Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Trouble With Transcoding

I just spent a few hours trying to get some MKVs of a show I wanted to watch to play on my tv. It sucked. The state of affairs when it comes to computer media and TVs is getting better, but it still has a long way to go and it's about damn time it sped up. It's infuriating. 


All I wanted to do is play this file on my tv. Well there's no way to play files on it, it's just a monitor. (My TV isn't the newest so that one isn't as important). So you have to use some sort of player. Of course I could just play it through VGA using the computer, but for whatever reason the resolution is shit and there's lag whenever I try that. (I've also messed with that for hours.) So my only real option is to use the ps3 or xbox. Well fuck me, neither of these expensive devices have any fucking idea what an MKV is. You need to convert your files to mpeg! Relax, it'll only take an hour or two. Oh, wait, you wanted to keep your subtitles and multiple audio channels? Well GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! 


So what the fuck are you supposed to do at this point? Really, I don't know. Luckily in the past I have utilized a golden gift from the heavens called PS3 Media Server. It essentially streams your computer's content over your wifi like many other media servers, to most any media device. (PS3, Xbox, Blu-ray players, etc.) But here's why it's such a gift: it will transcode your files that are unknown to the device (such as mkv) into something more recognizable (mpeg) and stream them to the device.  At the same time. It's a great program and I recommend it to everyone.  


But here was my problem tonight; sometimes you just get some high quality files you want to stream and things go to shit. It's wasn't he program's fault, my dying computer just couldn't transcode that shit fast enough. So you end up with de-synched audio/video and freezing. I played around with the setting but I don't think there's anything I can do. And after hours of this I just have to wonder why I can't just put the damn thing on my usb drive, plug it into the damn ps3 and play the fucking file. Haven't we reached that level of technology? Should it really be this hard? I'm sure we'll get there eventually but fuck. Drives me crazy.  

1 comment:

  1. I'm pretty sure that we actually have that tech, Sony are just a bunch of greedy bastards and want to protect their precious Blu-Ray. Don't get me wrong, B-R is very good quality, but there is always better and in this case they just wanna get more money out of you :/

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