I've been using this fantastic software for the last 2-3 years and i must say that it is the best available crossrendere out there.
SO MEGA PROPS FOR ALL DEVELOPERS WHO HAVE GIVEN US THIS!
I wish to give something back to the community, and i think I'v just stumbled upon something all users of the linux distribution of PMS would love to hear.
My background for this is the 3 years playing around tweaking, nudging, breaking, hurting, spanking my NetGear ReadyNAS Pioneer Pro (Custom DEBIAN kernel), to make it able to Crossrender subtitles on HD MKV files, via the Playstation 3 Media Server for Linux.
I had alot of success getting it all working with 720P MKV's - subtitles perfectly adjusted in size and position, no flikkering, no stuttering - PERFECTION.
But the HD goes abit further than that - namely 1080P, and for about a year i've looked for specific reasons why my system kept on pausing and resuming playback (1 second pausing).
The answer was ofcause the same answer given to SOO many new members on this forum: IT IS YOUR CPU!
And it is 100% exactly that, if you have a single core CPU without hyperthreading - the CPU load is rough when crossrendering subtitles on 1080P MKV files - but for the Windows guys they have the luxary of editing thier PMS.conf and tell the Mencoder to be multithreaded with multible cores.
Linux however seams to have been left in the dark in some sense because tonight I stumbled upon proof that the linux release of PMS never actually gave any real multithreaded crossrendering. It could utilize both cores yes, but not to the full extend, and what im trying to say here is that I'v found a way to push MORE out of the mencoder on linux distributions. (Debian and Ubunto anyway)
I have no idea if this method has been suggested on this forum before, but i've been here for years now searching for answers and havent come across anything like this.
Here it is:
1: Install Mencoder, mplayer and ffmpeg via any package manager (aptitude or something similar) - If you know your way around linux you should try to get the latest release. Im using Lenny (Stable) at this time and it does the job just fine, but you might have to use some Squeeze (Testing) packages to satisfy dependencies.
So when installing all of these – add these line to your /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ lenny main
deb http://ftp.se.debian.org/debian lenny main
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
*Note: Having the latest release of those 3 components can make all the difference in the world, so get your components up to atleast “Lenny” mode
– UPDATING YOUR PACKAGES ARE ON YOUR OWN RISK! – If you don’t know what you are doing then just try to see if the Mencoder-MT trick works for you at the get go.2: Install Mencoder-MT and satisfy the dependencies.
http://debian-multimedia.org/dists/unst ... der-mt.php
There is the package – and links to the unofficial packages that you might need to compile for your kernel.
Some of them might install without a flitch – but in my case I had some custom debian packages which included parts of the needed packages, so I had to do some manual overwriting to get everything in place.
It was worth the risk – trust me.
3: When you have installed mencoder, mplayer, ffmpeg and mencoder-mt you should try this:
- Locate your mencoder file location:
- Code: Select all
updatedb
locate mencoder
In my case it was: /usr/bin/mencoder
- Move mencoder out of the directory
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mv /usr/bin/mencoder /usr/mencoder
- Create a symbolic link from mencoder-mt to the old mencoder location
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ln /usr/bin/mencoder-mt /usr/bin/mencoder
So what did that do ? – Well – the default location of mencoder now only exists as a pointer to the mencoder-mt, with all its glory. PMS has no idea apparently because it just uses the file like it always did, except mencoder-mt truly grasps the multithreading business
In my case I went from stuttering, 1 sec pausing and corrupted data to flawless, seamless, extremely high quality(mencoder_encode = keyint=1:vqscale=1:vqmin=1) and faster chapter movement.
Is this the correct way of dealing with this? – I don’t know – but it sure did the trick for me!!
Here is my PMS.conf btw if it should have any interest.
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nbcore = 2
mencoder_ass = false
mencoder_disablesubs = false
mencoder_mt = true
mencoder_yadif = false
mencoder_scaler = false
mencoder_scalex = 900
mencoder_scaley = 700
mencoder_remux_ac3 = true
mencoder_forcefps = false
mencoder_intelligent_sync = true
mencoder_usepcm = true
mencoder_nooutofsync = true
mencoder_mux_compatible = true
mencoder_encode = keyint=1:vqscale=1:vqmin=1
mencoder_audiosublangs =
mencoder_subfribidi = false
mencoder_subcp = cp1252
mencoder_fontconfig = true
mencoder_ass_defaultstyle = false
mencoder_ass_scale = 4
mencoder_ass_outline = 2
mencoder_ass_blur = 1
mencoder_ass_subpos = 0
mencoder_audiolangs = eng,dan
hidevideosettings = false
hide_enginenames = false
hide_transcode_folder = false
hide_media_library_folder = false
hide_extensions = false
hide_empty_folders = false
audiobitrate = 640
audio_thumbnails_method = 0
audiochannels = 6
tsmuxer_preremux_ac3 = true
ffmpeg = -g 1 qscale 1 -qmin 2
engines = mencoder,tsmuxer,mplayeraudio,ffmpegaudio,tsmuxeraudio,vlcvideo,mencoderwebvideo,mplayervideodump,mplayerwebaudio,vlcaudio,ffmpegdvrmsremux,rawthumbs
autoloadsrt = true
key_sort_method = 0
disable_fakesize = false
http_engine_v2 = true
chapter_interval = 5
chapter_support = true
thumbnails = true
thumbnail_seek_pos = 1200
use_mplayer_for_video_thumbs = true
network_interface = eth0
maximumbitrate = 0
maxvideobuffer = 600
embed_dts_in_pcm = true
enable_archive_browsing = true
usecache = true
folders = \/media\/Videos,\/media\/Music,\/media\/Pictures
language = en
As a funny sidenote it took me about 2 days to figure out that "mencoder_decode =" setting on the linux results in no subs - got a atleast 5 gray hairs from that one so leave it out!
OK - So if you are up for it - give it a go and let me know how it worked out for you - I might also be able to help if you are having issues with the steps.
//EoniX