mindless ramblings

Streaming mkv in Mediatomb to PS3

Soo Wei — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:40:25 +0000

Mediatomb is a great UPnP server that generally works with the PS3. Regular AVIs seem to work but MKV support out of the box is not very good.

Here’s how I got MKVs transcoding in real time to the PS3 (with 5.1 passthrough!) on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.

Install Mediatomb
Install ffmpeg
Make sure you are using the *-unstripped libs as dependencies for ffmpeg (See here for details)
Follow the instructions here and here to setup basic support for the PS3.

Edit /usr/bin/mediatomb-transcode-video with your favorite text editor. This is the script that I am using:

#!/bin/bash

FFMPEG_PATH="/usr/bin/ffmpeg"
INPUT="$1"
OUTPUT="$2"
VIDEO_CODEC="mpeg2video"
VIDEO_BITRATE="4096k"
VIDEO_FRAMERATE="25"
AUDIO_CODEC="copy"
FORMAT="mpegts"

exec "${FFMPEG_PATH}" -i "${INPUT}" -vcodec ${VIDEO_CODEC} -b ${VIDEO_BITRATE} \
-r ${VIDEO_FRAMERATE} -acodec ${AUDIO_CODEC} -f ${FORMAT} - > "${OUTPUT}"

Notes:

The audio codec is set to “copy”. This simply forwards whatever audio stream is present. This successfully forward Dolby Digital 5.1 to the PS3, through the TV and out to the speakers!
The format can one of several things. It was originally set to “dvd” but that caused buffer underflow errors to spew forth during transcoding. “mpegts” seems to maintain compatibility but without the errors.
I’m not sure if the framerate is truly neccessary.
I tried using 8192k as the bitrate but it didn’t seem to make a big difference.

GTI: Oil woes… (Update)

Soo Wei — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:29:59 +0000

Got 3 quarts of Castrol Syntec ($8.99 * 3), ended up adding 2 quarts in…

GTI: Oil woes…

Soo Wei — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:23:51 +0000

Oil pressure warning light came on while driving just now. Dipstick indicated no oil! Added 1/2 qt and still no results. Will go to Canadian Tire and grab more oil later.

Odometer is at 13200km or so.

GTI: First service

Soo Wei — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:02:45 +0000

First service was done at roughly 7800km. Got booked in for a Saturday morning appt at Capilano VW, was out in just over an hour. Complained about the oil burning but they maintain it is normal. Cost was quite high, $152 for basically what was an oil change.

GTI: Oil update

Soo Wei — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:10:55 +0000

5555km, half a quart of oil burnt. No additional oil was added, will monitor in another 1000km or so.

GTI: Burning oil

Soo Wei — Thu, 01 May 2008 06:22:21 +0000

The GTI seems to be burning oil at an alarming rate. 2 qts have been added in just over 4000km.

I have 2 theories:

The oil was at the minimum level during delivery and wasn’t topped up during PDI.
The engine is burning oil.

Anyway, the oil is topped up, and I’ll continue to check the level over the next 2000km to see if it goes away.

On a slightly brighter note, the fuel economy is improving and I’m getting roughly 50km more per tank now. Not too bad for city driving I guess… boost is addictive!

GTI: Break-in period over

Soo Wei — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:49:18 +0000

Alright, finally past 1500km and stepped on it for the first time. Coming from the P5, the amount of torque is just ridiculous! I can’t imagine it chipped. Aside from that, fuel economy is staying fairly constant at about 400km per fill up. I’m not driving much anyways, commuting by bus is actually not too bad!

GTI: The beginning

Soo Wei — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 04:23:08 +0000

In the spirit of the name of this blog, I’ll just randomly blabber on about the GTI. I think I’m going to use the blog to just keep a running journal of the car, kinda like TrueDelta but with less statistics.

It’s been 20 days since we got the car and it’s been completely problem free. 2 tanks of gas (Shell 91 and Husky 92) have gone into the car. With just over 800km on the odometer, that works out to roughly 400km/tank without really stepping on it at all. This appears to be expected though, and mileage will improve after 8000km.

One thing to look out for is topping up engine oil. The 2.0T seems to burn oil relatively fast, so a check will probably be done at 1000km in case any top up (VW 502.00 approved only!) is needed.

Besides that, everything is great. Seat warmers warm up quick, Climatronic keeps things cool (or warm) and the Gorilla Gear trunk liner is just awesome.

I am now a Canadian Permanent Resident!

Soo Wei — Wed, 23 May 2007 05:02:28 +0000

As of 845pm this evening, I am a Canadian Permanent Resident! It’s taken me a relatively short 10 months to get it, thanks to the British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program. The actual process of “landing” in Canada was really smooth and only took 10 minutes. The friendly lady at the Peace Arch customs gave my documents a quick look, welcomed me to Canada and gave me a little Canadian flag.

Next up are the more mundane things like reapplying for my SIN card, CareCard and that kinda stuff. Small price to pay to live in one of the best countries in the world!

Concert tracking

Soo Wei — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:27:41 +0000

I was so annoyed by the fact that I have missed out on so many good acts that I turned to the good old Google. A quick search turns up this simple to use concert tracker called tourfilter. Just enter in the bands you want to see, and you’ll get emailed when something turns up (I think!). They do have an RSS feed too, so you can just subscribe to that and hopefully it gets updated.

Here’s my list if anyone is interested.