Mediatomb 0.12 on PS3: video thumbnails, YouTube and Apple movie trailers

In a previous article, I explained how to build mediatomb, an open source media server able to stream music and video to UPnP devices, such as the Playstation 3. This build is based on the latest development source tree, so although the next official release (0.12) is still ahead of us, we can already take a look at some new features, namely:

improved on-the-fly transcoding.
built-in support for video thumbnails (using ffmpegthumbnailer),
Apple movie trailers,
YouTube video feeds

In this article, I'm going to demonstrate these features on my PS3 and I'm also going to explain how to set them up.

FYI, I'm using Ubuntu 8.04, ffmpeg SVN-r16245 (built from source), ffmpegthumbnailer 1.3.0 (built from source) and x264 0.65.1057 (built from source).

1) Basic configuration

mediatomb only has one config file, located in ~/.mediatomb/config.xml. For more information, please check the mediatomb documentation.

Let's start from the default settings and add a few things.

In the <server> section, set the extended UPnP protocol information for the PS3:

[Updated on 2009/01/02] Reportedly not needed anymore if you're running the latest PS3 firmware (2.53). Try changing it to 'no' if you're experiencing issues with movie playback.

In the <extension-mimetype> section, add a few entries to map common extensions for video files to the appropriate MIME type:

In the <mimetype-contenttype> section, add a few entries to map MIME types to extensions, so that mediatomb can use the proper method to extract metadata:

2) On-the-fly transcoding

The PS3 supports a limited set of audio & video file formats. For example, it can't play FLAC, FLV, Quicktime, etc. In order to play these files anyway, we need mediatomb to transcode them on the fly and then stream them to the PS3 in a format it can play. Transcoding itself is performed by external tools, such as VLC and ffmpeg.

All we have to do is:

list all MIME types which require transcoding,
associate each of them to a transcoding profile,
define the actual transcoding profiles.

Here's the complete configuration I use:

for audio transcoding (OGG and FLAC), a profile based on ffmpeg, which outputs 16-bit PCM stereo audio at 44.1KHz and 192 Kbit/s,

for video transcoding (ASF, FLV, Quicktime), a profile also based on ffmpeg, which outputs MPEG-2 video at 25 fps and 4Mbit/s, as well as MPEG stereo audio at at 44.1KHz and 192 Kbit/s.














audio/L16
yes
yes
44100
2
yes






    DX50
    DM4V
    M4S2

video/mpeg
yes
yes
yes
yes

Now, here's the 'mediatomb-video-generic' script. Don't forget to change the path to ffmpeg if needed and to set execute rights ('chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/mediatomb-video-generic'):

[this updated script works for Youtube, Apple trailers and mkv files and doesn't require VLC anymore : thanks to the anonymous reader who contributed it].

#!/bin/bash
INPUT="$1"
OUTPUT="$2"
VIDEO_CODEC="mpeg2video"
VIDEO_BITRATE="4096k"
AUDIO_CODEC="mp2"
AUDIO_BITRATE="192k"
AUDIO_SAMPLERATE="48000"
AUDIO_CHANNELS="2"
FORMAT="dvd"

exec /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -threads 2 -i "${INPUT}" -vcodec ${VIDEO_CODEC} -b ${VIDEO_BITRATE} \
-acodec ${AUDIO_CODEC} -ab ${AUDIO_BITRATE} -ar ${AUDIO_SAMPLERATE} -ac ${AUDIO_CHANNELS} \
-f ${FORMAT} - > "${OUTPUT}" 2>/dev/null

All right, let's get to the good stuff.

3) Video thumbnails

Assuming you have installed ffmpegthumbnailer, enabling on-the-fly thumbnail generation only requires this addition to the <server> section:



  128
  5
  yes
  no

Let's save these changes, restart mediatomb and browse some videos: MPEG-2 on the left, DivX on the right. Thumbnails are generated on the fly when videos are browsed.

Let's try some different file types.

Below on the left: VOB files ripped from a DVD. VOB files really are MPEG-2 files, but since they have a different extension, they wouldn't be viewable if we hadn't mapped the .vob extension to the video/mpeg MIME type.
Below on the right: some MKV (Matroska) samples.

This looks much nicer than blank icons :)

4) Apple movie trailers

This feature, found in the Online Services menu, allows you to view movies trailers hosted on an Apple website.

This is very easy to configure. In the <online-content> section, add:

Save the changes, restart mediatomb and...

It works like this. First, mediatomb fetches an RSS feed, then it parses it and dynamically creates menus where trailers are sorted by genre, release date, etc. Let's go to action movies and hmmm... 2012? What is this?

Wow, the Himalaya overrun by a giant wave, the end of the world, etc. My kind of movie :)

Come on, is this a cool feature or what?

5) YouTube videos

Now, let's go back to the Online Services and enter the YouTube menu. In the mediatomb configuration file, we need to define:

a valid YouTube account (username and password),
the list of video feeds that we'd like to browse.

So, in the <accounts> section, add:

And in the <;online-content> section, add:

This is quite customizable, but no official documentation is out yet. A quick look at the code will give you some pointers, though ;)

Save the changes, restart mediatomb and now you can browse your YouTube playlists.

You can also browse the standard YouTube feeds that you have defined: Most Viewed, Top Rated, etc.

All right, that's it for today. Mediatomb is a GREAT project, I can't wait for the official release. In the meantime, there's already plenty to explore.

And by the way, Merry Christmas to all you geeks out there ;)

===================================

As requested, here's my config.xml file. You just change to change YouTube_Username, YouTube_Password, LastFM_Username & LastFM password to your own values.




 
   
     
       
     
   
   MediaTomb
   uuid:b8b13d59-378e-4cb8-9a87-14f70c70f847
   /home/julien/.mediatomb
   /usr/local/share/mediatomb/web
   
     
       mediatomb.db
     
   
   
  
   
     
       128
       5
       yes
       no
     
     
       *
     
   

 

 
   
     /usr/local/share/mediatomb/js/common.js
     /usr/local/share/mediatomb/js/playlists.js
     
       /usr/local/share/mediatomb/js/import.js
       /usr/local/share/mediatomb/js/import-dvd.js
     
   
   
     
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

     
     
       
       
       
       
     
     
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       

       
       

       

     
   
   
     
     
       
       
       
       
       
     
     
   
 

 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   

      
       audio/L16
       yes
       yes
       44100
       2
       yes
       
       
      

     
       
            DX50
            DM4V
            M4S2
       
       video/mpeg
       yes
       yes
 yes
       yes
       
       
     

   
 
 
  
 LastFM_Username 
 LastFM_Password