Not much ado ok the media server...

But I am working ok something else.

I have this nasty habit of testing out new techniques and technologies on real word events. I have been tasked with deploying respondus lockdown browser on our lab computers where I work. I'm trying makemsi to build a custom package I can deploy using either a active directory login script or group policy.

I already compiled the sample makefile, and it worked out fine. I intend to first add the installed respondus files into the makefile, then figure out how to register dlls and update the registry. More later.

Ffmpeg works now

By recompiling the x264 ebuild (I tweaked the ebuild with --disable-asm flag) I was able to get ffmpeg to work on my media server, but it seems like now it takes literally forever to transcode a file.

I wonder if there are any magic settings to make this work.

Ffmpeg a wash

It took over ten hours to transcode this lsttst episode of fringe, making my media center not the ideal place to transcode. That sucks, because I really would like to download and transcode fringe episodes so I can watch them, as I never have time to catch fringe at the time it airs.

Couple of things I still may try. I have a new kernel I want to try. I also left the resolution the same, so I'm going to change the resolution. Let's see what happens. If all else fails, I can disconnect the USB drive and transcode on another machine.

Xbmc a wash

I tried to get xbmc to work on my media server as a way to improve the streaming from my laptop, and to try something else. Well, I had problems getting it compiled on my gentoo VM, primarily due to lack of disk space. So I'm charging that to the game.

I was able to tweak my portable mplayer settings so that I can stream iPod videos wirelessly to my laptop with ampache. So I am going back to transcoding vids with ffmpeg. That means I need to recompile my kernel to support MMXEXT option. More on that later.