VLC and UPnP

[oysteina]

Hi

I've been trying for some time now to use VLC as a media renderer supporting UPnP. It is stated in change-logs that UPnP is supported by the latest version of VLC but only on linux. Therefore I have installed the latest version of Ubuntu and I have downloaded the source for VLC 0.8.5 and installed it.

I have a UPnP server running on my network, and a controlpoint which easilly discovers other media renderers and servers. But it can not see the VLC player.

I've tried to find out how to make VLC propagate itself on the network, but all I could find was a description on a UPnP setting in preferences-playlist-service discovery. I have no UPnP settings there, only SAP, Shoutcast and Podcast. Is there some plugin I'm missing?

Has anybody used VLC in a UPnP setting? If so, could you describe how to make it work?

Any help would be apperciated!

Øystein

[masterplumber]

I've been trying to achieve the same thing.

As far as I can tell, vlc has been compiled without upnp being enabled in the Ubuntu release. So you need to get the source code, all of the dependent packages and do it yourself - remembering to set upnp to enabled.

I don't have enough Linux skills to do that but it would be good if someone who did could maybe enlighten us

[oysteina]

Thanks for replying.

<<So you need to get the source code, all of the dependent packages and do it yourself - remembering to set upnp to enabled.

I did install vlc (and all the dependencies) using source code! Any idea how to enable upnp? I have not seen any commands for configuring with upnp.

Øystein

[funman]

you'll need to install libupnp http://upnp.sf.net and recompile vlc

maybe on ubuntu it exists, in that case you would install libupnp-dev

please tell us if that works

[hepaminondas]

...even finds out the mediaserver, but it seems that no information on the files is exchanged (i.e. VLC does not show any possible file...)

No idea on how to proceed...don't know what i could change on the configuration...

Best regards

[masterplumber]

there's some line somewhere in the ./configure about enabling upnp

Perhaps this might help

http://www.cybergarage.org/blog/2006/01 ... ectly.html

[oysteina]

I have now configured VLC again with the libupnp-dev package on ubuntu. This worked and I now have a UPnP option in preferences-playlist-service discovery. i can also look for UPnP devices in my playlist with the service discovery option.

However, it does not work exactly as I hoped. The VLC discovers most UPnP servers (not all), but they are just a folder in my playlist. I can not browse the servers, nor see any content on them. In addition to this, the VLC player does not propagate itself on the network. This means that I can not use a control point either to play content on the VLC player.

So for now I have a UPnP media renderer which can locate servers, but I can not use it to play files from the player itself, nor from a control point. which kind of was the whole point with setting up a UPnP environment.

If anyone has made this work, let me know! There seems to be very few software media renderes with UPnP support, and the ones who exist does not seem to work for streaming TV signals. If anyone has managed this without buying expensive software or hardware pleas let me know!

Øystein

[mathusael]

to my knowledge, VLC is only a UPnP client not a server and therefore do not broadcast its address on the network but rather discover them only -- this might have changed, but well, obviously the knowledge hasn't been shared... so, a solution would to use a server.

There are lot of servers for Linux :
* UPnP Server : uShare, GMediaServer, CyberMediaGate, MediaTomb (to share media files)
* UPnP Renderer ou Client : djmount, GMediaRender, VideoLanClient (to read media files)
* UPnP Controller : cidero (java), CyberLink Sample Control Point (java) (to send files from a server to a renderer -- I guess this is in case the client has no controller build in)

May be try uShare first, it seems to support the most format.

There was a page (in French ) explaining all this here :
http://www.pervasive-network.org/SPIP/P ... -avec-UPnP

but it seems to be down right now, so I'm using the google cached version http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:01 ... =firefox-a

[oysteina]

My goal was not to use VLC as a server but as a renderer. I have tried several servers (Cidero, Intel and others). What I need is a media renderer which propagates itself on the network and is able to stream TV-signals.

The point of having a media renderer which broadcasts itself on the network is to be able to use a control point (in this case a Nokia N80) to start and stop media streams. If I'm not mistaken, a part of the UPnP spec is the fact that both servers and renderers should broadcast themselves on the network so control points can find them.

Another problem with VLC, as I mentioned, was also the fact that media files on the server did not appear in the VLC UPnP playlist. Just the name of the servers, and that makes it difficult to run the files in VLC.

Thanks for the link, unfortunatly I'm not fluent in French.


Øystein

[aassing]

Hi All!
I am TOTALLY new to this And the various terms - U all are super helpful and so very patient with beginners like myself. I just wanted to note however that I have been trying to gain as much knowledge about - what "I" call - my baptism into the wireless life and have been jumping thru Firey HOOPS trying to figure out what the other is saying.....THat said - I hope I can be helpful by adding that I currently use the media server TVersity and it's home is on my NSLU2 Unslung 6.8 (Don't even Ask how I got that thing "slug?" - Out of a sling to Unslung!) attached with a 1gig Flash USB and an Iomega Silver series 250Gig Hdd - loaded with all/or most of my music, video and pic collection and it transmits wireless to my Netgear MP101 and some other wireless things I have e.g PSP and for the most part it is the Best server I have used - and Really folks - I have USED a LOT of the other servers - U may want to give it a try - they also have a really nice support forum like on here. Do feel free to contact me if I can lend any "basic" advice on how I "prayed" and finally got here....The only update is that I am currently in the process of changing over to the ASUS 700Ge wireless media/server/Hdd/do yr laundry/ router so things are about to get Crazy again....Thanx again!!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The UPnP plugins are buggy (because none of the developpers use any media server). The fact that neither of them work on anything but Linux does probably not help here.

We need someone to maintain it. Full point. Sorry.

[oysteina]

Now that home networks are more usual, it would be nice to have some working software media renderer which does not cost a lot of money. The few renderers available does not seem to fully support the UPnP and DLNA specifications.

Øystein

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

This is going to happen if and only if someone contributes support for it.

[cannonwg]

This is going to happen if and only if someone contributes support for it.

Using the cyberlink upnp stack with vlc is not easy, I know I've tried it with little success. I could bring up a list of my devices and content some of the time, and at others the sax parser just plain crashed.

Although I still play with trying to get it to work correctly, I've been doing builds mostly on tiger, I've since moved to writing platform independent servers and applications that can call vlc either via script or api.

If and when we do have a module for vlc working it will be part of our bastet project on sourceforge.

Meantime we are implementing a upnp "bridge server" that can be accessed via either browser or http client api.
We may also develop a simple vlc module to connect to our client. our server will advertise via dssdn (bonjoir) and accept simple xpath type queries to browse the dom structure. This eliminates the need to include the upnp libraries in the build.

If anyone is interested more in this approach we would be interested in hearing from you via our sourceforge project . http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/bastet