ffmpeg output formats.

[Andy Bircumshaw]

On 23/5/2011, at 2:30pm, Paul Verrall wrote:
> ...
> I need ffmpeg to output iplayer videos in something other than the default mp4.
> Basically my Sony blu-ray (DLNA compliant) device will only play
> certain types of video over the network.

DNLA is a very dubious "standard", and can mean practically whatever the manufacturer wants it to mean. There is no assurance that one DNLA-compliant device will work with any other specific DNLA-compliant device.

> Not sure of the exact
> encoding needed, but some hints of command syntax would go a long way
> to getting me started.

Well, knowing the exact encoding needed would be a *very* good start. 

get_iplayer's .mp4 videos are h264 video & ACC audio. Your blu-ray player should be able to cope with that, because blu-rays also carry video with these encodings.

The PS3 is made by the same manufacturer as your player, was released 5 years ago, and has no problem playing get_iplayer .mp4 videos.

You can stream to the PS3 using DNLA and the MediaTomb server, but I do now recall mention that Sony's implementation of DNLA there is horrendous.

I have streamed get_iplayer's MP4 videos to the PS3 this way.

If you can put a video on a memory stick or SDcard, or burn it to a CD / DVD and play it on your player, then the exact same video should work fine over DNLA.

TL;DR: I'd make sure first that this isn't a problem with DNLA, rather than the video format.

If you do indeed need to mess with the video encoding, then use `get_iplayer --raw` and the ffmpeg documentation [1] [2] [3]. Ask any questions on the ffmpeg mailing list or elsewhere until you've got a file format you can play / stream to your Sony. Further questions are probably not relevant to this mailing list, or to get_iplayer, until you have converted the BBC's .flv file (that you get using "--raw") into a format you can play - only then we can tell you about get_iplayer integration.

aB.



[1] http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-doc.html
[2] http://ffmpeg.org/faq.html
[3] http://www.google.com/search?q=ffmpeg+manual