Audio only media player - how media players work under Pluto

[archived]

Hi,

I'm still considering adding audio only media player to Pluto - so that more that one audio streams could be played on MD....

Some time ago we did some preliminary tests with Xine player and it worked (setting its own alsa device - so more audio streams could be played on multichannel or multiple sound cards). But then no synhro and one-to-many playing features we're not yet implemented...

Now I'm trying to solve some issues and seek for easiest way to do this, so I would kindly ask for more info how following features of Pluto are implemented:

- synhronization of media players (audio players (xine, vlc))
- how is videolan client and server used ?
- why is xine player still present (cause if I understand right vlc also works when stream is played to more destinations) ?
- how does Pluto switch from xine player to mutliple players when user selects more than 1 destination ?


Thanks in advance,

regards,

Rob.

[archived]

Hi,

First of all, when the users selects more than one destination, the xine player is stopped, and the vlc is started and is set up to resume from the same position in stream. Xine player is still present because the vlc is still having some problems, like for ex. when playing a dvd with animated menus, it hangs. It is possible that, when the vlc will get to 1.0, we might consider dropping xine. But not now.
About the way the videolan client and server are used now ... you can only stream from the core, because the videolan server can only be installed there, for the moment. But we are working to change this, that is to allow each MD to have a videolan server installed, enabling this way streaming from every mds.
About synchronisation of media players, this works only for videolan clients.

Best regards,
Johnny

[archived]

- does that means, if VLC was also installed on a MD having a TV tuning card, that this MD could stream to other MD ? is it what you are thinking about ? Which release ?  
- About tv ... I have a pinnacle PCTV pro card ... should I change it for something else or would it work on a MD ? what would be a good USB2 "pluto certified" card ?

Tx very much
jeff

[archived]

Hi,

...

About synchronisation of media players, this works only for videolan clients.

Best regards,
Johnny

Hi,

can you be more specific?

 Is VLServer doing the job (synhronization) and VLCs just connect to some stream (how do they connect over http:, rtp: or other method ?).

Thanks,

regards,

Rob.

[archived]

hi
(maybe we should make a resume and group all the question   )
Why don't you use the streaming capabilities of VLC (not the server BUT the client wich is also able to create a stream) for the MDs? that would be less soft on the MDs. From what I understood on the VLC site, VLC is able to stream from a huge kind of source. I think that pluto doesn't use this yet (stream from a PVR on a MD for example), but do you plan to do it ?

Tx,
jeff

[archived]

Hi all,

When I wrote about videolan server, I was referring to the VideoLan Server plugin, that is a part of Pluto. This is also using as a backend the vlc application, and not vls. So basically we have one vlc application running as a stream and synchronisation server, and two or more vlc applications running as clients.
Anyway, the VideoLan will only be used to stream local media. For PVR we'll be using the VDR, that seems more stable in this field.

Regards,
Johnny.

[archived]

Hi all,

When I wrote about videolan server, I was referring to the VideoLan Server plugin, that is a part of Pluto. This is also using as a backend the vlc application, and not vls. So basically we have one vlc application running as a stream and synchronisation server, and two or more vlc applications running as clients.
Anyway, the VideoLan will only be used to stream local media. For PVR we'll be using the VDR, that seems more stable in this field.

Regards,
Johnny.

Hi,


I'd just aks if mythtv stays available as an option. VDR is only for DVB cards, and that's a problem for many users...

Also I have another question concerning making audio only media player device with VLC (I guess you can answer this one easily since you worked on VLC code) :
- how hard would it be to start more instances of VLC audio only player on single MD - each outputing to different alsa device ?
- is it already possible to use VLC instead of Xine for single client situation ?
- how are more VLC clients synhronized - is this done by default on streaming server or they contain any other methods?
- does streaming server produce single stream or separate streams ?
- can you give some pointer or info  what streaming method did you use ?
- if synhronization is done at server level, does this mean that any other media players will synhro too (xine, alsaplayer) ? I'm asking this cause Alsaplayer would be really easy to add as audio only device ...


I'm asking this cause I guess that working on xine audio only player would not be smart, since it's going out of system, or not ?

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Rob.