transcode with mediatomb

Hello,

I am trying to use transcode with mediatomb to stream unsupported 
formats to my dvd player/network player: a jvc dd-3.
The supported formats on that player are few, but it does play avi 
(divx), asf and wmv from a upnp media server.
I set things up on my freebsd 7.2 box, and it streams the supported 
formats just fine using mediatomb.
Any unsupported format at the moment i transcode with ffmpeg, which 
actually works nice for mp4, mov, flv and so on using a commandline 
looking like this:

ffmpeg -i "$input" -target dvd -y "$output"

$input is the filename handed down by mediatomb, $output is the FIFO 
buffer mediatomb makes.

Now, i am trying to get something together to be able to play a dvd iso 
on the jvc through mediatomomb using transcoding.

I tried different transcoders like ffmpeg, vlc and transcode. Ffmpeg 
can't handle it (as far as i can tell), and on freebsd there's a problem 
with vlc in that the transcoded video does play sound but somehow the 
videostream is missing or not playable (not even if i use it on command 
line and store the feed in a file, which in then in turn try to play 
with vlc on a windows machine using samba to get at the file..).

With transcode, i can, or at least, it will transcode the iso. I 
installed it from the ports, and compiled and installed without any 
errors. I managed to get it transcoding in it's most simplest form to a 
file using:

transcode -i test.iso -x dvd -o test.avi -y xvid

When i open test.avi (using vlc on a windows machine), it has the main 
title on the dvd transcoded and plays just fine.
So I configured mediatomb to send a mimetype video/x-msvideo for any iso 
file it can find. the jvc player thinks this is playable, so it shows it 
on the list.
Next, to get mediatomb to start transcoding, i entered a profile for it 
in config.xml:

    <profile name="video-iso" enabled="yes" type="external">
       <mimetype>video/x-msvideo</mimetype>
       <first-resource>yes</first-resource>
       <hide-original-resource>yes</hide-original-resource>
       <accept-ogg-theora>yes</accept-ogg-theora>
       <agent command="mediatomb-transcode-iso" arguments="%in %out"/>
       <buffer size="1048576" chunk-size="131072" fill-size="262144"/>
     </profile>



Last, i made the shell script mediatomb-transcode-iso :

#!/bin/sh
transcoder="/usr/local/bin/transcode"
input="$1"
output="$2"
exec "$transcoder" -i "$input" -x dvd -o "$output" -y xvid


After that, what i end up with is:
- the jvc player does show the iso, so apparently it thinks it can play 
the given mimetype
- it tries to start to play the 'video file' when i click it
- it takes a couple of seconds, but then reports that it can't play the 
file afterall (no errors given, just a stop sign..)
- on the server side, i do see transcode getting started using ps -ax
- i added > /tmp/transcode.log in the script after the exec of 
transcode, and see it recognizing the dvd, starting things up and 
actually start transcoding
- after a couple of hundred frames (i guess up to the point the fifo 
buffer of mediatomb is filled) it stalls and mediatomb can't kill the 
process.

I tried switching things around a bit but no luck so far:
- mimetype in the profile to video/mpeg, and transcode -y mjpeg
- mimetype in the profile to video/x-msvideo, and transcode -y divx5

What i am thinking at the moment is that maybe the output stream muxing 
isn't correct for the given format (avi or mpeg)..

So i am wondering:
- is what i am trying to do at all possible? (meaning: using transcode 
under mediatomb to transcode things)
- if so, what options do i have to give transcode to make it export 
either a standard avi or mpeg stream which the player recognizes?
- did anybody get this running with mediatomb and if so, what's the 
config for it in config.xml and the script that starts the transcoding?
- also, what happens if a dvd has 2 movietitles on it? For example, i 
have made an iso of my band of brothers dvd's which has 2 episodes on 
every dvd..

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated..