Smart Media Player Network Access in Fedora 20

[Rick Stevens]

On 09/22/2014 02:50 PM, Stephen Morris issued this missive:
> On 09/17/2014 10:09 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>> On Wed, 2014-09-17 at 08:01 +1000, Stephen Morris wrote:
>>>> Keeping the neighbours out is just standard network practice: use a
>>>> decent WPA password on the router, and keep a tight control on
>>> incoming
>>>> connections via the server firewall. IIRC the server config can also
>>>> restrict clients to certain IPs though I haven't bothered with that.
>>> My concern with dlna from Windows or Linux was not so much with
>>> neighbours hacking into the network, but if the dlna stream is not
>>> transmitted to a specific device like Miracast is, then it was
>>> potentially conceivable that it could be broadcast and inadvertently
>>> played on the neighbours receiver without really meaning to.
>> It *is* transmitted to a specific device, but the transmission is
>> initiated by the client pulling it from the server rather than the
>> server pushing it to the client. At the transport level it's exactly the
>> same. The neighbours are not going to be bothered a) because it's not a
>> multicast service, i.e. each client gets its own individual stream, and
>> b) because they can't see inside your network (as long as you set it up
>> correctly as mentioned last time).
>>
>>> One of my collegues that I work with uses a homeplug type device and
>>> tells me it works very well, so I could look at that although I'm not
>>> sure how well it would work in a powerboard as I don't have any spare
>>> wall power points.
>> No way to tell without trying it, but these things are designed for
>> fairly noisy environments and even multiple phases (i.e. homes with
>> several power rings). All the same, I would put the Homeplugs on their
>> own sockets and move something else to the multiconnector if possible.
>>
>>> I have a few other issues I need to sort out as well.
>>> I have finally managed to get nfs on the nas usable but the playback
>>> on
>>> the android player is worse than the playback via smb on the same
>>> device. I can use dlna to get the player to stream movies from the
>>> nas
>>> which seems to give a bit better performance, but I have movies in 3
>>> directories, with one directory containing mp4 files, the 2nd with
>>> mov
>>> files and the 3rd with an mkv files, but dlna is unable to even see
>>> the
>>> directory containing the mkv files and at the moment I don't know
>>> why.
>>> The 2 directories that dlna can see were created by Windows whereas
>>> the
>>> directory it can't see was created from Fedora via Samba, which might
>>> explain the issue but I don't know why that should be any different.
>> It may also depend on the client side. In the past I've had problems
>> with some clients which couldn't see MKV files (because they didn't have
>> the codec). However you should recheck the server config file. Does it
>> list all the places you keep content? What happens if you put an MKV
>> file in the MP4 directory? Does it show up or not? It would be helpful
>> to know what server you're using now. As I said before, minidlna is very
>> easy to set up.
>>
>> I don't have a separate directory per format, but use directories for
>> TV, Movies, Home Video etc.
> I have similar directory structures, but I have now resolved my issue
> with dlna not being able to see the top level directory that contained
> the sublevel directories containing mkv files. I tried renaming the top
> level directory from windows but the client still couldn't see it. It
> wasn't until I refreshed the multimedia service on the server that the
> client could then see the directory, sub-directories and mkv files. What
> I don't understand is why dlna had trouble seeing the directories but
> NFS and Samba had no issues at all.

Most DLNA servers create a database containing the content. If you
changed the layout or anything like that, you have to have the DLNA
server rescan the directories to find the content and hand it off to the
clients.

> I'm using a Dlink DNS-320L Nas box with 2 Western Digital Nas 1TB disks
> configured as Raid 0 connected via ethernet to my wireless
> modem/router/phone for my server.
>
> Now that I have the Nas sorted out I need to sort out ffmpeg and why it
> does the things it does. Its giving me grief when I convert videos to
> mp4 format in that it insists on using aac for the audio codec, and then
> refusing to undertake the conversion unless I supply 2 additional
> parameters because aac is still beta. If it really is beta why is it
> using that codec by default when not explicitly told to?

The default codec for mp4 files IS AAC (or ALAC). If you're telling
ffmpeg the output format is mp4, it selects AAC as the audio encoder.

The AAC codec that comes with ffmpeg _is_ experimental, hence the need
to set "--strict experimental" to use it. I rebuild my own ffmpeg using
libfdk_aac stuff at compile time so it uses that library rather than
the one that comes with ffmpeg. libfdk_aac is also considered a bit
better than the native one. It's up to you what you want to do.

> My main concern with using a powerboard, because I don't have any
> choice, was using the homeplug device with other devices overloading the
> powerboard having had issues with a 2000W heater destroying powerboards,
> and having the electronic store that provided the powerboard tell me I
> should never plug the heater into the powerboard, that I should only
> ever plug it into the wall power socket as powerboards are not designed
> for that load.

Yeah, probably way too much juice to pump through the powerboard. 2000W
heaters draw, what, 11.8 amps at 120VAC (5.9A at 240VAC)--probably with
a pretty nasty power-on spike. That's quite a bit to be asking of a
circuit board and plastic.
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital    ricks at alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2        ICQ: 22643734            Yahoo: origrps2 -
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-         The Navy's a bunch of wimps!  MY job's an adventure!       -
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