Using the PlayStation 3 as a media center with Linux

I recently got a PlayStation 3 from my wonderful girlfriend, and one of the reasons I wanted one was for its great possibilities of being a media center. I installed MediaTomb on my Linux machine (Gentoo) and after half an hour of configurations, it was ready to stream content to the PS3.

Installing MediaTomb
Portage is wonderful, and of course contains MediaTomb. It is an open source uPnP media server with DLNA support. DLNA is a protocol that computers and other devices can use to talk to each other, for instance when supplying video files over a network. It can do much more too, just have a look at the link to wikipedia for more info. When I did my install, I followed the guide at gentoo-wiki.com. To get more information (especially regarding transcoding), check the site there, this is my "shortcut" guide to it.

Install it using portage:

# emerge mediatomb

Make sure you have the use flags that you need enabled. I'm using

[I] net-misc/mediatomb
Available versions: 0.11.0 {curl debug exif expat ffmpeg javascript libextractor mysql taglib}
Installed versions: 0.11.0(22.28.13 2008-08-17)(curl exif expat ffmpeg javascript taglib -debug -libextractor -mysql)
Homepage: http://www.mediatomb.cc/
Description: MediaTomb is an open source UPnP MediaServer

and that works well for me. Since I rather use sqlite instead of a full mysql install, I haven't enabled that use flag.

When streaming to the PS3, you also need to enable some transcoding support. This also allows you to get thumbnails on the different video files. I use ffmpeg as my transcoder, since I already have it installed. Make sure you have the "encode" use flag enabled. If you need video thumbnails, also install ffmpegthumbnailer. support.

# emerge ffmgeg
# emerge ffmpegthumbnailer

Then you have to create 2 scripts to launch the transcoding for you. First the script for audio (/usr/bin/mediatomb-transcode-audio):

#!/bin/bash

FFMPEG_PATH="/usr/bin/ffmpeg"
INPUT="$1"
OUTPUT="$2"
VIDEO_CODEC="mpeg2video"
VIDEO_BITRATE="4096k"
VIDEO_FRAMERATE="25"
AUDIO_CODEC="mp2"
AUDIO_BITRATE="192k"
AUDIO_SAMPLERATE="44100"
AUDIO_CHANNELS="2"
FORMAT="dvd"

exec "${FFMPEG_PATH}" -i "${INPUT}" -vcodec ${VIDEO_CODEC} -b ${VIDEO_BITRATE} \
-r ${VIDEO_FRAMERATE} -acodec ${AUDIO_CODEC} -ab ${AUDIO_BITRATE} -ar ${AUDIO_SAMPLERATE} \
-ac ${AUDIO_CHANNELS} -f ${FORMAT} - > "${OUTPUT}" 2>/dev/null

and then the one for video (/usr/bin/mediatomb-transcode-video)

#!/bin/bash

FFMPEG_PATH="/usr/bin/ffmpeg"
INPUT="$1"
OUTPUT="$2"
VIDEO_CODEC="mpeg2video"
VIDEO_BITRATE="4096k"
VIDEO_FRAMERATE="25"
AUDIO_CODEC="mp2"
AUDIO_BITRATE="192k"
AUDIO_SAMPLERATE="44100"
AUDIO_CHANNELS="2"
FORMAT="dvd"

exec "${FFMPEG_PATH}" -i "${INPUT}" -vcodec ${VIDEO_CODEC} -b ${VIDEO_BITRATE} \
-r ${VIDEO_FRAMERATE} -acodec ${AUDIO_CODEC} -ab ${AUDIO_BITRATE} -ar ${AUDIO_SAMPLERATE} \
-ac ${AUDIO_CHANNELS} -f ${FORMAT} - > "${OUTPUT}" 2>/dev/null

We need to make them both executable:

# chmod +x /usr/bin/mediatomb-transcode-audio
# chmod +x /usr/bin/mediatomb-transcode-video

My config file now looks like the following. Copy it to /etc/mediatomb/config.xml and start MediaTomb.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<config version="1" xmlns="http://mediatomb.cc/config/1"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://mediatomb.cc/config/1
http://mediatomb.cc/config/1.xsd">
<server>
    <ui enabled="yes">
        <accounts enabled="no" session-timeout="30">
            <account user="mediatomb" password="mediatomb"/>
        </accounts>
    </ui>
    <name>MediaTomb</name>
    <udn>uuid:51b10cef-e678-41be-8a0c-6d53e5243b2d</udn>
    <home>/var/lib/mediatomb</home>
    <webroot>/usr/share/mediatomb/web</webroot>
    <storage>
        <sqlite3 enabled="yes">
            <database-file>mediatomb.db</database-file>
        </sqlite3>
        <mysql enabled="no">
            <host>localhost</host>
            <database>mediatomb</database>
            <username>mediatomb</username>
            <password>mediatomb</password>
        </mysql>
    </storage>
    <protocolInfo extend="yes"/>
</server>
<import hidden-files="no">
    <scripting script-charset="UTF-8">
        <common-script>/usr/share/mediatomb/js/common.js</common-script>
        <playlist-script>/usr/share/mediatomb/js/playlists.js</playlist-script>
        <virtual-layout type="builtin">
            <import-script>/usr/share/mediatomb/js/import.js</import-script>
        </virtual-layout>
    </scripting>
    <mappings>
        <extension-mimetype ignore-unknown="no">
            <map from="mp3" to="audio/mpeg"/>
            <map from="ogg" to="application/ogg"/>
            <map from="asf" to="video/x-ms-asf"/>
            <map from="asx" to="video/x-ms-asf"/>
            <map from="wma" to="audio/x-ms-wma"/>
            <map from="wax" to="audio/x-ms-wax"/>
            <map from="wmv" to="video/x-ms-wmv"/>
            <map from="wvx" to="video/x-ms-wvx"/>
            <map from="wm" to="video/x-ms-wm"/>
            <map from="wmx" to="video/x-ms-wmx"/>
            <map from="m3u" to="audio/x-mpegurl"/>
            <map from="pls" to="audio/x-scpls"/>
            <map from="flv" to="video/x-flv"/>
            <map from="avi" to="video/x-divx"/>
            <map from="divx" to="video/x-divx"/>
            <map from="vob" to="video/x-divx"/>
        </extension-mimetype>
        <mimetype-upnpclass>
            <map from="audio/*" to="object.item.audioItem.musicTrack"/>
            <map from="video/*" to="object.item.videoItem"/>
            <map from="image/*" to="object.item.imageItem"/>
        </mimetype-upnpclass>
        <mimetype-contenttype>
            <treat mimetype="audio/mpeg" as="mp3"/>
            <treat mimetype="application/ogg" as="ogg"/>
            <treat mimetype="audio/x-flac" as="flac"/>
            <treat mimetype="image/jpeg" as="jpg"/>
            <treat mimetype="audio/x-mpegurl" as="playlist"/>
            <treat mimetype="audio/x-scpls" as="playlist"/>
            <treat mimetype="audio/x-wav" as="pcm"/>
            <treat mimetype="audio/L16" as="pcm"/>
            <treat mimetype="video/x-msvideo" as="avi"/>
            <treat mimetype="video/divx" as="avi"/>
            <treat mimetype="video/vob" as="avi"/>
        </mimetype-contenttype>
    </mappings>
</import>
<transcoding enabled="yes">
    <mimetype-profile-mappings>
        <transcode mimetype="application/ogg" using="audio-common"/>
        <transcode mimetype="application/ogg" using="video-common"/>
        <transcode mimetype="audio/x-flac" using="audio-common"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/x-flv" using="video-common"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/divx" using="video-common"/>
        <transcode mimetype="video/divx" using="video-thumbnail"/>
    </mimetype-profile-mappings>
    <profiles>
        <profile name="audio-common" enabled="yes" type="external">
            <mimetype>audio/L16</mimetype>
            <accept-url>yes</accept-url>
            <first-resource>yes</first-resource>
            <hide-original-resource>yes</hide-original-resource>
            <accept-ogg-theora>no</accept-ogg-theora>
            <agent command="mediatomb-transcode-audio" arguments="%in %out"/>
            <buffer size="1048576" chunk-size="131072" fill-size="262144"/>
        </profile>
        <profile name="video-common" enabled="yes" type="external">
            <mimetype>video/mpeg</mimetype>
            <accept-url>yes</accept-url>
            <first-resource>yes</first-resource>
            <hide-original-resource>yes</hide-original-resource>
            <accept-ogg-theora>yes</accept-ogg-theora>
            <agent command="mediatomb-transcode-video" arguments="%in %out"/>
            <buffer size="10485760" chunk-size="262144" fill-size="524288"/>
        </profile>
        <profile name="video-thumbnail" enabled="yes" type="external">
            <mimetype>image/jpeg</mimetype>
            <accept-url>yes</accept-url>
            <thumbnail>yes</thumbnail>
            <resolution>128x128</resolution>
            <agent command="ffmpegthumbnailer" arguments="-i %in -o %out -s 128"/>
            <buffer size="524288" chunk-size="512" fill-size="1024"/>
        </profile>
    </profiles>
</transcoding>
</config>

Start it using

# /etc/init.d/mediatomb start

Adding files and directories
To add files to the MediaServer, simply point your favourite browser to http://192.168.0.157:49152/ and then press the "Filesystem" link to the left. There you can add the directories you want, and the server parses them for you. If you have inotify enabled in you kernel (which you probably do) it will be possible to let the server automatically know when something has been changed, and it reparses that directory when needed.