drozwood90
Senior Member
Now that I have a faster processor on the server (2.12GHz Celeron to P4 Extreme 3.2GHz), I want to try to get my video files to stream.
I have Shoutcast for Audio and it works quite well (has worked well since I set it up with the last processor).
I tied that into some custom pages and events (Homeseer), so I can actually control playlists, song selection, PREV / NEXT, pause, play, stop, etc.
So, I originally started out playing around with VLC. I could never get it to quite work well transcoding out to my phone. It would be my preferred method as it has all the codecs built in, is very scriptable, simple, etc. However, I never could get it to quite stream out to my phone. VLC to VLC works decent enough (at least with my test machines). I'm afraid I'll never get a payback to my time I invest in it.
So, then I tried Tversity. Back when I started with this, I was still running Win2k3 on my server. I didn't have enough processing HP, so I didn't get too far with it. I could get movies to stream, with a lot of jitter and buffering (due to lack of CPU). I was able to sort of resolve that by forcing Tversity to transcode the WHOLE video, whether someone was connected or not. i.e. connect, start to stream, disconnect, wait 30 min - 1 hour, reconnect and stream AOK. The issue I had with this, after streaming enough video to "fill" my memory, my phone would stop playing the video...i.e. it was NOT really streaming. Also, this took maybe 5 hours of tinkering to get "just right" where it would work...Under Win7, I played around, after 3-4 hours, I finally got it to stream to my phone, but it would only transcode and stream the first 11 seconds of video. Then it would stop. I'm not sure it was a codec thing or not, as I tried transcoding xvid, mpeg, mpeg2, h.264, nothing went longer then 11 seconds. [sigh] Plus, I still need to ensure it's going to stream for real, not stream and fill ALL the memory on my phone.
I liked that with BOTH of these solutions, all my files are private to me, I'm not sending playlists, or a list of "selectable" files to a remote server.
Enter, my dockstar. I got these off Woot. They can supposedly transcode video files. A BIG plus, it uses only 5-10watts to hook 4 usb hard drives up to my network. Also, allows me remote access to the drives through the dockstar webpage. Negatives are: if I have to change codecs, I'm stuck with whatever is on the dockstar. If I want to "stream" the files to my phone, I have to allow the unit to connect to the internet and allow the dockstar (i.e. pogoplug) server to be aware of what's on the hard drive. Maybe it's not a big deal, but I don't like that they have a record of my drive. What if I am storing tax documents and such on there?? Things I don't want to be public in any way.
So, I never even tried to connect to a docstar for streaming. I also setup a special DHCP rule in my DHCP server to assign them local IPs, without the ability to get online (no gateway, no dns servers).
Lastly, I used Orb. Just as an experiment, I installed it on a laptop that I figured had enough HP for a test. As I had already installed all the codecs for my Win7 Tversity testing, all I did was install the software, then configure an account. It worked RIGHT out of the box. Streamed to my phone. I did NOT try to stream a whole movie, so I am not sure if it is streaming in the same way I got Tversity to stream, or if it is actually streaming (where I could watch for as long as I had battery without filling the memory of my phone). I was just impressed that WITHOUT ANY tinkering, it just worked...it detected what I was streaming to, and started transcoding.
The negative is, it works similar to the dockstar. You log INTO their website, which then presents all the stuff the server has been allowed to see. You click on one of the movies, and it will launch MediaPlayer and it just works. I didn't try any audio files, but it also supports youtube transcoding and a few other sites. The big thing is, they make claims up and down that they don't know anything about what's on your machine, nothing is stored on their servers, etc. I do like that this, you can POINT it to look only in specific directories...
I dunno...I guess, I'm asking what do you use? If nothing, how do you feel about the Orb stuff?
Here's a link to the Privacy Notice:
http://www.orb.com/privacy
I guess I really like the 0 maintenance and how Orb just worked. They claim that the webpage is created based on what the server (installed on my machine) told them. And even IF I get Tversity working under Win7, how long will it last like that? It seems to be a very fickle beast.
--Dan
I have Shoutcast for Audio and it works quite well (has worked well since I set it up with the last processor).
I tied that into some custom pages and events (Homeseer), so I can actually control playlists, song selection, PREV / NEXT, pause, play, stop, etc.
So, I originally started out playing around with VLC. I could never get it to quite work well transcoding out to my phone. It would be my preferred method as it has all the codecs built in, is very scriptable, simple, etc. However, I never could get it to quite stream out to my phone. VLC to VLC works decent enough (at least with my test machines). I'm afraid I'll never get a payback to my time I invest in it.
So, then I tried Tversity. Back when I started with this, I was still running Win2k3 on my server. I didn't have enough processing HP, so I didn't get too far with it. I could get movies to stream, with a lot of jitter and buffering (due to lack of CPU). I was able to sort of resolve that by forcing Tversity to transcode the WHOLE video, whether someone was connected or not. i.e. connect, start to stream, disconnect, wait 30 min - 1 hour, reconnect and stream AOK. The issue I had with this, after streaming enough video to "fill" my memory, my phone would stop playing the video...i.e. it was NOT really streaming. Also, this took maybe 5 hours of tinkering to get "just right" where it would work...Under Win7, I played around, after 3-4 hours, I finally got it to stream to my phone, but it would only transcode and stream the first 11 seconds of video. Then it would stop. I'm not sure it was a codec thing or not, as I tried transcoding xvid, mpeg, mpeg2, h.264, nothing went longer then 11 seconds. [sigh] Plus, I still need to ensure it's going to stream for real, not stream and fill ALL the memory on my phone.
I liked that with BOTH of these solutions, all my files are private to me, I'm not sending playlists, or a list of "selectable" files to a remote server.
Enter, my dockstar. I got these off Woot. They can supposedly transcode video files. A BIG plus, it uses only 5-10watts to hook 4 usb hard drives up to my network. Also, allows me remote access to the drives through the dockstar webpage. Negatives are: if I have to change codecs, I'm stuck with whatever is on the dockstar. If I want to "stream" the files to my phone, I have to allow the unit to connect to the internet and allow the dockstar (i.e. pogoplug) server to be aware of what's on the hard drive. Maybe it's not a big deal, but I don't like that they have a record of my drive. What if I am storing tax documents and such on there?? Things I don't want to be public in any way.
So, I never even tried to connect to a docstar for streaming. I also setup a special DHCP rule in my DHCP server to assign them local IPs, without the ability to get online (no gateway, no dns servers).
Lastly, I used Orb. Just as an experiment, I installed it on a laptop that I figured had enough HP for a test. As I had already installed all the codecs for my Win7 Tversity testing, all I did was install the software, then configure an account. It worked RIGHT out of the box. Streamed to my phone. I did NOT try to stream a whole movie, so I am not sure if it is streaming in the same way I got Tversity to stream, or if it is actually streaming (where I could watch for as long as I had battery without filling the memory of my phone). I was just impressed that WITHOUT ANY tinkering, it just worked...it detected what I was streaming to, and started transcoding.
The negative is, it works similar to the dockstar. You log INTO their website, which then presents all the stuff the server has been allowed to see. You click on one of the movies, and it will launch MediaPlayer and it just works. I didn't try any audio files, but it also supports youtube transcoding and a few other sites. The big thing is, they make claims up and down that they don't know anything about what's on your machine, nothing is stored on their servers, etc. I do like that this, you can POINT it to look only in specific directories...
I dunno...I guess, I'm asking what do you use? If nothing, how do you feel about the Orb stuff?
Here's a link to the Privacy Notice:
http://www.orb.com/privacy
I guess I really like the 0 maintenance and how Orb just worked. They claim that the webpage is created based on what the server (installed on my machine) told them. And even IF I get Tversity working under Win7, how long will it last like that? It seems to be a very fickle beast.
--Dan
