Busy Bee

This past week has been mighty hectic, thus slowing down working on my media server. I'm still trying to get the transcoding to work at some level; over 10 hours for a vid and then getting it with no sound doesn't cut it in the least.

I was able to get another kernel compiled strictly for the Pentium II, so once I do that, and transfer all my media files to a larger hard drive, I'll get back to trying to optimize transcoding on that machine. I need to find a bitrate calculator.

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.