LinuxMCE Forums

General => Users => Topic started by: tschak909 on August 29, 2008, 01:21:34 am

Title: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: tschak909 on August 29, 2008, 01:21:34 am
Hopefully this needs no introduction, all explanation is done in the video.

Have fun watching...
-Thom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmCLm4pIIUg

Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: niz23 on August 29, 2008, 08:37:02 am
TSCHAK.

Great.
After some research I feel that Mediatomb is better than fuppes in many ways.
One thing, the author of fuppes is missing. At least according to fuppes forums. Because of that there is a fork named fuppex which aim to develop fuppes further and as soon as the author get back (been missing since early 2008) they will merge everything back.

Second, Fuppes lack metadata support. Even in latest fuppex trunk it cannot handle metadata. At least not for my PS3.

Third, integration possibilities.
With fuppes you only have a sqllite backend. No easy way to integrate against lmce unless we can write some code that hook into fuppes to add/remove data from lmce. Have done some research on that and believe I know were we can add it but I cannot figure out how lmce retrieve media info from its database. Is it through dcerouter communication (command 401 or datagrid) or do orbiters use direct mysql connections through dbwrapper?

For MediaTomb:
*Support transcoding (fuppes do too).
*Have ajax based webui.
*Can present streams as upnp/dlna media.
  Mean we can add a lmce media streamer and present that stream through upnp/dlna. Sees liveTV on my PS3 in the future controlled by an orbiter.
*Support mysql and sqllite as backend with a common storage class. We can derive existing mysql functionality and modify it to talk to lmce 
 database instead. I believe we have a lot more metadata than mediatomb store so it should work. This way we don´t need to write any sync code
 between upnp and lmce. Need to investigate this further.

I wonder what the upnp control point actually do? If I understand it right the control point is about controlling external upnp aware hardware.
Which mean it should be possible to remotely trigger media playing on an N8x0, PS3 etc.


Steps to implement for mediatomb (as I see):
1. Modify existing mysql storage class to talk to lmce db instead.
    Use lmce as master. Mean no way to add media via mediatomb webui.
    Only media and video. No playlist support.
1b. Enhance profile detection to support devices that need transcoding better.
2. Playlist support
3. Possibility to add media through tomb webui.

Maybe hard to understand all above. Did my best to explain it in english.
/niz23
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: tschak909 on August 29, 2008, 01:42:49 pm
while i do agree looking at other media engines is a good thing, what i do NOT want, is having to go into ANOTHER web admin to do my work, and if I hear talk like that again, i'm going to start bashing heads..

The singular point should be to have UPnP as an adaptor, and have it push things out as needed directly from our database...maybe this will require us to write our own server.. or we adapt what's already out there and rip out most of its associated web UI...

he who writes the code first, comes up with the rules...

-Thom
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: totallymaxed on August 30, 2008, 11:45:09 am
Hopefully this needs no introduction, all explanation is done in the video.

Have fun watching...
-Thom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmCLm4pIIUg



Canola is very cool indeed :-)

I had to make the following changes to get fuppes working though;

I needed to edit /etc/fuppes/fuppes.cfg and add the following lines to get my content visible;

Code: [Select]
<shared_objects>
    <!--LMCE-->
    <dir>/home/public/data/audio</dir>
    <dir>/home/public/data/videos</dir>
    <dir>/home/public/data/pictures</dir>
    <!--<itunes>/Users/.../iTunes.xml</itunes>-->
  </shared_objects>
  <network>
    <!--empty = automatic detection-->
    <interface>192.168.80.1</interface>

Then restart fuppes with;

Quote
/etc/init.d/fuppes restart<return>

Then go to Web Admin and use fuppes options->Rebuild Database menu option. Now you should be able to use Canola's 'Search servers' icon to browse to your Core and access all your content.

All the best

Andrew
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: tschak909 on August 30, 2008, 05:04:08 pm
oddly, all I had to do was just rebuild the db.... there was already an entry for /home/public/data ...

-Thom
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: totallymaxed on August 30, 2008, 05:28:19 pm
oddly, all I had to do was just rebuild the db.... there was already an entry for /home/public/data ...

-Thom


Weird... I tried that but I still did not see the audio, pictures or videos directories listed. When i added them to the fuppes.cfg explicitly then they appeared and worked fine.

Andrew
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: tschak909 on August 30, 2008, 05:34:35 pm
Now in order to make this work seamlessly, three things need to happen:

(1) Fuppes needs to be rebuilt with video transcoding enabled.
(2) a device profile needs to be made for the Nokia N810 basically shrinking down all file based media types to ipod size and data rate. Ironically, flash video (FLV) output, which is just basic profile h.263.... would work perfectly here.
(3) DVD files need to be pulled, and the largest size title on the image needs to be seeked, found, and transcoded.

If nobody volunteers for this, I'll put this on my list of stuff to do after I finish the MAME plugin bits.

-Thom
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: niz23 on August 31, 2008, 09:46:39 am
TSCHAK.

I´ll take this task as we discussed yesterday.

Have already started to write down what mods need to be done. It´ll be in wiki in a couple of days.
Need to figure out which pluto_media columns to be mapped to which columns in upnp server.

I think I have decided to use MediaTomb to do dlna/upnp services.
It have one big advantage over others. It can play audio/video streams, like the youtube stream plugin that it have.
In the future I see that we can create a stream_plugin for lmce that present audio, video etc to mediatomb and then be able to control which video for example plays on that stream from an orbiter.

/niz23
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: totallymaxed on August 31, 2008, 10:36:52 am
TSCHAK.

I´ll take this task as we discussed yesterday.

Have already started to write down what mods need to be done. It´ll be in wiki in a couple of days.
Need to figure out which pluto_media columns to be mapped to which columns in upnp server.

I think I have decided to use MediaTomb to do dlna/upnp services.
It have one big advantage over others. It can play audio/video streams, like the youtube stream plugin that it have.
In the future I see that we can create a stream_plugin for lmce that present audio, video etc to mediatomb and then be able to control which video for example plays on that stream from an orbiter.

/niz23


So is the decision to go with MediaTomb over fuppes agreed? I have no strong feelings either way... except that I am already somewhat familiar with fuppes.

Andrew
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: bulek on August 31, 2008, 07:38:23 pm
oddly, all I had to do was just rebuild the db.... there was already an entry for /home/public/data ...

-Thom


Weird... I tried that but I still did not see the audio, pictures or videos directories listed. When i added them to the fuppes.cfg explicitly then they appeared and worked fine.

Andrew
FYI, I've just tried Upnp without any modifications on 710 Release and Nokia N800 with latest canola. I only see avwizard-sounds and samples directories - no public... It seems we're really close to this great feature...

Regards,

Bulek.
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: niz23 on August 31, 2008, 08:08:11 pm
totallymaxed.
TSCHAK.

I´ll take this task as we discussed yesterday.

Have already started to write down what mods need to be done. It´ll be in wiki in a couple of days.
Need to figure out which pluto_media columns to be mapped to which columns in upnp server.

I think I have decided to use MediaTomb to do dlna/upnp services.
It have one big advantage over others. It can play audio/video streams, like the youtube stream plugin that it have.
In the future I see that we can create a stream_plugin for lmce that present audio, video etc to mediatomb and then be able to control which video for example plays on that stream from an orbiter.

/niz23


So is the decision to go with MediaTomb over fuppes agreed? I have no strong feelings either way... except that I am already somewhat familiar with fuppes.

Andrew

It depends on how we defined agreed upon.
Me and TSCHAK had a chat about it yesterday and as I have written earlier MediaTomb have several features that fuppes don´t have.
One other thing is that fuppes have been forked into fuppex because the original author is nowhere to be found.
Third, fuppes only support sqlite as backend. MediaTomb support mysql too which will hopefully make the integration seemless.
Fourth, MediaTomb support the concept of relaying streams. For example a youtube video can be transcoded and presented to a upnp/dlna device.

And last but not least. Support for Xbox360 and PS3 is excellent. Actually MediaTomb was the first upnp server that supported PS3 and even support thumbnails for media presented to the PS3 and probably to others too.
This mean we can hopefully take lmce media thumbnails and present it to MT directly.

I´m open for other suggestions but for now I think MT is the best choice and it´s not complicated.

/niz23
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: totallymaxed on August 31, 2008, 08:23:58 pm
oddly, all I had to do was just rebuild the db.... there was already an entry for /home/public/data ...

-Thom


Weird... I tried that but I still did not see the audio, pictures or videos directories listed. When i added them to the fuppes.cfg explicitly then they appeared and worked fine.

Andrew
FYI, I've just tried Upnp without any modifications on 710 Release and Nokia N800 with latest canola. I only see avwizard-sounds and samples directories - no public... It seems we're really close to this great feature...

Regards,

Bulek.

Bulek just follow the simple steps outlined in my earlier post in this thread to get fuppes pointing at your media and you will have a working setup ;-)

Just playing now with MediaTomb on my desktop machine and this looks very impressive indeed I have to say.

All the best

Andrew
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: totallymaxed on September 02, 2008, 01:43:29 pm
totallymaxed.
TSCHAK.

I´ll take this task as we discussed yesterday.

Have already started to write down what mods need to be done. It´ll be in wiki in a couple of days.
Need to figure out which pluto_media columns to be mapped to which columns in upnp server.

I think I have decided to use MediaTomb to do dlna/upnp services.
It have one big advantage over others. It can play audio/video streams, like the youtube stream plugin that it have.
In the future I see that we can create a stream_plugin for lmce that present audio, video etc to mediatomb and then be able to control which video for example plays on that stream from an orbiter.

/niz23


So is the decision to go with MediaTomb over fuppes agreed? I have no strong feelings either way... except that I am already somewhat familiar with fuppes.

Andrew

It depends on how we defined agreed upon.
Me and TSCHAK had a chat about it yesterday and as I have written earlier MediaTomb have several features that fuppes don´t have.
One other thing is that fuppes have been forked into fuppex because the original author is nowhere to be found.
Third, fuppes only support sqlite as backend. MediaTomb support mysql too which will hopefully make the integration seemless.
Fourth, MediaTomb support the concept of relaying streams. For example a youtube video can be transcoded and presented to a upnp/dlna device.

And last but not least. Support for Xbox360 and PS3 is excellent. Actually MediaTomb was the first upnp server that supported PS3 and even support thumbnails for media presented to the PS3 and probably to others too.
This mean we can hopefully take lmce media thumbnails and present it to MT directly.

I´m open for other suggestions but for now I think MT is the best choice and it´s not complicated.

/niz23

Hi Niz,

We agree that MediaTomb looks to be a nicer implementation and seems to have more features implemented currently. We have installed MediaTomb release 0.11.0 on a couple of Core's here now so we can test it. It seems to be working nicely. I notice that one of the options when setting up your media directories is to have 'timed' re-scans or a scan based on iNotify (which is what UpdateMedia uses too) that senses directory changes as they occur.

We seem to be getting MediaTomb to read the embedded id3 data in mp3's ok... but so far it will not display any cover art on an N800 at least. Have you had any success with that?

We can get avi's files to display on the N800 but no other video files seems to display. Again have you got anywhere with these?

All the best

Andrew
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: niz23 on September 02, 2008, 03:38:39 pm
totallymaxed.
Hi Niz,

We agree that MediaTomb looks to be a nicer implementation and seems to have more features implemented currently. We have installed MediaTomb release 0.11.0 on a couple of Core's here now so we can test it. It seems to be working nicely. I notice that one of the options when setting up your media directories is to have 'timed' re-scans or a scan based on iNotify (which is what UpdateMedia uses too) that senses directory changes as they occur.

We seem to be getting MediaTomb to read the embedded id3 data in mp3's ok... but so far it will not display any cover art on an N800 at least. Have you had any success with that?

We can get avi's files to display on the N800 but no other video files seems to display. Again have you got anywhere with these?

All the best

Andrew

Unfortunately I don´t have access to a N8x0.
only a PS3 machine.
Haven´t got thumbnails to work on it yet. It should work according to a several posts on the internet.

Iám using MediaTomb 0.12 (the trunk) since it seem to be a release of it soon. So far no stability problems.
What I´m working on right now is to nail down a couple of bugs (missed features?) in lmce media_plugin.
It seem that there is no code that update "is new?" status for anything other than video files?.
In order to sync files between Mediatomb and lmce I need this to work reliably.

Have some learning to do too. Its pretty hard to understand lmce source code.

By the way you find me most of the time in irc.

/niz23
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: golgoj4 on September 10, 2008, 01:13:38 am
just thought i would toss in my experiences. I just installed the 0.11. release of media tomb and im seeing thumbnails for the audio. I still need to work on the video transcoding though as those show up unsupported.

will post as soon as i get it working and with what settings
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: Monkgs on September 10, 2008, 07:06:49 am
And last but not least. Support for Xbox360 and PS3 is excellent.

/niz23

Just to be clear, Media Tomb does not fully support Xbox 360. It may support audio, but definitely not video.
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: niz23 on September 10, 2008, 08:25:41 am
Demus.
And last but not least. Support for Xbox360 and PS3 is excellent.

/niz23

Just to be clear, Media Tomb does not fully support Xbox 360. It may support audio, but definitely not video.

Are you referring to the upcoming 0.12 version or the existing 0.11?
Don´t have a 360 to test with so I cannot say for sure.
A lot of things for X360 have been added into trunk version.

And mostly. The problem is MS way of implementing thins as ususal.

/niz23
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: Monkgs on September 10, 2008, 10:51:27 am

Are you referring to the upcoming 0.12 version or the existing 0.11?
Don´t have a 360 to test with so I cannot say for sure.
A lot of things for X360 have been added into trunk version.

And mostly. The problem is MS way of implementing thins as ususal.

/niz23

I was simply referring to the documentation from the website. Also the developers have made several posts on the forums indicating that it's far too much work to support the Xbox, and that it won't be happening. Additionally there is no xbox code in the latest development trunk.
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: niz23 on September 10, 2008, 01:32:41 pm
Demus.

Sorry. Have not done my homework good enough and accidentally said.
It is not supported in any way, so far.
And according to the developers it probably will never be unless MS decide to implement something that follow specs.

I was referring to Coherence.
https://coherence.beebits.net/wiki/SupportedDevices

Problem here is what should we support?
Coherence is nice. A python framework for creating UPnP/DLNA servers with.
Pretty complete, but lack transcoding for now. It´s used by "elisa" as their media server.
They are looking into using gtrans for transcoding purposes but no code is comitted yet.


/niz23
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: samuelmukoti on December 13, 2008, 05:48:36 am
Hi,

Just wondering if anyone has made any progress with MediaTomb or Fuppes with regards to transcoding.  I'm really keen to see if i can stream content to the Nokia N810/N800

thanks,

Sam
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: tschak909 on December 13, 2008, 06:25:35 am
we core devs have way too much on our plates atm.

Anybody wanna help out?

-Thom
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: golgoj4 on December 13, 2008, 09:23:29 am
Hi,

Just wondering if anyone has made any progress with MediaTomb or Fuppes with regards to transcoding.  I'm really keen to see if i can stream content to the Nokia N810/N800

thanks,

Sam

What exactly are you trying to transcode? I have very good sucess using the mythTV upnp server as well as fuppes (and thats with a busted config!) with no issues on my ps3. there is pretty good documentation on how to setup custom device profiles as well in their docs. I recommend checking them out. As far as mediatomb, i checked it out but the lack of 360 support makes it a non-starter imo.

If you post what your issues are, i will be more than happy to try and help you figure it out.

From what ive seen in my experience and as tschak has pointed out to me, upnp is pretty sloppy so those making devices make it quite difficult to know exactly what  it specific requirements are. if you check out the fuppes config.

This http://fuppes.ulrich-voelkel.de/wiki/index.php?title=Device_specific_settings  (http://fuppes.ulrich-voelkel.de/wiki/index.php?title=Device_specific_settings)will take you to the project relevant docs.

You can see the specific vs general settings

also, dont miss http://fuppes.ulrich-voelkel.de/wiki/index.php?title=Device_specific_settings#video_transcoding (http://fuppes.ulrich-voelkel.de/wiki/index.php?title=Device_specific_settings#video_transcoding). This version, im assuming is compiled with transcoding support because i didnt need to re-compile. I dont remember if i needed to set the flag, but you can check to see if its enabled by

-going to the webadmin
-from top navigation
    advanced ----> configuration -------> upnp server
-choose 'status' and a list of the configured options will come up.

this list will show you options enabled for filetypes for 'general' devices as well as specific ones. You can check there to see what the options are, and with the links above and knowledge of what your device can handle, create a custom profile if needed.


And check back, maybe if we get more people using the upnp stuff we can compile the config files into one larger one.

BTW vfolder.cfg is a whole other bag of worms i have yet to figure out. im still in the transcoding phase :)
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: samuelmukoti on December 14, 2008, 11:00:48 am
Hi,

Just wondering if anyone has made any progress with MediaTomb or Fuppes with regards to transcoding.  I'm really keen to see if i can stream content to the Nokia N810/N800

thanks,

Sam

What exactly are you trying to transcode? I have very good sucess using the mythTV upnp server as well as fuppes (and thats with a busted config!) with no issues on my ps3. there is pretty good documentation on how to setup custom device profiles as well in their docs. I recommend checking them out. As far as mediatomb, i checked it out but the lack of 360 support makes it a non-starter imo.

If you post what your issues are, i will be more than happy to try and help you figure it out.

From what ive seen in my experience and as tschak has pointed out to me, upnp is pretty sloppy so those making devices make it quite difficult to know exactly what  it specific requirements are. if you check out the fuppes config.

This http://fuppes.ulrich-voelkel.de/wiki/index.php?title=Device_specific_settings  (http://fuppes.ulrich-voelkel.de/wiki/index.php?title=Device_specific_settings)will take you to the project relevant docs.

You can see the specific vs general settings

also, dont miss http://fuppes.ulrich-voelkel.de/wiki/index.php?title=Device_specific_settings#video_transcoding (http://fuppes.ulrich-voelkel.de/wiki/index.php?title=Device_specific_settings#video_transcoding). This version, im assuming is compiled with transcoding support because i didnt need to re-compile. I dont remember if i needed to set the flag, but you can check to see if its enabled by

-going to the webadmin
-from top navigation
    advanced ----> configuration -------> upnp server
-choose 'status' and a list of the configured options will come up.

this list will show you options enabled for filetypes for 'general' devices as well as specific ones. You can check there to see what the options are, and with the links above and knowledge of what your device can handle, create a custom profile if needed.


And check back, maybe if we get more people using the upnp stuff we can compile the config files into one larger one.

BTW vfolder.cfg is a whole other bag of worms i have yet to figure out. im still in the transcoding phase :)


Thank you for your post.  Looked at the Device specific settings and will be playing around with it to try put together a device template for the Nokia N810/N800 - thats were my interest was, most of my videos in my library won't play well on the N810 and would like them transcoded for better playback performance. 

Will post how it all pans out - looking good ATM

br,

Sam
Title: Re: Demo: LinuxMCE's UPnP to a Nokia N810, playing audio and video.
Post by: golgoj4 on December 15, 2008, 04:59:02 am
cool. in that case i recommend finding out what video codec and bitrates work best for your device and you should be good to go.