Premise Premise UPnP Control Point Issues

So it's been a long while since I played with John's UPnP control point. I have been (and had some success in the past) trying to use it to feed internet radio streams to Premise from some (any?) UPnP server. TVersity seemed to work sporadically in the past. But the older version (0.8.0 with 1.6 XDO) would crash alot. And ALOT of streams would not work. So I updated it to the latest version on this site.

That version pegs the CPU at 99%. Ocassionally, when another process insists, it will drop back to 50% or so, then back up to 99%.

All that I'm trying to do is to have internet radio feeds in Premise. Using msense. But, as we all know, the Premise media player is a bit "long in the tooth" and doesn't deal directly with many of the current formats.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

John, if your Control Point will do this and I'm doing something wrong, please let me know.

Hi Sam,

If I understand you correctly, TVersity is peaking the CPU and isn't letting you deal with Internet streams. The control point service itself is not peaking the CPU, right?

As of V0.7.1 of the UPnP Control Point, support of internet streams natively in Premise was introduced. Basically, it lets you add a UPnP Internet stream using the built-in Premise Media server. A snapshot of the release notes for that version is included in this post.

Good Luck,

-John



V0.7.1

Enhancements
• Implemented support for Internet audio streams using standard Premise configuration mechanism. This does not require any external UPnP AV Media Server to “host” the pointer to the Internet Audio stream. Only MP3-based streams (i.e. Shoutcast) are supported. The “mms” transport is not supported. To add a stream, do the following:
o Under Media, create an Internet provider. Under the Internet Provider, create an Internet Stream. Under the filename of the Internet stream, add the URL of the stream. A stream that appears to work reliably for testing can be found at:
http://scfire-dll0l-1.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1074

• Implemented support for Internet audio streams “hosted” by an external UPnP AV Media Server. Only TVersity streams have been tested. MP3-based streams (i.e. Shoutcast) are supported. Microsoft “mms” streams are not supported.
o Streams hosted by an external UPnPAV Media server should appear under the Media Server’s entry under sys://Media/Content.

• Implemented support for UPnP AV Media Renderer browsing of Internet streams found in Premise. This is an enhancement to the Media Server functionality introduced in version 0.6.1.
• Internet stream functionality has been tested with DSM-520, Pinnacle Showcenter 1000, and the Intel “reference” AV renderer found in the Intel UPnP AV developers kit.

John in VA said:

Hi Sam,

If I understand you correctly, TVersity is peaking the CPU and isn't letting you deal with Internet streams. The control point service itself is not peaking the CPU, right?

As of V0.7.1 of the UPnP Control Point, support of internet streams natively in Premise was introduced. Basically, it lets you add a UPnP Internet stream using the built-in Premise Media server. A snapshot of the release notes for that version is included in this post.

Good Luck,

-John

Click to expand...

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. The CPU peaking is the Premise UPnP Control Point task without TVersity running. In fact, I just tried it again to be sure there are no UPnP devices running anywhere. So either way. With or without.

The only time the CPU usage drops is when my virtual server (VMWare running CentOS with a Zimbra mail server) needs cycles. It takes them, then lets go. Works very well actually. But if I let it go (PUnP) it drags everything else down to a crawl.

The only other app I have running in the background is SageTV.

Sorry Sam. I misunderstood.

Are you performing an extract? That tends to keep the CPU busy on my system. Why don't you try turning on logging and PM me 5 minutes of high CPU activity?

Go to regedt and browse to local machine\Software\GEorgeco Professional Services\Premise UPnP Control Point\Debugging and set the debugging level to 20. Stop and start the control point. There's a logs directory under where the control point installs and grab today's log file.

Thanks,

-John

John in VA said:

Sorry Sam. I misunderstood.

Are you performing an extract? That tends to keep the CPU busy on my system. Why don't you try turning on logging and PM me 5 minutes of high CPU activity?

Go to regedt and browse to local machine\Software\GEorgeco Professional Services\Premise UPnP Control Point\Debugging and set the debugging level to 20. Stop and start the control point. There's a logs directory under where the control point installs and grab today's log file.

Thanks,

-John

Click to expand...

No extraction running. In fact, no UPnP stuff running yet on the PC.

Not much inthe log file after 8 minutes. Here it is:


That's it. Hope there's an answer here.

My apologies. I didn't see that JRiver was running in the background. CPU Usage is now down to 0.

But I just tried creating an internet stream and when I tried to play it, Premise locked hard. It was a PLS link. So, MP3, but as a playlist.

I'll keep trying streams though.

Well, I've create three Shoutcast streams in Premise. None work. If I try the same 3 URLs in Winamp, they all play. In Premise, I get a flash in the media player when I select the stream and then instantly back to "nothing playing" and muted output.

Nothing added to the log.

The debug level is at 20 and that's all you get? Hmmmm.... Did the service crash? Any errors in the Event Log?

John in VA said:

The debug level is at 20 and that's all you get? Hmmmm.... Did the service crash? Any errors in the Event Log?

Click to expand...

John,

The PUnP service didn't crash, but the prkernel did. Although, to be fair, I've seen prkernel seem to be crashed only to have it release after a while. Not related to PUnP. I didn't have the patience to wait this time. In the past I only discovered it because I walked away and came back 15 minutes later to find it alive again. I waited this time for a couple of minutes to no avail. Locked up tight.

This last time I got a couple of event log entries:

At 1:53:12 PM - 8/22/2008
Source - Service Control Manager
Event ID: 7034
The Premise UPnP Control Point service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 3 time(s).

The other entry I got was exactly the same except "It has done this 5 time(s)".

The log file was :
Friday, August 22, 2008 1:41:21 PM clsPremiseConnection Got past minibroker connection status check
Friday, August 22, 2008 1:41:21 PM clsPremiseConnection Got past subscribe to connection
Friday, August 22, 2008 1:41:21 PM clsPremiseConnection Identity of the Premise host is holly
Friday, August 22, 2008 1:41:21 PM clsPremiseConnection Connecting event happened for Premise Server: localhost
Friday, August 22, 2008 1:41:21 PM UPnPControlPoint Got past premise connection
Friday, August 22, 2008 1:41:21 PM UPnPControlPoint Got past smart control point creation

So the log file never went past 1:41pm while the event log error was 12 minutes later.

I'm at a loss.

I've tried the Shoutcast links as they are, a PLS file and I've opened up the playlist files and used the actual stream links. Both cause the same problems. But both ways always work in Winamp. So I know the streams ans playlists are OK.

I'm starting to think that my Premise installation is not right. But I hate the thought of tearing it down and recreating everything. But it may be the only way to know.

Maybe this will help. The control point actually does two things with respect to Internet streams.

1. It will make a UPnP media server's (like TVsersity) internet stream visible with the Premise Media folder. It will also control an external UPnP renderer (like a DSM-520). So, using the Premise browser, you can tell a media zone that contains a UPnP media renderer to play the internet stream actually hosted on the media server. In this scenario, the control point tells the media renderer where the internet stream (on the external media server) is and instructs it to play.

2. The control point will make an MP3 internet stream defined within Premise's internal "Internet Provider" available to external UPnP renderers. For example, a DSM-520 could browse the Premise Media tree, find an internet stream and play it. In this scenario, the control point tells the DSM-520 to connect directly to the MP3's source.


What the control point doesn't do is trick the Automation Browser's media player into playing MP3 streams.

PRKERNEL crashing sounds like a problem (duh!). What you are seeing is PSMONITOR restarting PRKERNEL whenever it crashes. I've rarely seen PRKERNEL crash "silently". There may be an error log entry that describes the issue. At this point, your best bet is to save your configuration and start from scratch by deinstalling and reinstalling. I would then do a gradual recovery to your previous state. It may be that you have a piece of media that has a combination of special characters not handled very well by the PRKERNEL. I've had a situation where there were multiple ampersands ("&") within the title of a song that caused Premise to crash (silently). I stumbled across it by looking at XML dumps that Premise does periodically. You might be seeing the same thing here.

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

-JOhn

John - No worries! I appreciate your trying.

So I think what I'm hearing is that the way I'm trying to do it - playing it directly from the automation browser - without any kind of "external" renderer, is causing the problem. Am I right?

I think so. I thought the automation browser could only play "MMS" streams. Shoutcast (or MP3) streams were not supported. Again the control point is really only designed to control UPnP AV compatible devices (media servers and media renderers specifically).

The PRKERNEL crash you are seeing may be causing other issues too.

I never had problems with MMS streams. But there are fewer and fewer of them all the time.

I think I am going to either look for a cheap device or experiment with a software renderer and see if that works.

I haven't seen an other issues with the system. It's really been rock solid.

I'll post again if I find a workable solution.

The DSM-320 and DSM-520 work pretty well for audio. The video support isn't so good. The ROKU soundbridge "should" work, but I haven't tested it with my software.