[Solved] Expert help: Tried it all, but still no dual core

[pivot]

Thank you for taking the trouble. It is much appreciated. I shall give it a try and then report back.

One observation however. Instead of installing ffmpeg, should we not be installing ffmpeg-mt?

I never really installed ffmpeg-mt, just used the libs for mencoder/mplayer. If you install it it will compile as ffmpeg-mt i think. Then you have to reconfigure ps3mediaserver or something to look for it. But... no need to install it. Regular ffmpeg + mencoder/mplayer with ffmpeg-mt libs works like a charm

[undead1512]

Pivot, I am going to try out the instructions that you posted earlier but I was wondering if it was better to start with a fresh Lucid Lynx 32bit install rather than uninstalling mplayer, mencoder etc on my current installation? I am assuming that a fresh install is better but what do I need before the installation ? Just update LL and install ubuntu-restricted-extras ?

I am running Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz and all 720p material is transcoding properly with ext subs but some 1080p mkv's seem to be 'too much'. I want to see if your "recipe" will do the trick. If not, then it's gonna be byebye PMS and welcome Asus Eee Box & XBMC (hopefully not cause the kids love to use PMS ).

[pivot]

Good question. I wouldn't think that you would need to reinstall linux, but of course it can't hurt to do so. The procedure will install all needed compiling apps, codecs from restricted etc. Don't think u need to install anything else. But do remember to remove the old ffmpeg, mplayer, mencoder etc if it is already installed on a fresh lucid lynx.

The ffmpeg-mt will help u use both cores on your cpu, but it will only work for some codecs. I think it will work on h264, but i'm not too sure about any other details. I cant transcode 1080p on my cpu anyways

Good luck!

[nextBit]

Wow, I didn't believe this would work but it did. Thank you so much!
I'm even able now to transcode 1080p movies in a reasonable manner.

There's just one thing that's not right.
Before I reinstalled everything with your recipe, I could check the "Keep DTS audio in stream" checkbox, and really get the DTS to the receiver, but now, when this is on, when a movie with DTS in its stream is supposed to appear, I'm only getting a blank black screen (no error message on the PS3) and that's it.
When I check it off, I'm able to watch DTS containing movies, and it appears that something is transcoding the DTS to DD (but it doesn't soundas nearly as good as DTS, just dull and I can't hear the surround channels).

I think I should mention: I wasn't able to install libcelt0, libffado1, libxvidcore4-dev, as they couldn't be found; I didn't install the Live555 libraries, as I didn't think it's relevant; I got ffmpeg-mt not from the specified repository, as it was unresponsive, but from "git://gitorious.org/~astrange/ffmpeg/ffmpeg-mt.git" .

Any idea what went wrong?

[pivot]

Glad to hear it worked for you!

I got the same problems with DTS. It only converts it to DD no matter what settings I adjust. But that's a minor problem... Hoping for a new version of PS3mediaserver soon though. If not I'm hoping that someone else will carry the torch and maybe develop another media server software to get all the function we want. Must be tonnes of gifted programmers out there

Its been a while since I did this tutorial and a while since I've been working on the media server so I don't have any solutions for you, sorry. I didn't install live555 either.

[nextBit]

Yeah, it is a minor problem compared to the stuttering.
I'm still hoping that reinstalling mplayer after I configured it to compile with the live555 lib, would allow me to use DTS.
I'll let you know if it works.

[nextBit]

Well, I tried it.
It didn't seem to make any difference.
My time wasn't lost for nothing, though. I noticed when I reconfigured mplayer before compilation that it's not using vdpau.
I installed the latest version of nvidia display drivers, and configured it again.
Thanks to that, it seems like 1080p movies are now streamed nearly flawlessly.

[pivot]

Sweet! But did the mplayer with the newest nvidia display drivers give you DTS??
I wouldn't think that the display driver did any difference on the streaming. However, there are certain software one can install to make use of the gpu for decoding the video (which will save the cpu some work).

[nextBit]

As I said, it didn't give me the option to remux (or whatever it's called) the DTS stream, unfortunately.
What you suggested, is exactly what happened. The gpu does take some of the work now, and that's why things are running smoother.
Do you think it might be possible to do the same trick of copying bits of the ffmpeg-mt source code into an earlier revision of mplayer, so that the DTS stream would come thru ok?
That's the only idea I have left.

[pivot]

Hmmm... prolly way out of my area of knowledge. I just got lucky with this recipe to dual core transcoding