Streaming Hi-Quality Video To Android With Tversity and nswPlayer

[tallnerd1985]

Sorry that I havent posted since I opened the thread, kind of got caught up at work with the Incredible launch and trainings. I will try to answer some of the questions that may have arrived while I was gone.

I just tried this but it didnt work... I followed every bit of instruction correctly but it just keeps popping up as "Illegal File" when i click on a movie i want to play. MrRoboto

When you encoded the movie using Handbrake, you may have not checked off "Web Optimized". The reason why you do this, just like what dvdcatalyst said, MP4 wont stream correctly if the MP4's ATOM marker is at the end of the video file instead of the beginning.

I'm gonna try this out as well. Got my Droid where I want it as far as a base OS (thanks to UD 9.8). Anyway I wanted to figure out the streaming bit and tried Orb. I have used Orb a little before for xbox, but on the Droid the video is crap. Wasted an hour of my life on that (great idea but not good for video). Will try this tomorrow...or uh later. LuN3yDaV3

I used to love Orb for streaming my media to my laptop when I was away from home on business trainings and such but the developers have kind of gotten lazy with development lately. The biggest issue they have at the moment is their transcoding program is set to encode at 14-15fps to mobile phones instead of 30fps or whatever is the standard fps. The only thing I miss about Orb is they web login support client and the api's for making apps for a native library.

OMG it's working!! Only over Wi-Fi right now but that's more than I was able to do before! NSWPlayer did the trick. Now if I can just figure out how to get 3G to work. The library link won't load. The browser just sits there after I enter the URL, working and working, but never changes.

Thanks to the OP for the instructions! Lady Droid

That happens to me every once in awhile when I enter my IP address and such. I am wondering if you havent got it to work once if Verizon is blocking the port or something. Hopefully I will get some feedback from the community if this is happening to a lot of people. I am going to try dvdcatalyst MP4 server because its a lot lighter than Tversity's server software from the looks of it.

You can have a look here for a different method:

Video streaming?

If you follow the thread there, I talked gavinsnana through the entire setup. dvdcatalyst

Thanks for filling in while I was gone. I really dig how much time and effort you put into your program. I will update the main page to use your software instead of Handbrake if you already got the encoding profiles loaded up.

edit: As of the latest iPhone OS 3 version currently on Apple devices, the iPhone/iPod Touch can no longer play video files from a direct link in Safari. This worked for all previous OS versions for these devices, but with the latest update this capability was removed. This is the main reason why the MP4 Streaming Server app is now available as a free download. dvdcatalyst

Thats ashame man, dont give up on your MP4 server, we may have different uses for it....like Android. Maybe we can develop our own Orb like server for streaming MP4 files. I was looking thru the web and found that we can probably assemble a ffserver to transcode in MP4 with Quicktime Faststart for when the video is not pre-encoded?

 

[dvdcatalyst]

Thats ashame man, dont give up on your MP4 server, we may have different uses for it....like Android. Maybe we can develop our own Orb like server for streaming MP4 files. I was looking thru the web and found that we can probably assemble a ffserver to transcode in MP4 with Quicktime Faststart for when the video is not pre-encoded?

ffserver I spend a considerable amount of time trying to get that to compile on Windows, but without success. There is a program for the PSP that actually streams with build-in transcoding, but uses a custom PSP video format (PMP) with a client application on (hacked) PSP's. It came out when Sony was still pushing the UMD video format, where the video file playback was limited to 368x208 as a max resolution while UMDs could utilize the full 480x272 resolution of the PSP. With the Windows-server app, it just provided a list of files in a folder, and on the PSP, you used the App to connect to it and play the files while the server trasncoded it on the fly. It worked pretty good then, but when firmware 3 came out, Sony let the 480x272 resolution be used for standard video files, and the app wasn't used as much anymore. There is partial source code available for it, but I never did manage to compile it.

With the MP4 Server, I initially had a conversion-engine build-in, and accessible through the web-interface. You could start a conversion of a DVD or video file that way, and even initiate a reconversion using a different profile remotely as well, but having both the conversion and the web-code into a single application made things quite complicated to maintain. Due to its complications and bugs, I kept it in the fridge for over a year (check on my website for iPhone Streaming Server references). When someone asked for something like it, I decided to continue work on it, but with the iPhone issue, I basically ended up stripping parts out, and making it free.

 

[tallnerd1985]

@dvdcatalyst

Maybe instead of doing a transcoding server, maybe do a media management server like you have now but expand it serve music and pictures. I was thinking it would be awesome to have a Android client that interacts with your server software to cache a list of media files that are either hosted locally on the phone or on the server then have the client as well be a media player. I forsee it being able to either stream the media or sync the pre-encoded file, using your software, via Wi-Fi or 3G from the server. Lastly, if possible without infringing on Orbs concept, have a Meta-server that interacts between the phone and the home server software.

I figure that we break it up into 3 different devisions or so:

Media Server:That would be you

Android Client/Media Player/Library:I think I have someone in mind that wants to do this

Meta-Server for the Client and Server:I havent the slightest clue but I will fund the cost for the server and software

Let me know what you think

 

[dvdcatalyst]

PM sent with some brainstorming.

 

[Clawbane]

First of all I want to thank everyone who posted on this thread, you all made setting this up SUPER easy. I have one problem with it though. When I start downloading nswPlayer does not stream it. I have to wait until the entire thing is downloaded before I can play it. If anyone has any suggestions I would really appreciate it.

 

[tallnerd1985]

First of all I want to thank everyone who posted on this thread, you all made setting this up SUPER easy. I have one problem with it though. When I start downloading nswPlayer does not stream it. I have to wait until the entire thing is downloaded before I can play it. If anyone has any suggestions I would really appreciate it.

Hmm, what kind of phone do you have and if it's stock or not. Also this method is requires the mp4 to be encoded with the atoomb at the beginning of the file. If not, it will try to download the movie first instead of streaming it. Other than that, I haven't really messed with this after the new TVersity updates came out but I would try DVDcatalyst's mp4 streaming software which does the same thing as TVersity. The only reason why I suggest that is because the author of TVersity refuses to get off his Apple iPhone high horse and make it compatible with Android so that no encoding is required for streaming avi files and other such files.

 

[reizac926]

androvlc

I have configured everything according to your instructions, but when I select a file to play, it gives me an error that says "AndroVLC Server Unavailable"
Do you have any idea how to resolve that?
Also, do you have an answer for the earlier post about, when you are connecting to your home ip address over 3g, it prompts for a U/N and password. Any idea what those would be?

 

[Candyhut]

Hi all, great guide tallnerd1985. Just got hold of a ZT-180 Epad and having great fun with it. Really like Android some great stuff out there . I have followed your guide and have tversity working on the epad, but I can only access pictures. Every time I try to watch a video I get <Uknown> 192.xxx.xxx.xxx Download Unsuccessful. I would be really grateful if somebody could point me in the right direction. Also is there any way of playing Java games in a browser on Android 2.1. My son loves a game called the powder game. Thanks for your help in adavance

 

[Ph0t0n]

another method

I just tried an app called "RockPlayer" with Tversity. I'm not sure when it came out - might have been after this nswPlayer tutorial. The cool thing is that it uses ffmpeg, so if your library has a lot of mpeg4-part2 (DIVX and XVID), there's no transcoding required - which means two things: 1) you don't have to spend time to re-encoding your whole video library, and 2) Video quality won't be lost in the re-encoding process. If your library has a lot of H.264/AVC or mpeg2, then RockPlayer isn't very useful.

It works over 3G. I haven't tested it over wi-fi yet, but if it works over the internet I'm guessing wi-fi would work too.

Just install the app on your phone, and then go to your http Tversity webpage (not the flash one). Click on the movie as if you were going to download it - RockPlayer opens it automatically. I tested avi files in XVID and DIVX and they both worked fine. I also tried a few SVCDs in mpeg2 format, but they played back choppy. None of the H.246 .mp4 or .mov files I tried worked - choppy/slow video and no audio. There is a "hardware decoding" option, but when I turned it on, I couldn't get anything at all to play on Tversity - not even XVID or DIVX. I had to use Advanced Task Killer to kill RockPlayer when it froze.

Like the nswPlayer solution, it's not really using Tversity's DLNA, so there's no on-the-fly transcoding or anything. However, it gets the job done and is a lot easier than trying to use the Tversity's flash player on a touchscreen, which is pretty much impossible (although a physical keyboard's arrow keys help a little). And it's less time consuming than re-encoding for nswPlayer.

For wi-fi anyway, the ideal solution is still a profile for Android devices so that the transcoding can be done by TVersity on the computer. I'm not sure how to do that, but I suspect it needs to be done by the Tversity guys. However, I think Android's DLNA app might be broken anyways because I have yet to get it to work with anything. In my opinion the DLNA specification is overly complicated and leaves too much room for interpretation which results in a lot of products not working together and frightens away companies thinking about implementing it.

BTW - I have a Droid 2, running Android 2.2.

 

[Treyxazn]

Rockplayer indeed did the trick, thank you : )
with tversity, I noticed that on 3G it can be hard to have optimum streaming
outside wifi networks worked great and when I had a close to full or full 3g signal streaming was flawless.

I normally post on XDA I just thought I'd contribute to others searching for help with streaming.

I am on the Samsung Epic 4g with Sprint.

 

[frightking]

Help me please!!!!

So I am not great at all this techy stuff but at times can hold my own. I have set everything up on my PC with Tversity. I can access and see all my files through the browser on my phone but when I click on the a I get a message that says "downloading" and then shortly after a downloading error message. Any ideas of what I am doing wrong? I am using a Samsung Fascinate with Android 2.1, I have tried three differant browsers: Opera, the Browser that was on the phone and also Skyfire. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Treyxazn]

So I am not great at all this techy stuff but at times can hold my own. I have set everything up on my PC with Tversity. I can access and see all my files through the browser on my phone but when I click on the a I get a message that says "downloading" and then shortly after a downloading error message. Any ideas of what I am doing wrong? I am using a Samsung Fascinate with Android 2.1, I have tried three differant browsers: Opera, the Browser that was on the phone and also Skyfire. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hey, it is not the browser but rather the media player you are using to receive the said video. Download Rockplayer for free off the market and that should do the trick. It supports most video formats but it does not transcode .mkv for example nor does tversity if you need help with media conversion software I can help with that also, good luck mate : ) !

 

[jxrain038]

With Tversity and Rock Player Lite, I am able to stream video over 3G to my phone. There's only one problem. There is no sound. How do I fix this? I am using DVD Catalyst 4 and I've selected the option in Catalyst for the streaming. My phone is running Chevy SS 5.1, 1.1 LV.

 

[dvdcatalyst]

The files created with DVD Catalyst are already in the proper format, make sure that tversity the option to recompress is turned off.

Have you tried my own mp4 server to see if that works better?

 

[jxrain038]

I have not tried yours yet dvdcat, but only because I loved the idea of being able to stream through the xbox360. I started to use Act1 Video player instead of Rock player and now it seems to be working. Is there any way I can speed up the stream over 3g? It seems like it needs to buffer about every 20 seconds.