UPnP How to watch DVDs? / Filter files?

[wierdbeard65]

Hi Forum!

Ok, I have my 810 core installed. Currently, I have no Media Directors, but I do have the network all set up as-per the "correct" settings.

I have ripped a couple of CDs and a couple of DVDs to the core. I have set the CD ripping format to .mp3. (DVDs appear to be being ripped as .iso) My first MD is next on the hit-list once I have this bit going 

So far so good. I then went to the Media Tomb admin page in WebAdmin and told it to scan the public MCE directory structure. I have then attempted to access the files from both a PS3 and Windoze media player.

Results:

• I seem to have 2 media servers listed on both devices. MediaTomb and DCERouter. The latter has no media on it.
• Cd's seem to play fine. (Although when I left the default .ogg ripping format, they didn't)
• Pictures appear, but so do the thumbnails
• DVDs don't appear at all
• All directories appear under all media types on the PS3

So,

1) How do I make my DVDs appear?
2) Is there any way I can apply a filename filter to the files that are scanned to stop the thumbnails appearing? (At the moment it's still Flickr, but I want to put family pics there eventually.)
3) How do I stop the "Empty" media server appearing? I'd also like to rename the working one from Media Tomb to something more family-friendly
TIA!

[phenigma]

1) How do I make my DVDs appear?
2) Is there any way I can apply a filename filter to the files that are scanned to stop the thumbnails appearing? (At the moment it's still Flickr, but I want to put family pics there eventually.)
3) How do I stop the "Empty" media server appearing? I'd also like to rename the working one from Media Tomb to something more family-friendly

1) UPNP will only work with 'media' files.  The DVDs are disc images which are not understood by upnp systems.  To do this you need to rip your DVDs not as images but as media files with an application like 'makemkv'.  You would keep the movie and chapter locations but lose all the dvd menus and special features.

2) The mediatomb documentation has a mechanism for you to define all the valid file extensions for known valid file types and then to tell it to not import any 'unknown' file extensions.  This sounds like you can define the valid file types and omit '.tnj' as a valid extension and it would omit those files completely.  The mediatomb docs are here: http://mediatomb.cc/pages/documentation#id2536421 look about 2/3 of the way down the page in the <mappings> section.

3) Hmm, I've not seen this myself so I'm not sure where it's coming from.  Ah... Mythtv has an internal UPNP server ... it's likely that both are showing as both are valid upnp servers.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the ps3 has very specific container/media-format combinations which it will play.  Media that does not conform will not play properly, you can set up mediatomb to transcode these files on-the-fly into a format the ps3 can play.

J.

[wierdbeard65]

Thanks for the help!

So, if I re-rip my DVDs, they will be available via uPNP? Will they still be available via "normal" MDs though?

TIA

[phenigma]

The ripping process would be done outside of LMCE with an app like makemkv but the resultant files would be viewable as a video file under LMCE on the core and MDs as well you could configure mediatomb to make the files viewable through UPNP on something like the PS3. 

PS3 doesn't read .mkv formats natively so a different container format would be more ideal.  Do a little research on the formats the ps3 will support and find an app that will rip your dvds to that format. 

J.

[golgoj4]

A note on filtering files

Mediatomb does a flat file list for video. They have a method of separating it by folder, series, etc, but its kind of a pain and im still figuring it out.

also, if someone smarter than me wants to figure out how to populate the mediatomb db with the data from the lmce installation...mmmmm sexy.

i've looked into it briefly but its my next stop after the tvdb stuff gets added in.

music, as you may have noticed, gets automagically sorted.

golgoj4

[wierdbeard65]

Thanks for the information guys!

I downloaded makemkv for Windoze and installed it on my laptop. Currently it seems to be taking about twice the length of the dvd to rip it!  Not ideal, but there you go.

Does anyone have any suggestions of a better utility to do this? Preferably one that can be scripted from the command line. I'm guessing that if we can script it, then there's a chance it can be integrated into MCE and then the whole "populate the DB" issue becomes much easier.

I'm also finding that it takes AGES for changes to show up vie uPNP (like I add something to my core, but it doesn't show up on the PS3 etc until the next day). Is there any way to do a "scan now" alongside the scheduled scan? It makes testing very slow...

[phenigma]

makemkv for linux might be scriptable, I'm sure there are others as well, makemkv just came to mind quickly.

MediaTomb will update media immediately if set for 'inotify' otherwise it does a timed scan of your media similar to LinuxMCE's UpdateMedia.

J.

[wierdbeard65]

Ahhhh! Thanks, for that :-)

Actually, I'm looking at a uPnP server called PS3 Media Server at the moment (http://ps3mediaserver.org This has the advantage that it can take an iso or dvd file and unpack / transcode it as it streams to the PS3.

I'll post back with my expriences (although if anyone has been there already - good or bad - let me know and I can gain from your pain )

[phenigma]

I use ps3mediaserver regularly from my windoze laptop, for upnp media sharing to the ps3 there is no better application...  But it will not work well with other UPNP frontends like the xbox, or others, because it is optimized for ps3 acceptible file formats.

J.

[wierdbeard65]

Oh, ok - thanks for the tip

Actually, at the moment, I'm only interested in PS3 anyway. The site did mention XBOX which may be of interest in the future, but we'll see!

[golgoj4]

slightly offtopic, but worth a mention since filter files somewhat related...

http://www.ypass.net/blog/2009/06/categorizing-your-movie-collection-with-imdb/

looks like im going to be living in mediatomb territory for a while

[wierdbeard65]

Cool!

Now we're cooking