PMS 1.10.5 works including Transcode on G5 with leopard

[ctene]

Hi guys, I managed to figure out what caused the latest PMS version to be virtually useless on my Dual G5 1.8 PPC ... I got it all working now, streaming/transcoding ... including the MKV format and DTS multichannel sound. The problem can be fixed (easy for an experienced person, not so easy for an inexperienced person). Here is the approach angle:

Right click on PMS in your applications folder and click on Show Package Contents ... then go into Contents/Resources/Java/osx, as you will notice when double clicking each of these binaries, you will observe in the Terminal window which will pop out that they complain about bad cpu type, which is understandable, because our developer friends of course did compile them for INTEL only !!! - not good, and as you can imagine I was NOT happy to see that, but thats beside the point, so I went on my several hour quest of installing Apple Developer Tools / XCode and chasing down the most recent source builds for the binaries (the ones u need to recompile and replace are ffmpeg, mencoder and mplayer).

So, now the steps:

go to:
http://stephenjungels.com/jungels.net/a ... howto.html

and follow the instructions for PowerPC to compile ffmpeg with lame and FAAC (must !!! althou it says optional, this allows transcoding of and into AAC) ... then proceed with configure - use this line - not necessarily the one in the instructions

Code: Select all

./configure --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libfaac --enable-shared --enable-nonfree

, make and sudo make install of ffmpeg

after you are done copy the binary ffmpeg which you will now find in the folder where u compiled ffmpeg into the Contents/Resources/Java/osx folder of your PMS package

one down ... one left ...

next and last step:

the mplayer and mencoder binaries compilation:

get source code at:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html

unpack, ./configure, make (takes a while), sudo make install and again ... copy the resulting binaries (mencoder amd mplayer) into the Contents/Resources/Java/osx directory of the PMS package in your application folder, so, by now you should have replaced all 3 intel binaries with perfectly working PPC binaries and now your transcode function will work perfectly

Please ask if you have any questions.

Cheers,

Pete

P.S. if u r not much the programmer and would like the binaries already compiled for PPC G5 download them from the post below, so don't rush to get yourself a intel mac - your G5 is still good to go it's a good machine

[ctene]

Note:

I went onto testing, as I then discovered, when trying to play full HD, no matter what transcoder settings I would choose, the CPU loads fluctuate and as a result the play back starts to stutter ... so back to the drawing board ... after some time spent on google I found out that there is a multi-threading support patch for mplayer (mencoder) at GIT ... so I cleaned the originally compiled source of mplayer and patched the code and went onto re-compiling, done. The newly compiled binary with multi threading support turned out to be 100kilobytes smaller than my original one for single core processors, but anyways, I overwrote the old one and now I can stream absolute full quality multi channel 720p to my PS3 WITHOUT .... any trace of stuttering

Here is the package with the readily (by me) compiled encoder binaries for dual g5 ppc machines:

http://www.midislandpro.com/g5-dual-ppc-binaries.zip

and for the ones amongst you who are absolutely 'shy' to open and mess around with packages, here is the version 1.10.5 for PPC ONLY unzip in application folder and double click and thats it

http://www.midislandpro.com/ps3-media-server.zip

Enjoy your revived PowerPC machines

[ctene]

Additional and final note:

in either case, you must follow the install steps for LAME and FAAC in oder to have full codec support from this howto guide

http://stephenjungels.com/jungels.net/a ... howto.html

[Darth Ed]

Great! I'd cobbled together some of these myself, but not all of them, so I couldn't get mkv support working. Now, if only we could get tsMuxer for PowerPC!

[ctene]

I have requested the source code from them, but am kindda doubtful that they will be willing to cooperate ... but then again, what do we need tsmuxer for when the transcoding works at full speed without stuttering? Of course my PS3 is connected via wire and gigabit lan to my dual G5 but I still get streaming rates up to 50 Mbps (MKV video encoded with MPEG-2) despite transcoding and zero stuttering (multithreaded transcoding seems to work fine on Dual G5, I don't even hear the fans of that machine) ... at least with my compiled version and DTS streaming seems no longer to be a problem either, looks like there is resurrection after all LOL

[ced]

Hello there and thanks a lot for this fine overview on how to compile ffmpeg for PPC.

Using a Dual G5 PPC 2Ghz / Mac OS 10.5.8

I think i did everything :
- Xcode 3.1
- compiled lame
- compiled faac

... seemed to work fine

... when it comes to configugring ffmpeg with your line:

Code: Select all

./configure --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libfaac --enable-shared --enable-nonfree

it will stop with a warning:

Code: Select all

License: nonfree and unredistributable
Creating config.mak and config.h...
config.h is unchanged
libavutil/avconfig.h is unchanged

WARNING: GNU assembler not found, install gas-preprocessor


I´m really not too familiar with compiling stuff.

Any hints on what i might have done wrong would be highly appreciated !!

Thx !


EDIT: tried to use your pre-compiled binaries, too but theyll "quit unexpectedly" when trying to transcode anything with PMS.


Update:
I put gas-preürpcessor.pl from http://github.com/yuvi/gas-preprocessor/ in my /usr/local/bin directory - still the same message.

[mustp]

che, an even easier way to install is through MacPorts.

you can find a guide here:

http://www.haykranen.nl/2007/11/21/howt ... x-leopard/

pretty easy for most.

[Charlie97L]

I must be doing something wrong, because I have a quad core intel and I still get stuttering on 1080i mkvs with stereo.

[ctene]

Uhm yeah ... this is a thread in regards to the PowerPC G5 processor(s) ... doesn't really have anything to do with Intel, G5 is RISC and Intel is CISC and the two are completely incompatible with each other so this guide / version will just not work on your Intel Mac

[ctene]

Hello there and thanks a lot for this fine overview on how to compile ffmpeg for PPC.

Using a Dual G5 PPC 2Ghz / Mac OS 10.5.8

I think i did everything :
- Xcode 3.1
- compiled lame
- compiled faac

... seemed to work fine

... when it comes to configugring ffmpeg with your line:

Code: Select all

./configure --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libfaac --enable-shared --enable-nonfree

it will stop with a warning:

Code: Select all

License: nonfree and unredistributable
Creating config.mak and config.h...
config.h is unchanged
libavutil/avconfig.h is unchanged

WARNING: GNU assembler not found, install gas-preprocessor


I´m really not too familiar with compiling stuff.

Any hints on what i might have done wrong would be highly appreciated !!

Thx !


EDIT: tried to use your pre-compiled binaries, too but theyll "quit unexpectedly" when trying to transcode anything with PMS.


Update:
I put gas-preürpcessor.pl from http://github.com/yuvi/gas-preprocessor/ in my /usr/local/bin directory - still the same message.

Please make sure you have XCode 3.1.4 (the latest to the best of my knowledge) installed ... there are some differences in the compiler between 3.1 and 3.1.4 .... you can get the latest version by creating yourself an apple developer account (free) at http://developer.apple.com

Once you have the latest version, please retry the compile process ... do 'make clean' first.

Cheers