Introduction:

What you will need:

1. PS3
2. PC
3. Java SE Runtime Environment - http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp (download x64 if you are on 64bit, install this before PS3MS)
4. PS3 Media Server (works on Linux/Windows/Mac) - http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3217

Setting up PS3 Media Server:

The first screen you will see is the status screen.



If working correctly PS3 Media Server will detect your PS3. For this to happen both your PC and PS3 must be turned on, and connected to your router or modem.



If there is a problem you will see this screen. The most common cause for this is a firewall on your PC blocking either the PS3 Media Server application or JAVA. Both have to be whitelisted within your firewall application.

The traces tab will act as your debug log, it is helpful to read it if you are experiencing the second image above, as it may give clues as to why your PS3 and PC aren't talking to each other.



The first useful thing to notice here is you can install PS3 MS as a Windows Service. This will enable your media sharing every time you turn your PS3 on. You could always just add a shortcut to the PS3MS exe under your startup folder though.

Ignore the network settings unless you're having issues getting your PC to talk to your PS3, you can force an IP for the server here if you need to manually open a port on your router.

Enable the HTTPV2 engine, and prevent OS from sleeping while streaming so your power saving features don't kick in and put your PC in standby whilst you're watching a movie.



Turn on thumbnails generation, use mplayer for video thumbnails and also DVD ISOs thumbnails. The Thumbnail seeking position can be set to whatever time you want. This creates a thumbnail from the actual video.

Audio thumbails can be gathered from various sources, the drop down box lists the likes of Amazon.

Protip - PS3 Media Server supports custom thumbnails from your hard drive if you'd rather use something else other than a snapshot from the video. If you save an image as 'folder.png' in the same folder as your video file it will use that. An example:

On PC


On PS3


The PSD file with the template for the cover art I use can be downloaded here. Credits to Neowin member Boz for creating the template.

Navigation/Parsing settings contains various visual tweaks you can accustom yourself to. The #Video Settings# and #Transcode# folder hold very useful settings depending on your streaming needs, browse these folders on your PS3 to see. For example:

#Transcode Folder#


When enabled this folder will let you customize your file playback. If you have dual audio options or subtitles to choose from, you can go into this folder and select what you want.

If however for example all your movies are in english/don't need subtitles you can hide the #Transcode Folder# to clean up your menus.

The Shared folders section is where your movies are located.

Protip - With HD movies taking up 10's of GB of space at times, many of us may have our movies spanned across multiple drives. When it comes to browsing your files this can be a pain, as they aren't all shown in the one location under PS3 MS and you may forget what drive has what movies. There is a very easy and efficient solution, Linkshell Extension.

Install Linkshell Extension for your operating system. Afterwards you will notice new entries on your context menu called 'Pick Link Source'



This is used to specify what file or folder you want to create a virtual link to. Look at this scenario below,



Here we have two movies, but both these movies are on separate drives. In order to play them both back through PS3 Media Server, we'd have to add both locations to our Shared Folders section and browse them on our PS3 separately.

What we can do now is create one centralised folder, say C:\Movies. We would right click on one of our two movie folders above and hit 'Pick Link Source'. We would then navigate to our C:\Movies folder and right click, go to 'Drop As', then 'Symbolic Link Clone'.



Do this for both folders and you'll have this scenario



We have now created two virtual shortcuts to our actual movies within C:\Movies. Since they are shortcuts as you can see they occupy '0kb'. This can be done with folders or files.

If you're now wondering why we didn't just create an 'everyday' windows right click, paste shortcut, it's because such shortcuts won't work in PS3MS.

On your PS3 you will have your 'Movies' folder browsable as normal,



and inside...



Both movies in the one place, even although they are physically stored on two different drives.



The 'Transcoding Settings' tab is where we get into the real meat of things, and it's crucial to set things up correctly here.

First of all, under common transcode settings:

Leave the transcode buffer size at 400 (it's in relation to your ram). Only change this to a lower amount if you have a low amount of ram, say 1GB, or even 512mb.

Number of cores relates to your CPU, PS3MS should automatically detect this, but in case it doesn't manually enter how many cores you are running on.

Chapters support will add a feature under the #Transcode# folder that allows you to see virtual chapters created for the interval minute setting you supply.

Number of audio channels relates to the sound setup hooked up to your PS3, self explanatory. Leave the bitrate at 640.

Keep DTS audio in stream is a selling point of PS3 MS. If you have a 5.1 sound system and have encoded a movie with the DTS soundtrack intact, check this box to play DTS through your PS3. Your PS3 must have the volume normalized though, and tracks set to 1+2. If not you'll just hear static...



These settings can be accessed from pressing 'Triangle' during video playback.

Also do note, under video info, 'Select' during playback, the audio will report itself as PCM 2.0, 1.5Mpbs



This is just part of the trick to getting DTS working through streamed media, ignore it and instead pay attention to your receiver, you will notice your 'DTS' light is lit up and you are hearing audio through all 5 speakers.

Next setting to pay attention to is 'Remux when audio track is AC3'. This should be ticked if you have a 5.1 sound system as any movies/tv shows you have that include a 5.1 AC3 soundtrack will have the audio passed through untouched. If you don't have a 5.1 sound system don't check this, unless your AC3 is 2.0, as you'll need to let PS3 MS downmix any 5.1 audio tracks to 2.0 for your TV.

Under video quality settings we look at the bandwidth for transcoding. By default these settings are fine if you're using a wired network. If you're on wireless, select one of the lower settings from the drop down menu.



Next under video files engines, mencoder:

Turn on 'Enhanced multicore support for H264 HD content' if you have a processor with two or more cores.

Turn on 'Switch to tsMuxer when H264 video is PS3 compatible and there's no configured subs'. This will enable HD content to be remuxed if it doesn't need transcoded, it's crucial to turn this on.

The rest of the settings can be left on default for now.

There is a readme and FAQ/Help section within PS3MS with lots of more useful info, this guide is a quick run through the main features. There are other advanced capabilities such as plugins, two exist right now, an IMDB plugin, and a LastFM plugin.

They are pretty self explanatory to use but I shall include some more detail in the guide later.

If everything is setup correctly you should now be enjoying your movies





ps. TV photos all taken with an iPhone so quality not great.

Great guide - good work
I vote this get pinned

Dude......Nice guide!!! This will become very helpful for many.

Surely this has to be sticky?

Is there any good reason to rip your own movies and then play them back on your ps3 or hd-dvd/bd drive in your pc that you ripped them from? On the other hand downloading rips and watching them i can see. why can't people just admit what they're doing?

Some people prefere having their collection stashed in a huge library on their harddrive where theyre easy to access - which they are not when on the shelf..
Oh and. . . SHHHH

How about not needing to have 50 cases/discs to rotate between through viewing?

It is MUCH easier to have those 50 movies on your PS3. Actually possible as well.

Average 720p rip = 4GB

50 x 4 = 200.

PS3 can support up to a 350GB drive (only limited by current laptop drive size, it should be able to go higher as laptop drives increase).

Anyone who has the space to keep a digital copies has the luxury of just turning on his pc/ps3 and going through his movie selection.. no need to take any discs out.... not everyone is a pirate

you slide a case off the shelf, open it, pop in the disc. its pretty much the same amount of time if not faster than going through all types of folders and sub folders. not to mention all the hrs devoted to converting your files.

and don't get me wrong, h'm not badmouthing downloading, but lets be honest.

Being honest gets you killed(banned) in this world(neowin)
Why must you all discuss this?
Its off-topic..

Now lets move on..
Any way to get subtitles on the PS3 yet?
Both xvid and mkv-x264

Fair enough, but some find it less time consuming in the long run.

Can you imagine taking your PS3 away with you for a weekend/week/however long to somewhere outside of your Home?

Are you going to carry 5-10-15-20+ movies with you as well?

I see your point, but as long as no one condones piracy in here, benefit of the doubt?

Plus if you go down the streaming route, you can stream your movies to multiple locations in your house - You can't play a disc in multiple locations.

Also Home is going to allow playback of media files from your PS3 to your appartment.



Sadly no, I don't believe so

Lots of people are ****ed cause they have tons of anime

Thanks a lot Audioboxer! Very well written and useful guide, will come in very handy in the future

Taking your PS3 somewhere then a small cheap cd holder will do just fine to hold your movies and you get full quality in your HD movies.

Ok ok guys

Stop beating the horse to death.

It's a personal choice how you want to watch/store your movies.

The PS3 can support drives up to 350GB, so if you want to keep your movies on there, knock yourself out! If you want to carry/keep things to physical discs, knock yourself out again!

Ouch, 2 black eyes

very good reason to do such a thing, i did not consider it. i just always get annoyed at "i don't condone piracy" and "rip your own material" being in the same sentence or paragraph. if you have the source, why rip it, but portability is a fair reason. sorry for jumping the gun.

with mkv2vob I always get an unsupported codec error on A_AAC, any ideas?

You have a movie ripped with AAC instead of AC3.

MKV2VOB only supports AC3 DTS - 95% of movies are ripped in this.

Only choice is to go with GOTsent in my knowledge, unless someone else knows of another program.

You have far too much time on your hands buddy

Awesome guide man, thanks

What about burning larger files (>4gb) onto a double layer DVD? The ps3 is probably going to take half a life to copy it to its own harddrive, but I guess that could work if we use the latest versions of UDF?

Doh!

I forgot about doing that.

I'll update the guide to reflect with credit.

MP4 files will still have the 4GB limit though, only streaming beats that.

I to store my movies on my media server, because I can view any of the movies on any of my tvs throughout my house. I have only done it with my dvd's so far, as I haven't read much into how to store hi def movies onto my server.

I was obsessed with HD playback on the PS3 ever since it was released in Europe. I tried everything, read every forum when they (or should I say we) were trying to figure out what was wrong.
Two things were key: the firmware update that enabled high profile playback in the XMB and having the certainty that x264 encoded files had the level flag set to the highest by default, when it shouldn't have been like that.

If mp4 have that limit, why not use .VOB all along? Even if it's all shady and mysterious how the PS3 is correctly able to read those streams that way, .VOB supports ac3 and all that stuff, and most files come with AC3 anyway.

Is there any way to make the PS3 automatically play the next file in the folder after the previous file has finished playing?
It seems music files do this, but not the video files.

The reason there is a 4gig limit is because the only filesystem/format the PS3 reads through external harddrives is FAT32
Harddrives formatted in FAT32 have a limit - files cant be larger than 4gigs
If the PS3 supported other filesystems/formats(like NTFS/HFS/ext2 blah blah) through external we wouldnt be having this issue

Yup PS3 doesn't support level 5.1, only 4.1. These programs when remuxing the video, change to it 4.1 - One of the major issues for 1080p as well, it doesn't like having it's level changed.

Yeah VOB is the way to go, and it is what I use. People still stick with MP4 though if for whatever reason they must have ff/rw. Pause/Resume works fine on VOB, and if you're watching movies very rarely do you need to ff/rw. As I said though for whatever reason, 1.5x ff on VOB works.

With VOB one other thing I should of mentioned is, if you go to play a file and its a black screen, exit out, and press traingle on the movie and go to "play from beginning" - Just a small bug you might come across.





Correct, but wouldn't make a difference with MP4 files.

MP4 files ALSO have a 4GB play limit on the PS3 regardless of what drives the PS3 supports.

This is something thats hard to explain as people get confused, I done my best in my guide to explain it.

PS3 File System - NO size limits.

HOWEVER, the PS3 will only support FAT32 formatted drives - Therefore that is a drive limit of the device you are plugging in.

Now MP4 files, they have a 4GB limit on the PS3 regardless of the file system. No one knows why, but an MP4 file over 4GB will not play on the internal PS3 hard drive.

Streaming is the only way to get an MP4 file over 4GB to play on your PS3.



Good question but I dont think so.

Would be useful for 2 part movies

By the way, I added a FAQ section, and im going to cherry pick the best questions you guys ask!

I'll keep alookout on the original (Dutch) GOTsent topic for you Audioboxer, as I'm also active on that forum

Also, on a side note; if you are a mac user and you're using Mac OS X's native filesystem (HFS) on an external drive, it should also work on your PS3 AND allow files larger than 4GB - note: as far as I know, this is still not something to solve the mp4 4GB issue

Are you sure?
I thought only the X360 supported the HFS filesystem

I couldn't test it as I do not have a mac, nor do I have friends with a mac and PC, it's just what I've heard a couple of times now - yet, I could be wrong

Brilliant guide

great guide audio! props to you for helping me out with all this stuff a few weeks ago.

+1 vote for sticky

I used GOTsent to encode the mkv movie file to an MP4 as it states but instead it split the movie into 2 mkv files, 2.4gb each

What happened to the MP4?

Pretty positive that will be a codec issue, you're missing something required to carry out the whole process and are therefore being left with incomplete files. GOTSent is the front end only, it's not an all-in-1-package.

To play it safe, as I said I'd install CCCP - http://www.cccp-project.net/ - It requires what is needed, with things such as Haali Media Splitter (HD codec).

For all those people on their high horses of "CODEC PACKS DAMAGE YOUR PC!!!" come down to reality. CCCP if you read up on it, was made to be lightweight, and require all that's needed to play/watch HD content on your PC. It doesn't install multiple codecs and doesn't interfere with anything.

If you don't want to use it still, I'll dig deeper into specific codecs that are required.

AC3Filter - http://ac3filter.net/ - Is also needed as well if you aren't using the nero AAC codec.

Out of interest as well, http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/, download MediaInfo, and drag and drop your mkv onto it to see what video/audio codec it is using - Just to see if it's anything unusal, not found in a standard MKV rip.

Sentry23, the guy who is making GOTsent, is currently checking out possibilities to transcode files to mpeg2 to get subs working - picture quality suffers from this and it'll surely take more time, but if you're really keen on subs - as a lot of people are over at his regular forum - it's maybe a compromise worth making.

edit; he's also figuring out if it's possible to alter the frame rate, because apparently some people using Xbox360's complain about judder/jitter in the images when viewing stuff in 50Hz

for subtitles, but definitely only if you need em.

MPEG2 will take up muuuuch more space as well as the obvious drop in quality from transcoding.

TBH - I can only care subtitlewise for my Anime to work, however, support is never going to be something which resembles the stuff that can be done on a PC, with the karaoke's, panning/tilting text etc. If it's going to come, it'll be the same as on DVDs etc. where you basically have "raw" text at the bottom. Long story short; I won't be using any new transcode functions to get subtitles working, but oh well if it there it's going to please at least some people

Thanks! I didn't have CCCP installed and now that I installed it, it works perfectly.

GOTsent Beta-9 Pre-release
Now includes Playable on PS3/360 detection, subs are disabled. Some form of mpeg2 conversion is in there, yet it doesn't work for 360 yet
Download here, but use with care - it's a pre-release of a beta...

Also; Sentry23 announced he's now collaborating with Ditlew - apparently someone with a name in the PSP scene (I do not own one, so I wouldn't know) - they're working on a better h264 detection/implementation, which apparently is almost finished and should make beta10 or beta9, however the former is more likely.

edit; we should really get this topic stickied

I'll update my guide for Beta 9 once it's actually out and all the new features are in/confirmed working.

transcoding is a ballache if you ask me i dont see why people are so interested in playing everything on there ps3, something like the Popcorn Hour makes more sense to me if you dont want to use a pc, it has native mkv support and can read subtitles from mkv as well.

I dont have the room for a gazillion boxes that just do one thing each - I want ONE device to handle them all
My friend was trying out his friends Popcorn Hour, he says the software seemed a bit buggy..
Perhaps in the future I will invest in one if custom firmware hasnt struck the PS3 by that tiem

Thanks for this guide! Never heard of any of these programs and was going to just wait for MKV support! Quick note btw GOTSent won't convert an AC3 Audio track in Vista x64 if you don't tick Safe Sync For some reason if you don't it just says conversion done with no output file.

However I must admit I struggled getting MKV2VOB to work, for some reason it outputted the Audio fine to the VOB file but there was no video But GOTSent works anyway so its all good in the end

I just became even more satisfied with my PS3.

I'm playing my MKV files with just streaming!

All I did was install a codec pack, change a few settings and install tversity and stream over my network.

I'm so damn happy with this now.

Oh the guide is here btw:

http://forums.tversity.com/viewtopic.php?t=8063

Scroll down to method B.

Sounds like a codec issue to me, what codec pack/codecs do you have installed?




I didn't cover this in my guide, but im happy you have it working

Quickest method to view, but you do lose video/audio quality with the transcoding. Plus you need a very decent PC to handle on the fly transcoding

Just a quick word on Tversity with the K-Lite codec pack. Even though subtitles are check in ffdshow to load sas/ass/srt also embedded. Once you start the file on the ps3 go back to your computer right click on the tray icon and click on the subtitles.

Kill off the transcoding job. Go back to the PS3 and restart the same file. Subtitles should properly appear now on the transcoding computer.

GOTSent 0.23 Beta 9
Download here

• Lots of fixes (mainly audio and detection)
• Playable on PS3/360 detectie (Thanks to Ditlew)
• mpeg2 fallback encoding (PS3/360) note; might take long
• Subs are off temporarily due to detection issues
• command line encoding: Gotsent-version-.exe [filename\foldername] (converts all files in directory, to temp dir)
• Aspect ratio will be corrected for mp4 files where pixel resolution doesn't match display resolution

Apparently there's more but Sentry23 didn't finish his changelog cause he needed some whiskey (his words)

just so you guys know , the latest build of mkv2vob has added fast forward and rewind support


V1.5.2 28/Jan/2008
Fixed bug with long filenames with DTS give "Error creating AC3 from WAV!"
DTS now recompresses to higher 640bit quality instead of 384bit.

V1.5.1 27/Jan/2008
Fixed muxing bug, 1.5 was completely non-functional sorry.

V1.5 27/Jan/2008
Added Fast forward/rewind support


this is now by far the better option

Woah

How did he manage it?

I'll update the whole guide soon

no idea but i just checked it and its works glad he managed it

Yup

I'm in the process of reconverting all my movies now!

(It seems ff/rw has been made possible by using tsMuxer, which is a new application added to MKV2VOB)

Everyone should get 1.52 immediately. I have also noticed a 720p movie I had that I couldn't get working no matter what (MKV2VOB and GOTSent both failed) now works

Cant wait to try this - please let the next thing be non-hardcoded subtitles support
How come this thread hasnt been pinned yet? someone should PM DirtyLarry(?)