file to the converter and it does the rest.

First it took 4 hours to convert a movie. When it was done though I got a 5124 error and I could not find that code anywhere on the DivX site. It looks like it bombed out because I can't even find the converted file in the destination folder. Four hours and it errors out, I was bummed to say the least.

I'm still playing around with it though. So far I have to say it's not playing nice on my end. I'm also concerned about playback quality. I can see where space is a real concern for some people, but for others PQ is more important.

Here is something I found while doing some research, it's from Gromkov's Software

Question:

Okay, DivX has greater compression than MPEG2, but how does the quality compare? I have no experience with DivX, but wonder if I'm missing out on something. If the quality is as good as MPEG2, then I'm thinking I need to get educated. I'm not interested in putting videos on CD, nor do I keep movies on my harddrive. Sure, getting 10 hours of video on a DVD would be nice, but only if I don't have to sacrifice quality.

Answer:

Sometimes, Mpeg-4 (Divx/Xvid) doesn't compare to mpeg-2. The major difference between the two is crispness. Mpeg-4 has more of a smooth, almost platic-y look. The very best Divx/Xvid encodes still don't compare to their DVD counterparts. They can come close though, and coupled with the fact they're a lot smaller than DVD's in terms of size, you're willing to live with the quality loss.

Why DivX video distributed in Internet has worse quality than DVD? The answer is very simple. DVD format (actually MPEG-2) has many distortions usually ignored by human eye. During re-compression process (DVD to DivX) DivX codec uses already distorted video signal. As a result of this fact, DivX introduces additional distortion to the original (already distorted) movie. That's why psycho-visual enhancements are visible as annoying divx video artifacts. We could say more about power of DivX codec while comparing 2 movies encoded from really original source. For example TV to DVD, and TV to DivX. But now, many movies available in Internet were ripped from DVD. So these divx movies were compressed 2 times with 2 steps of quality loss: with MPEG-2, and then with MPEG-4.

Another reason why mpeg-4 is so popular is that there are a lot of people that use only divx for watching popular movies and I don't think they can really tell the difference between DVD and DivX. To each their own.

What looks good playing on a computer monitor in a window doesn't always look good on a 55" TV and rarely looks acceptable when blown up to 106". Still if I can get the same quality as my DVDs at a smaller file size, I'm game. I am concerned with the statement, "The very best Divx/Xvid encodes still don't compare to their DVD counterparts." and I have heard others say it's 'close' or called it acceptable.

EQDruid, with 3500 DVDs you want to put on your media system, I can see why space is a concern. Using the .vob rename method, you'd need 14TB of storage, and that's not very realistic even with the drop in drive prices. Time wise the rename method (or as Alienware pointed out, the PS3 now plays .vobs, but you'll still want to name the file to something you can recognize) will take you around 10 minutes per disc or 24.3 days straight to move everything to the media system.

I was hoping for some actual DivX files to use and go on, but right now it's not working. Let's go with a conservative estimate on filesize and use 1GB. This value will most likely change but for now we'll use it since people say you can get a DVD this size. That will drop the storage required down to 3.5TB which is much better but still up there.

Also keep in mind since this is such a huge project it's not something you'll want to have to do all over if you have a drive failure, so you might want to consider a Raid setup, or at least some type of archived backup for restoring the drives. Either way you're talking more storage space.

Timewise to convert 3500 DVDs to DivX, based on the 4 hour conversion time I saw (if there is a better and faster way someone knows, let us know) we're talking 583 days, or a year and a half to move all 3500 to your media system. Bob1029 reported earlier in this thread he used and likes a program called handbrake and the conversion time was around half the movie run time, but this isn't DivX and he wasn't able to confirm if the mp4 files play on the PS3.

I am also very interested in saving storage space, but for me personally, I don't want to sacrifice PQ. Don't get me wrong, I want this to work so I can enjoy more content on the same size drive but quality and setup speed are more important to me right now. This is one where everyone will have to make their own decision as to what is more of a priority to them.

I'm not giving up, but man... seeing it took me an hour or so to do an entire season of 24, the PQ is going to have to blow my socks off to want to spend time waiting on conversions.

So far I have my USB drive setup as a 'spy' genre drive. It has 22 Bond flicks, that includes Never Say Never, and six bonus discs, season 1 of 24, all three Bourne movies, Enemy of the State, True Lies, xXx, Remo Williams, and all three MI movies and I still have 150GB free on my 320GB drive. That's not too shabby and it retains the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound track. However if I could reduce the file size and retain the same quality, I'm definitely signed up!

i am a new member on here and let me start by saying hello to everybody

and now onto my question, i was looking around the internet for a way to put high quality movies on my ps3 so i downloaded ps3 video 9 since i used psp video 9 for my psp and it worked beautifally but ps3 video 9 was all pixelated on every option i chose so i found this thread and i followed all the above steps and it worked perfect on one movies i had, but i tried doing another one, which was 4.somethin gigs, then i compressed it as far as it would go and it stilll came out to around 2.6 gigs, so i chose to split the vob's like you said not to and it worked good but only the first part had sound, the other 2 parts did'nt have any, the ps3 even said it did'nt have any sound, i split the files because i only have a 2 gig memory stick, so is there any help for me to get this movie on my ps3's HDD?

can i put the full file (after your steps) on a dvd and copy them onto the ps3?

thanks for all the help