streaming video??

[reddragon72]

is there anything like this program for Video? I would love to stream my video collection as well. This program is so well done and just looks and works so well, my only hickup resolved itself with a reboot, that my only wish is it could do video as well.

I have a WHS(windows Home server) setup and tried Webguide, but it is a hit and miss program with video, and crahes quit often, and never streamed music at all.

Subsonic is an extremely nice addition to my homeserver and breaths new life and purpose into it!!! now if I can do video as well

[lemay86]

Subsonic will do video aswell. Since it uses flash player it can stream .flv and h264/aac .mp4's. but you can use a encoder like ffmpeg to transcode almost any video on the fly and stream that transcoding.

[arwenshade]

I have searched the subsonic forums a lot for the past few days to see if i can find a solution to the video playback abilities of subsonic, but with no luck so far.

You say that Subsonic will do video as well (.flv files), but can you please specify what i must do in order to get this working?

I want Subsonic to recognize my .flv files and play them in an embedded web-player. (Not external player like vlc but you know, like on youtube.)
Is this easy to set up, or even possible?

Very grateful for any advice!!

Arw-

[reddragon72]

Subsonic will do video aswell. Since it uses flash player it can stream .flv and h264/aac .mp4's. but you can use a encoder like ffmpeg to transcode almost any video on the fly and stream that transcoding.

I looked as well, and unless the post has a cryptic subject or it is being talked about in a thread that did not start out as video. Can you please add links to the threads with the setup info? that would be extremely helpful. Also if this does work nicely then how about we all chip in on a tutorial?

EDIT: I found thishttp://forum.subsonic.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1295&highlight=video+stream, but it assumes I know a lot of what I am doing. Is there a beginner's thread?

Also I have WMV(SD"WMV3" and HD"VC1") and AVI's(XVID) no MP4's or H264, will those stream as well? All my stuff is setup for the Xbox 360.

[lemay86]

Subsonic will do video aswell. Since it uses flash player it can stream .flv and h264/aac .mp4's. but you can use a encoder like ffmpeg to transcode almost any video on the fly and stream that transcoding.

I looked as well, and unless the post has a cryptic subject or it is being talked about in a thread that did not start out as video. Can you please add links to the threads with the setup info? that would be extremely helpful. Also if this does work nicely then how about we all chip in on a tutorial?

EDIT: I found thishttp://forum.subsonic.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1295&highlight=video+stream, but it assumes I know a lot of what I am doing. Is there a beginner's thread?

Also I have WMV(SD"WMV3" and HD"VC1") and AVI's(XVID) no MP4's or H264, will those stream as well? All my stuff is setup for the Xbox 360.

Those file formats will only play with the use of ffmpeg or some other encoder. Adobe has restrictions on the filetypes and codecs they support in flash.

To get video streaming to work you have to increase the players height to just above 20 pixels. Then in the transcoding rules section add the rules for whatever file types > flv using the command:

"location_of_ffmpeg -re -y -i %s -ar 44100 -ac 2 -f flv - "

If that line doesn't work it might be nessesary to create a shortcut to ffmpeg in the [subsonic_install_directory]/transcoding directory and use the command:

"ffmpeg -re -y -i %s -ar 44100 -ac 2 -f flv - "

Once those are in place go to settings->general and add the filetypes that you made the transcoding rules for to the music mask setting. Once that is done the flash player should play the filetypes you have rules for fine (at least in 3.6 it does).

Edit: I found the link to the thread that tells you how to change the players height.

http://forum.subsonic.org/forum/viewtop ... hth+height

3rd post down.

Note: Transcoding will use your cpu and there is the possibility that the movie you attempt to transcode will play faster then you can convert it. If this happens the player will restart assuming it had reached the end of the video. Also if the video you are trying to watch in flash player is greater than 2gb it wont work due to the fact that adobe still hasn't made a 64bit flash player. The only solution to this that I know of is to use an external player for the greater than 2gb files. (VLC 0.99 works well streaming from the server, but VLC 1.0 and higher seems to not work for me.)

[reddragon72]

Ok I got all that you said, but FFmpeg is confusing. What do I put in the dir to do the FFmpeg stuff, just the exe or all the files? it is a bit confusing.

Also the other thing is, I am running a WHS setup so can all this be done VIA Windows?

[arwenshade]

Yes, a beginners guide or tutorial would be very much appreciated!

But my main question is this:
i have a lot of music videos already convertet to .flv files. Do i still need to use ffmpeg to convert/transcode these files or will the flashplayer in subsonic be able to play them without setting up transcoding commands?

-Arw

[reddragon72]

Yes, a beginners guide or tutorial would be very much appreciated!

But my main question is this:
i have a lot of music videos already convertet to .flv files. Do i still need to use ffmpeg to convert/transcode these files or will the flashplayer in subsonic be able to play them without setting up transcoding commands?

-Arw

If they are already FLV then they will play through the player without conversion, but if they are a higher bitrate then your bandwidth allows then yes you will need to convert them again just for lower the video bitrate.

So far I cannot get FFmpeg to work. I put the ffmpeg.exe in the folder and pointed the conversion page to it, but the log says that it starts to convert then fails and switches to playing the original. I think the EXE of ffmpeg I have it the wrong kind. Anyone have the right one for a windows setup?

Edit, ok I tried another version of FFMpeg and I see working in the log, but I still get no sound or video. I see in the other threads that they are talking about a JW player?? what is this and do I need to swap out the players? this seems like an awful lot of work.

Also I have a lesser bandwidth outbound from my home, so what do I do to limit the bitrate?

[lemay86]

He is correct all the file formats on this page:
http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac ... ashFormats
are automatically supported without transcoding. All other formats are required too be transcoded to work with the flash player.

I think all you need is a shortcut to the ffmpeg executable in the subsonic transcoding folder.

Later today I am going to setup a vm Windows Server 2008 and get streaming to work with it. I'll write down everything I do to make it work and post it here.

[reddragon72]

He is correct all the file formats on this page:
http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac ... ashFormats
are automatically supported without transcoding. All other formats are required too be transcoded to work with the flash player.

I think all you need is a shortcut to the ffmpeg executable in the subsonic transcoding folder.

Later today I am going to setup a vm Windows Server 2008 and get streaming to work with it. I'll write down everything I do to make it work and post it here.

That would be great!!!! I have pretty much done everything in all the posts, minus the SW player thing. They seem to have swapped out the actually player that comes standard in Subsonic, but when I keep ready this doesn't seem to be necessary, or is it? I'm loving this program for my WHS and really having fun with it, and this video thing is just that much more fun, playing around with. I just wish I had more knowledge of web design....

[lemay86]

Swapping out players isn't required no. JW player is actually a awesome flash player. I was researching it when I was thinking of writing my own web based streaming application and in the process found subsonic, which saved me a ton of trouble writing my own. Once we actaully get to learning java at university I may contribute to this program, but as such we have only worked with C/C++ and my personal experience is only with php/python.

I have installed the VM and am installing the server updates, but have to go to class so my next post should be the steps to get it working with video.

[reddragon72]

Swapping out players isn't required no. JW player is actually a awesome flash player. I was researching it when I was thinking of writing my own web based streaming application and in the process found subsonic, which saved me a ton of trouble writing my own. Once we actaully get to learning java at university I may contribute to this program, but as such we have only worked with C/C++ and my personal experience is only with php/python.

I have installed the VM and am installing the server updates, but have to go to class so my next post should be the steps to get it working with video.

gotcha.. I might swap out the player then just to see if there is a difference. Also I see people talking about different stuff like tomcat. It seems to swap out the core of the site, but I'll leave that alone for a later date. Im going to continue to play around with it to see if I can figure out what is happening and why the video wont play. I see in the log that FFmpeg is converting the video, but like I said I get nothing on the output, from both AVI(xvid) and WMV(VC1)... I'm going to try a few other formats as well to see if it is those videos.

And again thanks for helping out with this!!! I really appreciate it!

[lemay86]

Well this is massivly annoying I cant get 3.7 to stream at all music or video. I even downloaded 3.6 to give it a shot and that failed too. I know 3.6 works on ubuntu so as a test I am going to install windows vista and see if the problem is with WHS only.

[BrianDelShasta]

I haven't completely read the entire thread but I thought I'd just throw this out there:

If you select 'external player with playlist' and use VLC as your media player you can play most media files without doing anything else. Remember you need to add the extensions in subsonic's settings before you can actually see the files.

It's actually pretty hassle free.

[lemay86]

Yes I do that actually(using vlc), but I believe he wanted to use the flash player for the video.

I just tested Windows XP and 3.6 works fine 3.7 however as before won't play videos in flash for some reason. I even tried downgrading the flv player to the 3.6 version as a last resort.

Because windows xp worked for 3.6 I retested Windows Server 2008 by clearing everything that has to do with subsonic and reinstalling it and it was able to play videos, but 3.7 is still a no go for that ( Ill post how to get video using flash with 3.6 tomorrow if you like, kinda tired now).

So in conclusion, from what I have noticed if you install subsonic 3.7 the flash player will no longer play videos. I tried Firefox, Internet Explorer, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2008, but in all those cases 3.6 played all the files perfectly. Is anyone else able to play videos using 3.7 in flash? I tried both the windows service version and the war version.