minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

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francois
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minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#1 by francois » 11 Jan 2015, 04:22

PART I:
Looking for some way to have access to videos, image and music to this wonderful lg tv we bought a few years ago, but also to be able to link computer, android phone and that TV, I thought I needed to set up a media server and could install some media clients. My impression was that this would be simple to link this way computer and/or an external attached hdd, smartphone and television.

This was not the case, until beny and cttan gavesome cues on how to do so. Under porteus-slackware you just need to build minidlna for your computer with slackbuild (sbo):

Code: Select all

root@porteus:~# usm -g libid3tag
root@porteus:~# usm sbo -b minidlna
Note: libid3tag is a prerequisite library in porteus 3.1 to build minidlna

1.0 Server side.
Under porteus minidlna from alien bob repo did not work because of too many missing dependencies:
http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbu ... lna/pkg64/
Instructions to get minidlna running under slackware:
http://www.mbse.eu/linux/homeserver/extra/minidlna/
Instructions to get minidlna under other distributions:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MiniDLNA#Global
http://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlnawebmin/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MiniDLNA
http://www.htpcbeginner.com/install-and ... tu-1204/2/

Commands to start and stop minidlna would not work on my installation:
http://www.mbse.eu/linux/homeserver/extra/minidlna/

2.0 Client side.
Fooling around to get some app on this motorola moto g smartphone of mine, many would be available:
http://appcrawlr.com/android-apps/best- ... lna-server
However, the most interesting features would ask for the paying version or the advertisement was so well placed that you could trigged the download of some cheap and dull games on the phone. There is a lot of them and amongst others:
http://appcrawlr.com/android-apps/best- ... lna-server
Searching a little more you get Banshee, Amarok, VLC, XBMC; XMBC reported to be the best choice under linux:
http://www.techdrivein.com/2011/08/5-an ... lling.html
So vlc remote on the smartphone could be used to get the content of the minidlna server. I never was able to get it going. It seems that you need the paying application to do that:
The free version of this app is not a very good choice since most basic features remain locked and you need to pay up to unlock.
Though vlc on the linux box seems to do a good job:
http://superuser.com/questions/191736/h ... lna-server

3.0 Other options:
Additional hyperlink on streaming tv:
Set top box comparison:
Comparison of set-top boxes

Comparison of UPnP AV media servers:
Comparison of UPnP AV media servers

Has some of you been able to install media server and it corresponding media clients on different devices? How do you do?

4.0 minidlna works on ubuntu it seems:
http://www.conrad.id.au/2012/06/quick-t ... buntu.html
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Note 1: For those of you interested, at this present moment the motorola moto g might be the best buy on the market according to the quality price ratio, compared to more performing devices:
http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compar ... /8208,8148
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones ... /review/11
http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/ ... vs-nexus-5
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/motorola-moto-g-1129
Note 2: Installation instructions for xmbc on slackware, this seems at first sight after testing minidlna a better alternative:
http://slaxbmc.blogspot.ca/2012/10/slax ... n-101.html
http://osarena.net/logismiko/applicatio ... kware.html
Last edited by francois on 16 Jan 2015, 03:38, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#2 by beny » 11 Jan 2015, 12:51

hi francois the slackbuild exist for the slackware or porteus user i have done a try and work like a charm:my computer,a minix-x8 amd kodi helix alias xbmc and my tv sony i have an usb sat receiver tbs and i can share also it via tvheadend server i have used samba before your post the minix have the android 4.4.2 on board

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Re: minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#3 by francois » 16 Jan 2015, 03:30

Hello beny. Sorry I took so much time to come back on this thread. I just wanted to have time to look at this media server issue. Finally, I just began to play with kodi (xmbc) on elementary os, which is said to provide the ultimate experience in terms of streaming. An alternative to minidlna. I thought I had to buy a android tv device, but it seems that the computer should be enough.

From what I understand I could work only with kodi for the streaming experience?
The computer could be enough, but as videos take a lot of space, I imagine that an external hdd for videos is good to have, or is android tv the way to go?
Do you devote an external hdd to store the videos?
Do you also use myth tv?

Thanks. :)
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Re: minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#4 by beny » 16 Jan 2015, 11:43

well i don't use a lot of hard disk to store video,but i think you have in canada a lot of site that stream movies like netflix or virgin media or local movie network kodi have plugin that allow you to watch this, well you have to pay this service not kodi,the tbs sat usb card have also the cam reader so you can receive sat media provider or tbs have also cable tv receiver if you want,the mythtv i have used it in the past but you have to have a lot of skill in mysql issue, this software work with database you have to do this first you start configuration,tvheadend is a good software i use it to share my sat tv channel from computer to tv also hd channel,tvheadend have also a pvr inside, the minix it is an android tv device can manage the 4k video and the last version have the H265 support and work very well for me.

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Re: minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#5 by francois » 17 Jan 2015, 16:07

tvheadend have also a pvr inside, the minix it is an android tv device can manage the 4k video and the last version have the H265 support and work very well for me

I will surely look at those.

Meanwhile, I am struggling with kodi to install appropriate plugins. At some places the interface is not that implicit. Maybe I just miss familiarity with it. There seems to be an infinity of possibilities.

I have more specific questions with which I will come back.

Thanks a lot for your support. :)
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Re: minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#6 by beny » 17 Jan 2015, 16:13

the kodi helix for android is ready yet and work well, android have a lot of feature for the net streaming.

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Re: minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#7 by cttan » 21 Jan 2015, 02:22

Hi francois,

Kodi/XBMC for media centre PC which you plug directly to your TV via VGA or HDMI connector. TV need not be smart enabled.

Minidlna is a simple streaming server where you can setup easily to stream your multimedia contents on your PC/laptop to you smart TV.
But the only disadvantage I found is no web administration or maybe I do not know how to configure it.

Here is how I got it to work. Just need to enter some info in the /etc/minidlna.conf as follows:-

Code: Select all

# port for HTTP (descriptions, SOAP, media transfer) traffic
port=8200

# network interfaces to serve, comma delimited
network_interface=wlan0

# specify the user account name or uid to run as
#user=jmaggard
user=root

# set this to the directory you want scanned.
# * if you want multiple directories, you can have multiple media_dir= lines
# * if you want to restrict a media_dir to specific content types, you
#   can prepend the types, followed by a comma, to the directory:
#   + "A" for audio  (eg. media_dir=A,/home/jmaggard/Music)
#   + "V" for video  (eg. media_dir=V,/home/jmaggard/Videos)
#   + "P" for images (eg. media_dir=P,/home/jmaggard/Pictures)
#   + "PV" for pictures and video (eg. media_dir=AV,/home/jmaggard/digital_camera)
#media_dir=/opt
media_dir=/media/MyBackup2/Movies
#media_dir=/media/MyBackup2/Movies/FORCETRANSCODE

# set this if you want to customize the name that shows up on your clients
friendly_name=My DLNA Server

# set this if you would like to specify the directory where you want MiniDLNA to store its database and album art cache
db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna

# set this if you would like to specify the directory where you want MiniDLNA to store its log file
log_dir=/var/log

# set this to change the verbosity of the information that is logged
# each section can use a different level: off, fatal, error, warn, info, or debug
log_level=general,artwork,database,inotify,scanner,metadata,http,ssdp,tivo=warn

# this should be a list of file names to check for when searching for album art
# note: names should be delimited with a forward slash ("/")
album_art_names=Cover.jpg/cover.jpg/AlbumArtSmall.jpg/albumartsmall.jpg/AlbumArt.jpg/albumart.jpg/Album.jpg/album.jpg/Folder.jpg/folder.jpg/Thumb.jpg/thumb.jpg
# set this to no to disable inotify monitoring to automatically discover new files
# note: the default is yes
inotify=yes

# set this to yes to enable support for streaming .jpg and .mp3 files to a TiVo supporting HMO
enable_tivo=no

# set this to strictly adhere to DLNA standards.
# * This will allow server-side downscaling of very large JPEG images,
#   which may hurt JPEG serving performance on (at least) Sony DLNA products.
strict_dlna=no

# default presentation url is http address on port 80
#presentation_url=http://www.mylan/index.php

# notify interval in seconds. default is 895 seconds.
notify_interval=900

# serial and model number the daemon will report to clients
# in its XML description
serial=12345678
model_number=1

# specify the path to the MiniSSDPd socket
#minissdpdsocket=/var/run/minissdpd.sock

# use different container as root of the tree
# possible values:
#   + "." - use standard container (this is the default)
#   + "B" - "Browse Directory"
#   + "M" - "Music"
#   + "V" - "Video"
#   + "P" - "Pictures"
# if you specify "B" and client device is audio-only then "Music/Folders" will be used as root
root_container=.


#transcode_audio_enable : =LPCM/MP3/MP3LPCM/DISABLE
#                          LPCM    : transcode to LPCM
#                          MP3     : transcode to MP3
#                          MP3LPCM : transcode to LPCM or MP3, selected by clients
#                          DISABLE : disable audio transcoding
#                          in order to transcode to MP3, it is neccessary that FFMPEG supports MP3 encoding using LAME MP3 Encoder
#                          for example, install "libavformat-extra-xx" on Ubuntu.
#transcode_video_transcoder : mencoder/ffmpeg/disable or other_transcoder/shell script 
#                             set the output of transcoder pipe
#transcode_video_options : options for video transcoder
#  can be divided into multiple "transcode_video_options"
#  max characters for every line is 199
#  max characters for total options is 1023
#transcode_audio_ffmpeg_options : options for audio transcode using ffmpeg
#  restriction is same as "transcode_video_mencoder_options"
#default options for mencoder and ffmpeg is hard coded
#followings are defaults


transcode_audio_enable=LPCM
#transcode_audio_ffmpeg_options=-v 0 -acodec pcm_s16be -f s16be -ar 44100


#for mencoder 60Hz(NTSC)
transcode_video_transcoder=mencoder
#transcode_video_options=-ss $STARTPOSITION -endpos $DURATION
#transcode_video_options=-msglevel all=-1 -really-quiet -oac lavc
#transcode_video_options=-of mpeg -mpegopts format=mpeg2:muxrate=8000:vbuf_size=1194:abuf_size=64 -vf scale=720:480,harddup -ovc lavc -channels 2
#transcode_video_options=-lavdopts debug=0 -lavcopts autoaspect=1:vcodec=mpeg2video:vbitrate=8000:acodec=ac3:abitrate=128:keyint=18:vqscale=1:vqmin=2
#transcode_video_options=-subdelay 20000 -ofps 30000/1001 -mc 0 -noskip -af lavcresample=48000 -srate 48000
#transcode_video_options=-o - $SOURCE 


#for ffmpeg 60Hz(NTSC)
#transcode_video_transcoder=ffmpeg
#transcode_video_options=-ss $STARTPOSITION -i $SOURCE -t $DURATION -v 0 -loglevel quiet -threads 2 -async 2 -target ntsc-dvd pipe:1
#transcode_video_options=-ss $STARTPOSITION -i $SOURCE -t $DURATION -v 0 -loglevel quiet -async 2 -target ntsc-dvd pipe:1


#for mencoder 50Hz(PAL)
transcode_video_transcoder_pal=mencoder
#transcode_video_options_pal=-ss $STARTPOSITION -endpos $DURATION
#transcode_video_options_pal=-msglevel all=-1 -really-quiet -oac lavc
#transcode_video_options_pal=-of mpeg -mpegopts format=mpeg2:muxrate=8000:vbuf_size=1194:abuf_size=64 -vf scale=720:576,harddup -ovc lavc -channels 2
#transcode_video_options_pal=-lavdopts debug=0 -lavcopts autoaspect=1:vcodec=mpeg2video:vbitrate=8000:acodec=ac3:abitrate=128:keyint=25:vqscale=1:vqmin=2
#transcode_video_options_pal=-subdelay 20000 -ofps 25 -mc 0 -noskip -af lavcresample=48000 -srate 48000
#transcode_video_options_pal=-o - $SOURCE 


#for ffmpeg 50Hz(PAL)
#transcode_video_transcoder_pal=ffmpeg
#transcode_video_options_pal=-ss $STARTPOSITION -i $SOURCE -t $DURATION -v 0 -loglevel quiet -threads 2 -async 2 -target pal-dvd pipe:1
#transcode_video_options_pal=-ss $STARTPOSITION -i $SOURCE -t $DURATION -v 0 -loglevel quiet -async 2 -target pal-dvd pipe:1


Open a new terminal and enter:-
/usr/sbin/minidlnad -R -d -f /etc/minidlna.conf

In order for your Android phone to be able to stream the contents, you will need to install a DLNA/UPnP client.
You can try out BubbleUPnP. Previously I use Skifta but it has been discontinued.

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Re: minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#8 by francois » 22 Jan 2015, 02:22

Thanks cttan. Your input is really appreciated. I might test this on this weeken at the same time that I will experiment a little more with kodi-xmbc. I try to fast porteus, I am too linux boulimic these times.
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Re: minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#9 by francois » 07 Feb 2015, 11:14

I have spent much time on kodi lately. It looks like a complex maze. I finally got it going. As you said benny, we have in Canada netflix which is very popular. The content offer in english is interesting but limited. Some interesting films are unavailable.

For French Canadians, the interest in netflix is very poor, the content is almost inexistent in French. Spanish content, would also be interesting for the many immigrants coming from central and southern america. It is scarce.

Cable TV is regulated by the federal state thru an organism called the CRTC. They encourage Canadian content which is based on canadian state TV and private TV chains, which is good. The problem is that it is hard to get connected thru the cable and satellite providers to specific content or it that this content is out of price, and comes bundled with general chains that you do not need.

These movies and tv services are provided mainly by cable. The price of the service seems to be too high. As a cue, my internet, TV cable (basic offer) and basic telephone services cost around 115$ per month.

Thus my exploration for a TV, movie solution that would be mainly internet, computer and antenna based. This way I could cancel the TV suscription from the cable provider, and perhaps the telephone subscription too.

Thus minidlna or Plex which seems to include dlna compatible with my smart TV, would be part of the solution that I need. But some antenna and PVR too. The only problem for me was the legal aspects of streaming and downloading. In canada, it seems that downloading content is illegal, but streaming would not be legally problematic:
http://m.thestar.com/#/article/business ... geist.html
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minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#10 by francois » 28 Dec 2017, 07:47

@cttan:
It took me some time to apply your strategy:
1) modify the minidlna.conf as yours as posted above
2) start minidlna with:

Code: Select all

/usr/sbin/minidlnad -R -d -f /etc/minidlna.conf
To your minidlna.conf, I have added:

Code: Select all

media_dir=A,/dlna/Music
media_dir=P,/dlna/Pictures
media_dir=V,/dlna/Videos
After having created the /dlna/Music /dlna/Pictures /dlna/Videos folders.

Code: Select all

[porteus Videos]# mkdir dlna
[porteus Videos]# cd dlna
[porteus dlna]# mkdir Music
[porteus dlna]# mkdir Picture
[porteus dlna]# mkdir Videos
And I have made symlinks to my external hdd.

Code: Select all

[porteus Videos]# cd dlna
[porteus Videos]# ln -s /mnt/sdb1/movies Movies
[porteus Videos]# ln -s /mnt/sdb1/TV-series TV-series
Thanks.

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minidlna as media server on porteus or slackware

Post#11 by francois » 30 Dec 2017, 01:01

If you have a LG TV like mine, you will surely need a video converter like handbrake:

Code: Select all

usm -g handbrake
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