I have a gigantic media server, over 10TB, mostly video (my music collection, while huge, just doesn't take much space comparatively).
While there are a variety of approaches/solutions to distributing this media around the home via a network, I've found that the easiest means for me is to simply mount server share(s) on playback devices when possible, rather than using solutions like TVersity and ORB.
Windows shares (a.k.a. CIFS) are simple to set up, provide full-resolution / quality playback of the material, and for whatever reasons (there are many), is more broadly compatible as a means of streaming. I've run into too many files that AllShare balks at, yet will play just fine when the file is streamed directly.
So what's the point of this thread?
Two-fold. 1) stimulate discussion on technology and methods used for streaming video on a LAN to get the best results, and 2) share my own solutions.
Here's what I've found:
CifsManager is Da Bomb. It does a great job of adding a system-wide Windows Share mounting and access capability to an Android device. Once a share is mounted on your phone, it looks just like any other mounted filesystem to any app, so files can be access on the shares as if they were local.
x264 encoded video plays very nicely on the stock video player. It's obvious that it has been optimized to take maximum advantage of hardware acceleration. I use the stock player to play HD content from a share over my network, which almost always means something in a mkv or mp4 container.
HOWEVER: The stock player can't play AAC encoded audio. This is a problem for mp4 -- these days, many people encoding for mp4 use AAC, so I find I have to demux, transcode audio (usually to mp3), and then remux. This is a PITA, but I haven't found any other solution... None of the third-party alternatives I've tried (most of them) can play x264 HD content and keep up. None.
To make things worse, for some reason hardware acceleration doesn't seem to have been implement for the Divx/Xvid (h263) default codec, so xvid video (usually SD format in avi containers) plays haltingly, and locks up frequently when streaming over CIFS. Oddly, copying a file over to local storage makes this problem go away with the stock player. My theory is that the network processing load combined with the CPU effort necessary to decode h263 without hardware assist just overwhelms the processor. Regardless, the stock player is not an acceptable solution here.
After trying many different players, the one that works best for "avi" files (almost always xvid encoded) is arcMedia (market, free). Close to flawless playback of this type of media streamed via CIFS. Unfortunately, arcMedia is completely useless for h264 (mkv, mp4 containers).
Streaming the direct source media, rather than going through a streaming server that will transcode, gives you the best possible quality and experience. While the above may sound complicated and involved, it really isn't -- in fact, it's the simplest:
Share your media library files in the usual way using the "Sharing and Security..." context-menu item on your windows media server.
Install CifsManager from the market.
Install arcMedia player from the market.
Mount your media shares on your phone with CifsManager.
Using your favorite File Manager, browse your media shares the same way you would your local SD card filesystem. To play an HD media file encoded with h264, click on it and play it in the stock player the same way you would if it was on your SD card.
For h263 encoded media (divx/xvid, virtually always avi container), run arcMedia and use its built-in file browser to navigate to the media file, then play it.
There are many, many advantages of convenience and ease-of-use in this approach over streaming with servers like TVersity, ORB, etc. On a LAN, where bandwidth isn't an issue, this approach works really well!
By the stock Video Player, did you mean on Android? Or Windows?
If Android:
Vital Player
If Windows:
Media Player Classic.
always looking for good info, and this is good stuff. Going to try it out when i get home and see if i have better luck than i've been having getting xvid and mkv's to stream from my network shares...
If you use GB rom, try diceplayer.
diceplayer can play 720p MKV+DTS with full HW acceleration.
I wish we had a thread like this for over the net streaming. If I'm at home I just use upnplay with rockplayer from my mediatomb box which is set to transcode anything ps3 can't play natively.. Haven't had any problems yet.
Cd's or tapes?
I use this:
http://www.serverelements.com/?target=NASLite-M2_x64
I have a dual core tower with 2 250 gig drives but want to add 5 1 tb drives with 8 gig of ram. This OS runs off a 8 gig jump drive with NO issues. I use UPNP to my Xbox and laptops. I haven't tried on my phone yet but I don't see why this wouldn't work.
schnowdapowda said:
I wish we had a thread like this for over the net streaming. If I'm at home I just use upnplay with rockplayer from my mediatomb box which is set to transcode anything ps3 can't play natively.. Haven't had any problems yet.
Cd's or tapes?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check or something called Plex its great, I used orb for years and was never happy with playback...Plex is amazing and the android app is awesome.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
see, my whole thing is I don't want to run some extra server software just to have this work. I've got a networked media box (Patriot Box Office) and it plays everything over my network flawlessly from my NFS and SMB shares, and I want to be able to do the same thing from my Epic and Tab (mostly Tab with the bigger screen.) Working on some dev stuff with my Tab so it's not fully setup, but once i've got it back to normal I'm going to test Cifsmanager and see if it's the missing link to the issues I've had with getting mkv's to stream.
pvtjoker42 said:
see, my whole thing is I don't want to run some extra server software just to have this work. I've got a networked media box (Patriot Box Office) and it plays everything over my network flawlessly from my NFS and SMB shares, and I want to be able to do the same thing from my Epic and Tab (mostly Tab with the bigger screen.) Working on some dev stuff with my Tab so it's not fully setup, but once i've got it back to normal I'm going to test Cifsmanager and see if it's the missing link to the issues I've had with getting mkv's to stream.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cifs works with samba. Don't know if you knew that or not.
Cd's or tapes?
pvtjoker42 said:
see, my whole thing is I don't want to run some extra server software just to have this work. I've got a networked media box (Patriot Box Office) and it plays everything over my network flawlessly from my NFS and SMB shares, and I want to be able to do the same thing from my Epic and Tab (mostly Tab with the bigger screen.) Working on some dev stuff with my Tab so it's not fully setup, but once i've got it back to normal I'm going to test Cifsmanager and see if it's the missing link to the issues I've had with getting mkv's to stream.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
schnowdapowda said:
Cifs works with samba. Don't know if you knew that or not.
Cd's or tapes?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, and with ordinary Windows shares.
CifsManager is one of the best pieces of software I've put on my Epic. And I have A LOT of stuff...
Shinydude100 said:
By the stock Video Player, did you mean on Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android, Samsung player that comes with the Epic.
For windows, I swear by CorePlayer. I'd buy it all over again full price if they'd add Android to their platforms (with HW acceleration, of course).
formula84 said:
Check or something called Plex its great, I used orb for years and was never happy with playback...Plex is amazing and the android app is awesome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going to find it and try it out right after I finish posting this.
I've been using Orb for years, and it has always had its issues. With Android, it became a major PITA because they only transcode to WM9 as of 6 months or so ago -- and WM codec support on Android is scant.
Great thread. Love this type of info. I've been messing with streamin off and on to my epic and this just pretty much sums up what I've been trying to do. Gonna go try that now...
Thanks!
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Do I need to be rooted to mount my shares with cifs?
Also, can you recommend a tutorial or software for ripping my dvd collection to my storage server?
As a side note I am pretty happy with twonky for music dlna solution.
Thanks
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App
Does anyone know how to play mediacenter tv recordings in my htpc on epic?
Tried orb but didn't like the quality.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
PlayOn is amaaaazing. But it's 70 bucks to get it forever. You can stream out of your network over 3g/wifi to your Android and it look great! Even does subtitles. For my PC or PS3 I love PS3 Media Server. It's pretty much perfect and streams HD over WIFI G even.
sethlo said:
Do I need to be rooted to mount my shares with cifs?
Also, can you recommend a tutorial or software for ripping my dvd collection to my storage server?
As a side note I am pretty happy with twonky for music dlna solution.
Thanks
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, Cifsmanager requires root AND a cifs compatible kernel
I run Windows Home Server .v1 and have tried multiple combinations of players/clients without a whole lot of success.. until recently. Movies are in .mp4 and .mkv format. I use UPnPlay for access and MoboPlayer for streaming playback; the combination works great! I have tested on a rooted Nook, rooted Hauwei Ideos S7, Evo Shift (Not rooted.. Darn 2.3.3!), and my rooted Epic.
Related
can someone try to work on ps3 media server settings ,on the fly trans coding maybe is better option then changing whole library of movies.It work for xbox maybe its gonna work on transformer
# ps3mediaserver renderer profile for Android
# Refer to PS3.conf for help
RendererName=Android
RendererIcon=android.png
UserAgentSearch=Android
Video=true
Audio=true
Image=true
SeekByTime=false
TranscodeVideo=MPEGAC3
TranscodeAudio=MP3
DefaultVBVBufSize=true
MuxH264ToMpegTS=true
MuxDTSToMpeg=true
WrapDTSIntoPCM=false
MuxLPCMToMpeg=true
MaxVideoBitrateMbps=0
MaxVideoWidth=0
MaxVideoHeight=0
TranscodeExtensions=
StreamExtensions=hdmov,hdm,flac,fla,dts,ogg,asf,asx,m2v,mkv
it wont work. the only thing you can transcode too is mpeg2 which the transformer cant do over upnp. mp4 cant be live streamed over upnp only over rtsp or rtmp, if you really want live transcoding look at vlc media player and vlc s+c for android. it takes a lot of tweaking but does work.
can you provide some more information about the transcode capabilities such as the lackof mpeg streaming
SangreSlayer said:
can you provide some more information about the transcode capabilities such as the lackof mpeg streaming
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have had no problems streaming mpeg2 even to the native player with Mediatomb. In fact, you can directly play mpeg2 files from an internet site (internet archive) if you have enough bandwidth. Even the matroska format will stream, although without sound and at an unpredictable framerate. Still, I think that problem is on the encoding side.
So what your saying is you can transcode with PS3 media server?
IE: if you were to take a video gotten from a generic source, lets say via bittorrent you can stream that with the PS3 media server?
Any video I try does not work. it only works if I transcode it with handbrake first.
any tips would be greatly appreciated.
SangreSlayer said:
So what your saying is you can transcode with PS3 media server?
IE: if you were to take a video gotten from a generic source, lets say via bittorrent you can stream that with the PS3 media server?
Any video I try does not work. it only works if I transcode it with handbrake first.
any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I was you I would go and get a WD media player. They go for about 60-90 bucks. I used the PS3 for about a year and I gave up. Mkv is not support on ps3 media server. Videos that it cant play you're pc will need to transcode before sending it over to your display. I ended up getting a dedicated media player. There are tons to choose from. WD, boxee, popcorn hour and dune players. No issues streaming 20-30GB blu ray movies when I had the WD player. PS3 sucks for streaming IMHO.
Actually, mpeg2 can be streamed over upnp.
Try this:
Code:
# ps3mediaserver renderer profile for Android
# Refer to PS3.conf for help
RendererName=Android
RendererIcon=android.png
UserAgentSearch=Android
Video=true
Audio=true
Image=true
SeekByTime=false
TranscodeVideo=MPEGAC3
TranscodeAudio=MP3
DefaultVBVBufSize=true
MuxH264ToMpegTS=false
MuxDTSToMpeg=false
WrapDTSIntoPCM=false
MuxLPCMToMpeg=false
MaxVideoBitrateMbps=0
MaxVideoWidth=0
MaxVideoHeight=0
TranscodeExtensions=
StreamExtensions=
frosty5689 said:
Actually, mpeg2 can be streamed over upnp.
Try this:
Code:
# ps3mediaserver renderer profile for Android
# Refer to PS3.conf for help
RendererName=Android
RendererIcon=android.png
UserAgentSearch=Android
Video=true
Audio=true
Image=true
SeekByTime=false
TranscodeVideo=MPEGAC3
TranscodeAudio=MP3
DefaultVBVBufSize=true
MuxH264ToMpegTS=false
MuxDTSToMpeg=false
WrapDTSIntoPCM=false
MuxLPCMToMpeg=false
MaxVideoBitrateMbps=0
MaxVideoWidth=0
MaxVideoHeight=0
TranscodeExtensions=
StreamExtensions=
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Though it should be worth noting UPnPlay doesn't send a "streaming end" HTTP header to the UPNP server, so after you play one video PS3 media server doesn't know you stopped watching the video and will be stuck in the "streaming mode", causing any other video not to load until you restart PS3 Media Server. This problem only persists iwth PMS, Serviio works fine if you set the transcoding profile. I wish PMS worked as it is the only Server with full softsub support.
Edit: Opps accidentally pressed "Quote" instead of edit...
Just wanted to make sure i am trying with the same player as you.
I am using the "my Net" and selecting the ps3 media server from there.
With the new settings, when I go to play it it just hangs with "please Wait" previously it would just immediately end with "fail to load"
SangreSlayer said:
Just wanted to make sure i am trying with the same player as you.
I am using the "my Net" and selecting the ps3 media server from there.
With the new settings, when I go to play it it just hangs with "please Wait" previously it would just immediately end with "fail to load"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you edit Android.conf with my profile and then restarted the server? Also, use Upnplay combined with MoboPlayer.
I did edit the file with your settings and restart the server. Will download Upbplay (already have mobo installed).
Update in a few minutes
That does seem to work. I am able to play non HD videos.
I was able to play different video's back to back without restarting, I tested with three different videos, watch 1 min of each.
I tested out a topgear episode that is 720p. My PC says its being trans-coded, but moboplayer just says "loading". After 1.5 minutes i cancelled out by going "home"
I then restarted the PS3 media server and reloaded upnplay and tried the video again. my PC still says transcoding and serving but mobo is stuck on loading.
Under Transcoding settings, i don't have Avisynth/FFmpeg or Avisynth/Mencoder available as they are marked red if that means anything
Any suggestions?
Thanks for being so helpful. I really appreciate it.
I know this post is asking about ps3 media server, and I have tried to use it also, but what I have found is a media server called PLEX, there is a mac/windows/even Linux server version, then you get the client on the app store for $5. I can not believe how well this app allows me to stream VOB/MKV/MPG,etc, and it allows me to do this all the way up to HIGH PROFILE 1080p MKV, oh and it also allows me to do this on a remote wifi connection or even on 3g, it really is amazing what these guys have pulled together. The other HUGE plus is it is a branch off of XBMC, so you have the same similar interface with all scraping, etc automatically, it can also do music and supports plugins. Anyways I would suggest you try it, server is free to download, and the app is so worth the measly $5, just suggest you get the server all setup and working before you buy the app. but even if you don;t like it the plex team will refund your money if you are not happy so there is really no remorse checking it out. Hope this helps, I am off to watch a 1080p high profile mkv on my transformer >
I think OP is trying to get PMS working so he can watch media on his PS3 too without running 2 servers. As to why HD vids don't play, maybe it didn't detect the need to transcode it, I need to look into this again after exam's over (maybe that'll explain why my videos didn't play properly when I tested), feel free to use the PS3.conf and try different things. It doesn't matter if you have ffdshow/avisynth, it uses bundled mencoder to re-encode. All that matters i that your PC can play the video fine in DirectShow players like Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, Zoom Player.
I tried the above .conf file settings and still when running an HD video
it won't limit the video size
is there a way to transcode down into say
800x480
I tried this
MaxVideoWidth=800
MaxVideoHeight=480
RobH79: Thanks for the information. So far I am most of the the way to my end goal. The last hold out being the 720p video's.
I believe the OP (like myself) do not want to run 2x renders, one for the PS3, one for the tablet.
Frosty:
The video does play fine on my PC using VLC but not with Windows media player ( I anticipate this is why all my below troubleshooting did nothing based upon your last response.)
I have done some more testing and tried a few different settings in the config, such as
MaxVideoWidth=800
MaxVideoHeight=600
and MaxVideoBitrateMbps=3
so far nothing has worked.
The video does play fine on my PC using VLC. I still see PS3 Media Server using the transcoding buffer, and Mencoder is using varying amounts of CPU and the java memory size is increasing as time goes on (I assume filling up the buffer)
**Update Since I started typing**
I went to: http://matroska.org/technical/guides/playback/windows/index.html and found out that i needed the CCCP pack, i usually dont install it on my system from a bad experience many years ago.
However I installed it and now it plays fine in windows media player.
I loaded up PS3 Media server and tried streaming again from my tablet...
And no luck, same issue as before. I went through all the other variations of the tweaks above and also no luck.
Any other suggestions?
I also tried to get myNet working, but i found this.
myNet uses AwoX as UserAgent name. So copy Android.conf and rename the file and change from:
UserAgentSearch=Android
to
UserAgentSearch=AwoX
But all upnp clients that you can download in the market use Android.conf. I know so far that only AVIs/WMV are working. However no MKVs.
ok... just my 2 cents
I have a tonido plug running ubuntun 9.04 and mediatomb as a server, no transcoding eneabled.
I installed UPnPlay from market as a upnp renderer (audio only, but support to stream video with external palyer)
I got DicePlayer (paid app) and am able to stream mkv, avi, mov, mp4 containers, even some movies that have srt or sub subtitles, however if I connect my tablet to a TV via HDMI I only get the video and not the subs... MyNet app gives a lot of trouble working with m3u playlists and can only render a file at a time, meaning if you want to play continous audio/viedo you need to go one by one manually.
So far I'm happy with this setup, planning on upgragind my local WLAN to "N" standard byt so far 54gb are good, not exellent
On the down side, I haven't got the time to tweak mediatomb to present in a convinient way video files, it throws everything regardless of the folder structure you have on the server hard disk
Edit, if you know how to hard encode and stream subtitles info is appreciated, also if you know to send subs via HDMI to tv I'll be grateful
Im kind of let down by the lack of video support. I have RockPlayer and MoboPlayer and Ive tried every UPNP app in the market. Music works great, no problems there, but video support is hit or miss (usually miss). I cant really put HD videos onto a 16GB ssd can I?
And whats the point of Flash if half the sites give me a "device not supported" warning? I may as well be browsing on my PS3.
Anyone have any suggestions? Ive used 2player, upnplayer, skifta, andromote and nothing works consistently
You can use the mynet application. It does upnp streaming.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA Premium App
I still have no idea how to stream videos or ebooks on this thing. Can someone write a small dummy's guide please.
here it's also a conundrum
I've read on e few places they use the MyNet from asus to view the movies
but on my Tf it only shows the music found on my upNp device no Photo's or vids...(even on the photo tab it's showing my music)
It's running on a WD myBook and that is running TwonkyServer, if I browse to it via a file explorer the file gets copied/cached so no streaming ...
So is the twonky to blame or the TF....
moo99 said:
Im kind of let down by the lack of video support. I have RockPlayer and MoboPlayer and Ive tried every UPNP app in the market. Music works great, no problems there, but video support is hit or miss (usually miss). I cant really put HD videos onto a 16GB ssd can I?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I put my video on a 32GB microsd. If you are trying to watch HD content that has issues fitting in 16GB then the bitrate is going to be too high to play anyway. Please remember that not long ago a 3ghz Pentium4 was having issues playing h.264 high profile well, this is the order of magnitude of the work we're expecting the Tegra2 GPU to do.
Since 3.1 I grab HD content from iPlayer and it generally weighs in at 800mb per hour, at that rate I can fill my Transformer with ~30hrs of video and still have plenty of space for music. I leave all the internal storage for apps and cache.
moo99 said:
And whats the point of Flash if half the sites give me a "device not supported" warning? I may as well be browsing on my PS3.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have never seen such a warning, I assume you're trying to use the locked-down US video sites like Hulu? Blame them,, they are choosing to lock out your device.
SilentMobius said:
Since 3.1 I grab HD content from iPlayer and it generally weighs in at 800mb per hour, at that rate I can fill my Transformer with ~30hrs of video and still have plenty of space for music. I leave all the internal storage for apps and cache.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would you mind sharing how you do this? Are you using the iPlayer desktop Windpows program and stripping out the DRM or are you using some other method to watch iPlayer downloads on your TF? The iPlayer Android App doesn't work well with Honeycomb and I'd love to be able to watch BBC programmes offline while I'm away from home.
Thanks!
watch videos : mobo/rockplayer + upnplay rocks.
For anyone struggling with the rubbish Mynet app and similar streaming solutions, I can recommend Plex (http://www.plexapp.com/)
The Media Server is free and built on XBMC tech, so managed media flawlessly, and the app allows you to stream video/ music from your home computer to anywhere you like. Even works without stutter with HD MKVs.
funkybudda said:
For anyone struggling with the rubbish Mynet app and similar streaming solutions, I can recommend Plex (http://www.plexapp.com/)
The Media Server is free and built on XBMC tech, so managed media flawlessly, and the app allows you to stream video/ music from your home computer to anywhere you like. Even works without stutter with HD MKVs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just want a good upnp client which allows streaming like upnplay. I don't want to install a new server on my nas.
funkybudda said:
For anyone struggling with the rubbish Mynet app and similar streaming solutions, I can recommend Plex (http://www.plexapp.com/)
The Media Server is free and built on XBMC tech, so managed media flawlessly, and the app allows you to stream video/ music from your home computer to anywhere you like. Even works without stutter with HD MKVs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
plex works very well...and it has impressed many of my friends.
I will check out Plex I guess. I know Im whining but Ive got a 2TB HDD that I keep my media on and transferring over every half gig HD video is foreign to me - my wifes windows laptop and my ps3 gladly stream it. Mynet works fine for music but doesnt work at all for most videos.
Yes, I was trying to get into NBc.com and hulu, but really, why do I have a different version of flash from windows and mac desktops? Not being able to alter my Browsers User agent string isnt helping either. I know Im just *****ing and I do appreciate al your comments. Youreright on every note, but honeycomb seems a step behind a ormal OS despite looking the same
There is a thread here on the requirements for encoding your videos for the TF. The TF cannot play RAW Bluray rips if that is what you are trying to do. Acutally no tablet will at the moment. You're only alternative is to get a transcoding streamer like VLC and VLC stream and convert, or tversity pro. I have not tried plex. The issue is that mp4 can only be streamed if the file is complete OR over RTSP/RTMP. I have used VLC but the video quality is pretty bad.
For mpeg-2(DVD) i use upnplay + Rockplayer and it works flawlessly.
I've tried the all (Plex included) and settled on upnplay + moboplayer
Based on advice in this thread, I tried Plex last night. The Plex app plays FLAC music just as well as the stock player, and the honeycomb presentation is good, they really enriched the content, although presentation is nowhere near the awesome stock music player UI feel. Video was good, although it was SD avi stuff on my network. No stuterring and no lag, very very responsive. Some odd behaviors at times, and the media scan has a couple of issues. They are supporting it though.
I uninstalled Mobo, Rock and UPnPlay, and shutdown Windows media connect service on my Atom-based W2K3 home server, and removed the Asus MyNet widget. UPNPlay and DLNA are great concepts, but the Asus implementation only supports what Mirosoft supports (meaning no FLAC). Google music will transcode my FLAC for storage. I got into android because of all these restrictions.
Plex did everything right, in one package, with honeycomb widescreen. Well worth my 5 bucks.
Just posting mainly to get this to the top of Google if anyone else ever does similar searches to me. The Galaxy Tab's AllShare app (so I assume this also holds for the Galaxy S, Vibrant, and all the other devices that are appearing in the "similar threads we found" prompt as I post this) expects MKVs to be supplied with a mimetype of mkv/x-msvideo. If not, whatever DNLA software you're using, you'll get the unsupported format error. I've just spent the day yesterday wading through every DNLA server known to man trying to get streamed MKVs working. The only combination I've found that works is Twonky plus editing its clients.db file to modify the mimetype of MKVs. Once done, streaming MKVs works a treat.
Hope this is useful to someone in the future (probably incoming people from Google!)
I've actually got .mkvs to stream via "VLC Direct", along with VLC open with a web interface. This works over 3g, but depends heavily on your upstream. You can use this program as a VLC remote for your PC too, as well as stream videos from your tab to your PC.
Loccy
you supposed right, I'm in the same situation with a Galaxy s..
I think this is one of the very few features i really miss right now, having Allshare (or similar) capable of streaming mkv's from a server to the phone
Later today i'll try stekum's solution, i will consider paying the pro version if it works just fine, even if it requires a server side software (that's why i still prefer "regular" pc's over nas).
I've also read about PlugPlayer app. I might give it a try, anyone already did?
I don't mind not having a fancy graphic interface, so i tried EsExplorer over LAN, but with no sucess.. anyone knows if there's a player/file browser wich could handle mkv over lan?
Cheers
I had xvid and mkv's streaming over wifi on my network via SMB shares before I wiped and installed my current rom. Now i've got xvid working, but no matter what combo i try mkv's will not stream.. Thinking about going back to stock to see if the same settings work again to stream mkv's. I'm using a combo of file expert + vplayer. rockplayer seems to try and play streaming mkv's.. but it fails at it (will play, but they are unwatchable)
The thing to remember is that the Tab stock ROM, or those based on stock (eg. Overcome) actually have support for hardware decoding of MKVs in the stock player. Anything that is seen as an MKV file is fine - I suspect the internal mimetype for MKVs is the same as AVIs, so that's why SMB works (although I was never able to get my wifi to push data fast enough to the tab to make that combo work). The internal player treats AVIs and MKVs on the local filesystem identically. SMB shares are mounted on the local filesystem, so when you open an MKV, the OS says "ooh, mkv/x-msvideo" and the player says "great, an AVI file, I can play that". Non stock ROMs don't have that MKV support - in fact most Android flavours don't, as I've found recently with a cheaply 10" tab I bought recently to take over the Galaxy as my video device.
When you get into DNLA it's the server that supplies the mimetype for the file. As most DNLA servers supply the "correct" mimetype for MKV AllShare doesn't know recognise the file type, and (incorrectly) reports that it can't play the file. So if you're using DNLA you MUST modify the mimetype the server sends for MKV.
The VLC solution is fine, but is transcoding, so what you're getting is not actually an MKV at all.
Twonky was the only DNLA server I managed to do this with without similarly resorting to transcoding.
Could you guide us please which section of the clients.db did you modify?
Sent from my GT-P1000 using Tapatalk
a parse of your clients.db would be awesome, tried changing mimetype for Android and samsung TV (added a mkv line to Android and modded the other) No luck
I'm running twonky on my headless ubuntu server if that means anything
edit:
I changed the media reciever in the webinterface to Android and made the android settings in clients.db look like this:
NA:Android
HH:Android
DB:AUTO
WB:webbrowse-n95
TP:MP4,-relocate_moov
MT:mkv video/x-msvideo
after that i can play most of my mkv files, so i guess i got it working.
Ok, I've tried many solutions and combinations so far in my galaxy s .. nothing worked except for VLC DIRECT, as steckums suggested.
I haven't tried twonky yet though..from what loccy explained i can see it still needs an application running server side... i was hoping for something like allshare..but hey we can't have it all
Thanks Loccy and Psymon for the hint, i'll install twonky on the server and see if it works for me..
p.s. with such a little screen i couldn't notice a big loss of quality when VLC streamed, transcoding, my test movie. Maybe with tabs it is different
braz+ said:
Ok, I've tried many solutions and combinations so far in my galaxy s .. nothing worked except for VLC DIRECT, as steckums suggested.
I haven't tried twonky yet though..from what loccy explained i can see it still needs an application running server side... i was hoping for something like allshare..but hey we can't have it all
Thanks Loccy and Psymon for the hint, i'll install twonky on the server and see if it works for me..
p.s. with such a little screen i couldn't notice a big loss of quality when VLC streamed, transcoding, my test movie. Maybe with tabs it is different
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your in for treat if you can get it working. Simply play the same file one after the other in the respective format and you instantly appreciate that the higher the resolution the crisper and more vibrant the video quality and watchability (not real work I know) regardless off screen size. The only caveat being the original capture equipment used and post production ect.
My question for this in the know is this; my understanding (basic as it may well be) is that mkv can also handle more colours simultaneously and has the ability to display a much larger range overall. Firstly is this correct? Or reserved for vc1 or blueray and the upper echelon of displays? If correct by changing the mime does this, as would be logical, mean the extra bits are ignored as it believes its a simple avi. Also I find 720p HD avi is the happy middle for me and it can be as complicated to achieve good playback and battery life even using these. I think I may just do some research re the mime difference between regular and HD avi... thank you for the tips... most timely considering the impending awesomeness of BOCA v2.0 . Cheers guys..
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Loccy said:
The thing to remember is that the Tab stock ROM, or those based on stock (eg. Overcome) actually have support for hardware decoding of MKVs in the stock player. Anything that is seen as an MKV file is fine - I suspect the internal mimetype for MKVs is the same as AVIs, so that's why SMB works (although I was never able to get my wifi to push data fast enough to the tab to make that combo work). The internal player treats AVIs and MKVs on the local filesystem identically. SMB shares are mounted on the local filesystem, so when you open an MKV, the OS says "ooh, mkv/x-msvideo" and the player says "great, an AVI file, I can play that". Non stock ROMs don't have that MKV support - in fact most Android flavours don't, as I've found recently with a cheaply 10" tab I bought recently to take over the Galaxy as my video device.
When you get into DNLA it's the server that supplies the mimetype for the file. As most DNLA servers supply the "correct" mimetype for MKV AllShare doesn't know recognise the file type, and (incorrectly) reports that it can't play the file. So if you're using DNLA you MUST modify the mimetype the server sends for MKV.
The VLC solution is fine, but is transcoding, so what you're getting is not actually an MKV at all.
Twonky was the only DNLA server I managed to do this with without similarly resorting to transcoding.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd still be inclined to suggest perhaps its a little more involved than a simple trick like that. To achieve real hardware acceleration you would need to split the streams to be piped to respective chips. 5.1 faux surround soumd and a distinct, noticeable difference in the mkv picture quality being played via CPU vs true gpu and sound card decoding with the rather large differences in battery drain and the sharpness and vivid colours the rest make me really think there is a little sophisticated trickery going on here than meets the eye.
A haalil media splitting like service would also need to know to hand then differently. I think it just plays xvid but like xdva or whatever its obliged to to split the streams for their respective processing chips/centres avoiding CPU usage as an extremely important requirement. Simply the CPU would be more involved in the distribution side in regular stuff than the files like x264 and vc1 which are the gpu/hardware accelerated/decoded files.
Could be wrong here honestly not an expert but that's how I have always broken it down when try to wrap my head around it all.
So sleepy.. prolly oodles of sleeping (heh or even spelling) mistakes but they will have wait to be dealt with at a later date. Any resources that you may know of I'd be interested in learning more too. :-D
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joshuaauger said:
http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/issues/detail?id=486
Comment #4:
MimeTypesChanges=audio/wav=audio/L16|video/x-matroska=video/avi
Added that to my android.conf on ps3mediaserver. Works for mkv!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Grand will try that, just used mono or vlc for this though and had no issues but always nice to have alternative.
But I end up downloading the file as get great wifi in the house it serves me the best but will definitely try this out next weekend.
Was looking at upgrading the media server in here and transcocing is fine most of the time but.....
HELP!?!?!
Can you put this in stupid plain English??? I'm having the same problem but don't understand how or what to download/change/update... Tx
I know this is old, but as this is the first google result, a hint from the Playback creators, "Samsung TV users have reported mkv streaming working... If you just rename the file .avi instead of .mkv". It's a mime type issue, so just get around it by lying
I worked for me. File didn't play as .mkv, just renamed it. I bet the allshare app can be hacked to fix the mimetype issue, assuming it's in plaintext string, but why bother.
Same for flv videos.
Hi all.
Am having trouble with using files streamed from my Twonky UPnP server, which worked fine on my old Galaxy Tab 7".
As I understand it, the new Tabs still support Divx playback in hardware out of the box - and if I lob an xvid on the internal storage it plays fine in the internal player.
If, however, I attempt to use AllShare to browse my Twonky server and play an xvid, I get "unsupported file format". If I use an alternate UPnP browser app, the files find their way to the video player app but don't play - I get a frame and a burst of sound every ten seconds or so. If I use an alternate UPnP app AND an alternate video player with software rendering, it all works fine - but obviously I'd prefer to use the default player and/or get the benefit of hardware rendering for battery life etc.
Same story with MKVs too - except the software player doesn't have enough grunt to play these, so I'm doubly stuffed on those files with no workaround.
Has anyone got the AllShare/Divx combo working on the new Tabs? If so, how, and using which UPnP server?
Loccy said:
Hi all.
<SNIP>
Has anyone got the AllShare/Divx combo working on the new Tabs? If so, how, and using which UPnP server?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AllShare does not work for me as well for video. However, BubbleUPNP and DicePlayer works (with TVersity as the DLNA server).
In fact, it seems to be the ONLY combo that works and believe me, I tried them all!
The best combination I have found for stable and hardware accelerated playback on the Tab 10.1 is:
1. Skifta application as a DLNA client.
2. DicePlayer + DicePlayer Tegra 2 plugin application for playback.
Thanks guys. Didn't think of Diceplayer, had tried pretty much everything else on the market but had given up and assumed nothing had functioning Tegra2 acceleration. Twonky plus Bubble plus Dice for the win - works nice for xvid. Tried an MKV but it was a bit laggy - although it could have been a 1080p, need to check. However, most of my use cases are for xvid playback so pretty happy.
By the way, my tab is an 8.9, but figured that info nugget wasn't relevant at the initial point
I use BSPlayer and regular LAN shares. I have twonky on my NAS, but I always find it easier to navigate a file structure.
siggehandf said:
I use BSPlayer and regular LAN shares. I have twonky on my NAS, but I always find it easier to navigate a file structure.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Another player I didn't know about - guess I was spoiled by how well the old 7" tab handled video in the stock player. And another nice recommendation - many thanks.
On the Diceplayer front, has anyone got any 720 mkvs running acceptably? The file I tried earlier was a 720. Truth be told it wasn't much better on Dice over UPnP than it was over BS over a network share. Would have expected Dice to destroy BS in terms of performance, what with BS using software decoding over the network.
I have a couple of questions about streaming your own content, rather than Amazon's, to the Fire that I'm hoping someone who has one can answer for me.
Can you stream content you upload to Amazon's content locker (5 GB free, or pay for more)? Is that limited to music or do videos work too? If so, what is the streaming quality like?
Can you stream content to the Fire over your home network, from a media server? If so, what kind of infrastructure and app support do you need?
Could you stream from a Wifi-enabled external drive, like a Seagate Satellite or a Kingston WiDrive?
I'm hoping the answer to one or more of these questions is yes, which will go a long way towards ameliorating the 6 GB usable internal storage. It's kind of sad considering my phone has 32 GB (16 internal and a 16 GB micro SD card).
The KF specs only lists MP4 and VP8 for video formats, which is standard for Android 2.3. As for 3rd-party video players, per Engadget review, "Amazon's own media players work well, but third party ones that offered better compatibility with file formats universally did not."
one word - Skifta
The Skifta app is working great for me on the fire - and available in the amazon app store to boot. no hacking required and it's free.
Skifta.com
I choose my NAS w/some m4v files (encoded w/handbrake for atv2) as the source, my fire as the player, then it lets me browse, play, stream over 802.11 in my house.
You can stream your stuff to your phone using Emit. It's in the Amazon marketplace so no sideloading.
https://www.emitapp.com/
Thanks for the tips, I'll check out those apps as soon as I have my home NAS running again!
I can also answer one of my questions now that I have my Fire in hand:
Can you stream content you upload to Amazon's content locker (5 GB free, or pay for more)? Is that limited to music or do videos work too? If so, what is the streaming quality like?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apparently you get unlimited storage for your own MP3s in Amazon's Cloud Player and they work great. Streaming quality is quite good. Haven't tried videos, books, or documents in the 5 GB space yet.
Cool note about Skifta I forgot to mention...is that it's DLNA certified. In other words, if you already have DLNA video devices, it works great with them without having to add new servers and such.
(in my case, my NAS does DLNA out of the box so it just finds it and works) - think they also have a mini server for PC/MAC if you don't already have one.
+1 for Skifta. Works great for me.
Emit works awesomely! realtime encodes the files on demand and streams it. much better than what i was going to do (open up a aws account with e3 and cloudfront, and have a website for all my stuff after hand encoding all my media to mp4... ... ... ya...)
thnks kernodle
robopanda333 said:
Emit works awesomely! realtime encodes the files on demand and streams it. much better than what i was going to do (open up a aws account with e3 and cloudfront, and have a website for all my stuff after hand encoding all my media to mp4... ... ... ya...)
thnks kernodle
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you know if it can re-encode and stream mkv files and make them work on the Fire?
e.mote said:
The KF specs only lists MP4 and VP8 for video formats, which is standard for Android 2.3. As for 3rd-party video players, per Engadget review, "Amazon's own media players work well, but third party ones that offered better compatibility with file formats universally did not."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Engadget made too many assumptions in that statement '3rd party players ....universally did not'. This is inaccurate. The VLC Media Player (alpha) and Mobo Video Player Pro do many formats. Mobo works well and is smooth playing. VLC is still in alpha, but once final one is launched it will be more capable. VLC can play 1080P WMV, but is a bit choppy due to no hardware video acceleration optimizations incorporated in this early version. There are other players on the market that should work with the Fire if these two do.
Go flex satellite
Sideloaded goflex app and rockplayer app and streaming from the satellite hdd is working on the Fire.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned PlayOn. It's free if you just use the local media streaming part of it, and it works really well. I have it on my Droid Incredible, PS3, Wii and on my KF, and I can stream remotely as well (even via 3G).
Unfortunately, it's PC only, and it's needs at least a dual core to run well.
sl0ttedpig said:
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned PlayOn. It's free if you just use the local media streaming part of it, and it works really well. I have it on my Droid Incredible, PS3, Wii and on my KF, and I can stream remotely as well (even via 3G).
Unfortunately, it's PC only, and it's needs at least a dual core to run well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 : PlayOn is awesome. I use it currently with my Windows Home Server to stream to PS3, iPhone and Nexus S.
I just want to be able to put on some mkv files without re-encoding so I can watch on the plane.
shaxs said:
Do you know if it can re-encode and stream mkv files and make them work on the Fire?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes it takes my avis and mkvs and converts on the fly. bigger files will have to "load" a little bit because of that. you can also tel it to preencode files. all the settings are what the device asks for too, so if you decide you want a different resolution, just change it in the options. i really love it.
goodness noone mentioned subsonic?
http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp
stream music via app may need to sideload it(although its in amazon approval process still)
u can also use browser version for video streaming and it supports full screen i have a subsonic server setup on my home lan with all my music/movies (5Tb) now accessible anywhere with subsonic on my fire
best solution imho and if u happen to be handy with rss feeds for your content u desire u got yourself a much better solution then anythign amazon can put out and faster