[mythtv-users] mythtv streaming for android

[Sven Bretfeld]

Hi Andy

Thanks for hinting us to this and thanks for sharing the script.

I tried it today with only minor success. Sound works good but lags
every 3 seconds for 1 second (for both, video and music). What is worse,
when playing a video there is nothing to view. The screen stays black,
only sound.

I had a picture when I tried for the very first time, but it was in very
gross resolution, rather bricks than pixels. After the first time no
picture ever appeared again.

I strictly followed your setup, using your script, but with the standard
vlc from the Ubuntu repository on Mythbuntu 10.10. The Android device
(HTC Magic, Froyo) is connected via WLAN within a local network. I run
the pro version of VLC S&C. The option "Override command line" is
unchecked. 

What could be the problem? Simply the speed of the LAN? Can it be solved
by adjusting the encoding parameters? In the long run I would like to
stream remotely via VPN. Help would be very welcome.

Greetings

Sven

Andy Wettstein <ajw1980 at gmail.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I was looking at streaming mythtv recordings and other movies to an
> android device (samsung galaxy s) and found some software for android
> called VLC stream and convert that appears to work pretty well:
> http://traveldevel.com/vlc-stream-convert
>
> I don't think I've seen it mentioned on the list before. It allows
> realtime transcoding of content via VLC to an android device. 
>
> It seemed to work fine for me using WIFI on the local network. For
> video, RTSP must be used, so that may make streaming over the internet a
> little troublesome (probably VPN is the best bet).
>
> VLC must have the http interface enabled and access must be allowed to
> the hosts you need. There is documentation about that on the
> traveldevel.com site.
> VLC must also be compiled with x264 support. Some distributions leave 
> that disabled due to IP issues. To check you can run this:
>
> $ vlc -l|grep 264
> VLC media player 1.1.5 The Luggage (revision exported)
>   packetizer_h264        H.264 video packetizer
>   h264                   H264 video demuxer
>   x264                   H.264/MPEG4 AVC encoder (x264)
>
> The last line for the x264 encoder must be present.
>
> I'll attach the script I'm using to start vlc. It is basically the same
> as shown on the traveldevel.com site, but with bash quoting and
> configured to use a locally compiled version of vlc. The encoding
> options for vlc are all in that script.
>
> I didn't look into it too much, but when I started with cvlc I couldn't
> browse any files on the android device, so if you want to run vlc
> without a graphical interface there might be some options that need
> adjusting.
>
> After installing and opening the app on android it should scan your
> network and find your VLC server. After that make sure to set your
> playback to RTSP. It probably is also necessary to adjust the playback
> size for full screen playback in Settings -> Display Sizes.
>
> You should be able to browse for your recordings and movies. I'm not
> sure how it decides where to start browsing from so you just have to
> look around. You'll probably want to use mythlink.pl to link your 
> recordings to sensible names. I use this:
> mythlink.pl --link /var/lib/mythtv/Recordings --format '%T/%T%-%S'
>
> I tested with both recordings and some videos and it seemed to work
> fine. Seeking backward seemed to work, but not forward.
>
> I think that covers the basics.
>
> Andy