multiMAN - multifunctional tool for your PS3 (Game manager/File manager/FTP/AVCHD/BDMV)

[condorstrike]

Dean this is much, much better...
sometimes I lost track of what thread I was in...lol

[Jayman]

I'm not going to change the thread name anyway... No need for flashy announcements.


Dean

Well it gets changed almost daily...lol So anyone who has been using this manager just knows to check it a lot. Great work!!

[dlanor]

Thanks, Ronald!

I'm not going to change the thread name anyway... No need for flashy announcements.

I agree. Like Jayman already said, those with an interest in this manager will most likely drop in to this thread spontaneously quite frequently, and then they will see any new releases in the attachment list at the bottom of the first post.

At least now I can keep stuff organized and probably it will be easier for all the users.

Indeed. This is a great improvement in itself.


Now for some testing feedback:

Tonight I spent some time testing the 'virtual' path "/ps3_home", and I found it both limited and somewhat buggy (as yet) I'm afraid.


The main limitation is that I was unable to copy any MP3 files or folders into the "music" subfolder or to copy any picture files (either JPG or PNG) into the "photo" subfolder, though I could see the same picture files I had already placed there through XMB.

This limitation is probably intentional, just a delay of that implementation, perhaps partly due to the complication of translating the use of picture and music subfolders into the 'Album' usage of the PS3.

The same would also apply to movies of course, except that movies are normally independent units, not necessarily tied to any 'Album'. (That's untrue for TV series I guess, but it would be impractical to use the PS3 HDD to store whole TV series anyway.)


A second limitation combined with a bug is that I was unable to copy a WMV file into the virtual "video" subfolder. The manager did take on the job, unlike the refusal for MP3 and pictures described above, but somewhere above 90% completion the process paused for a while and then aborted. After the abortion I could sometimes see that remaining HDD size was still smaller than it had been before the failed copying attempt. But I am not yet sure if this storage loss is really permanent, or just due to a failure to refresh some display info. I will have to try it again with larger files (thus risking even greater loss) to clarify this by checking size in multiple sessions, so both directly after failure and after a subsequent relaunch of multiMAN.


The one thing that worked well with the virtual folder was the copying of video files of the types MP4 and AVI, though this too suffered a minor bug in the file naming. For both cases a duplicate of the file extension (including '.' separator) was appended after the real one.

So a 4MB file originally named "Vagrant_Story_TITLE.avi" was copied to the "/ps3_home/video" folder with correct file content but incorrectly renamed to "Vagrant_Story_TITLE.avi.avi" and a corresponding error also occurred for MP4 files, where the normal extension ".mp4" was changed into ".mp4.mp4" instead.

Quite likely this is due to some simple oversight in the routine that parses the filenames and isolates the main name from the extension. Simple insertion of a NUL character at the period would have caused a strcpy of the main name to yield just "Vagrant_Story_TITLE" and then a strcat from a copy of the original extension would just add the ".avi" as needed. (Probably done to enforce normalized character case.) But if the NUL insertion was missed/forgotten, then we get the result I saw with two extensions combined. (First the original and then the normalized, or so I guess.)


I'm confident that you can easily fix the extension bug, but I am more worried about that WMV copying failure. I'll have another go at that tomorrow, testing it with more and larger files.

Btw: (So you don't have to wonder about this...)
All of the files used in these tests are such that the XMB is able to show/play/copy them correctly when accessed through XMB from a USB drive, with those files in appropriate "MUSIC", "PICTURE" and "VIDEO" folders, and of course I used the same USB drive for those playback tests as for the copying tests in multiMAN.

Best regards: dlanor

[HiTMaN-239]

This looks great, trying now. How does this handle original retail blurays? I just bought Inception and was trying to play it JB mode, I loaded multiman, and picked the top empty space (Game Disc highlighted). It took me to the xmb, I went to Videos and picked Inception.

I got as far as the white rotating disc icon, and just stays there. Doesn't load. Won't go back to xmb either, I have to shut down.

By the way it works fine outside of jb mode.

Any thoughts? (I also tried Open manager 2.1H with the same issue). Unfortunately inception is the only bluray I have lol, so I can't try a different movie.

Any help is appreciated, and thanks for your awesome work

[deank]

Now for some testing feedback:

Tonight I spent some time testing the 'virtual' path "/ps3_home", and I found it both limited and somewhat buggy (as yet) I'm afraid.

Currently it is implemented only for video files.

Here is how it works: multiMAN copies the video file to a temporary folder and then calls a registration service which asks the PS3 to put the file in the library. At that moment PS3 may decide to accept or deny the file. If it accepts it - it moves it to the proper 'library' folder. If not - it doesn't do anything and there is 50/50 chance that it will simply lock. If registration is unsuccessful multiMAN deletes the temp file.

For some reason it won't accept wmv files. The stupid thing is that the PS3 does everything based on the file extension. If I rename a .wmv to .avi - it will accept it and will show it as 'unsupported data', but once you play the file from the XMB - all is okay.

About the 'double' extensions - it is not a bug. The filename passed for registration has nothing to do with the original video file name. I locked my PS3 at least 50 times until I finally found a stable solution for the registration process. I'll take a look again. There is no documentation about how to do it.

For example filenames which contain any 2 equal characters in the name (like two spaces or "..") or the filename finishes with a space character or other weird things - the PS3 simply locks.

Currently multiMAN transfers the video file to ./USRDIR/TEMP/ and names it VEXPORT.*** (with original video extension) and then passes it to the PS3 (+ ALBUM/NAME/DETAILS information). The field 'name' is populated with original video filename and PS3 uses it and then unnecessarily adds the externsion a second time. I don't remember if I tried to remove the extension from the 'name' field, because I was frustrated with the constant failure and lock ups.

Dean

edit: Yes, I changed it now and it doesn't show the extension in the name (and no double .avi.avi)

[ieder-zijn-meis]

...

[condorstrike]

ok, guys... time for another theme. hope you like, and as always thanks and rep+ Dean.
condorstrike 7

it's like quick and lite-xmb style btw. please comment...thanks.
Attachment 22502

Attachment 22503

Attachment 22504

Attachment 22505

Attachment 22506

Attachment 22549

[Jay-Jay]

Thanks for starting up your own thread, this will make it easier for all of us when you update your app! Kudos! (does anyone say kudos anymore? lol)

I was thinking it would be cool if you could add a feature that could remind us which games require a disc in order to play with a disc icon or something. Or perhaps something we can edit on the .ini file or we could mark them on the manager or something?

Check out this topic on how this idea got developed and how a few of us are doing a bit of "title editing" to have this little reminder: = ([Tutorial] Tag game backups that require disc to play before loading them.)

This idea got started when the backup game "Assassins Creed Brotherhood" got dangerous if we forget to have a disc inserted before we load it. Since it corrupts our HDD.

[HiTMaN-239]

This looks great, trying now. How does this handle original retail blurays? I just bought Inception and was trying to play it JB mode, I loaded multiman, and picked the top empty space (Game Disc highlighted). It took me to the xmb, I went to Videos and picked Inception.

I got as far as the white rotating disc icon, and just stays there. Doesn't load. Won't go back to xmb either, I have to shut down.

By the way it works fine outside of jb mode.

Any thoughts? (I also tried Open manager 2.1H with the same issue). Unfortunately inception is the only bluray I have lol, so I can't try a different movie.

Any help is appreciated, and thanks for your awesome work

No body can help with this? Thanks.

[tonybologna]

No body can help with this? Thanks.

I believe MultiMAN needs converted Blu-Ray disc movies into AVCHD format. Unless I've missed something lately you can't rip a Blu-Ray movie directly to HDD with MulitMAN.

You also need to have a USB flash drive connected to the PS3 in order to mount the movie to the "Video" tab from XBM. Maybe dean can reply back with more information.