May 7, 2011

Media server that can stream video over internet

Forums: 
Multimedia

Hi Everyone,

I've been running Debian on my servers for years (and RedHat before that). Among the many tasks my home server has is that it runs Mediatomb to my PS3 - excellent and I'm very happy with it.

I now have a Virgin 50mb (with 5mb upstream) internet connection at home and I'm looking for an internet-capable streamer so I can watch my films at my girlfriends house. As I have 5mb upload, I am hoping for some good qaulity results, but I can't find anything suitable.

Anyone have any experience / recommendations? I run 64-bit Debian on a an AMD9650 quadcore with 4GB RAM

TIA,

Joe

12 Comments

Comments

May 7, 2011
Lman

I would either just google for websites (they are EVERYWHERE) or look on debian. They normally have packages you can download and install and to my knowledge there should be some video streaming apps. I don't know which 64 bit Debian you're running but there are packages. http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages

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May 7, 2011
jmcnulty

I have Googled a lot - everything seems to be audio only or a complete O/S install, which I don't want to do as the server has so many other jobs to do for me.

I'll have a look at the standard packages, but if you have any other suggestions / experience, that would really help.

Thanks,

Joe

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May 7, 2011
saqman2060

Use vlc to stream media. You don't need a server, just a powerful PC and a faster network connections.

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May 7, 2011
Lman

No problem just keep us posted on how it's goin. Come back to this exact forum if you need help :)

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May 7, 2011
asedt

I really don't have any experience but when I Google i find this:

http://www.howtoforge.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1454

And the first link in that topic is about how to do it with VLC:

http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/29/how-to-stream-almost-anything-using-vlc/

If I was you I would try that first.

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May 8, 2011
jmcnulty

Tried VLC (don't know why I didn't think of it - it's my default player on Windows)

The lenny repository version is quite old (0.8.6) and has the codecs stripped out by the debby people and specifically says that it isn't great at streaming, so I'm not suprised that after a couple of hours of fiddling I can't get it to work.

Any other ideas? Ideally I'd have something like mediatomb that can handle transcoding etc but over http.

TIA,

Joe

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May 8, 2011
Goineasy9

VLC is up to version 1.1.9 in sid, same as the version available to me in fedora 15. Codecs are easy enough to obtain. Since the requires are limited in vlc, if your good at apt, it might be a simple install. The only reason I'm telling you this is because it's the only app I'm familiar with for this purpose.
Hopefully others may come up with some alternatives for you.

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May 8, 2011
asedt

jmcnulty wrote:

I've been running Debian on my servers for years (and RedHat before that). Among the many tasks my home server has is that it runs Mediatomb to my PS3 - excellent and I'm very happy with it.

Now when I think about it you already use Mediatomb to stream over you LAN right? UPnP I read on there page: http://mediatomb.cc/dokuwiki/faq:faq

I'm not sure but is it not possible to access the LAN with OpenVPN mentioned in the faq I linked above.

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May 8, 2011
jmcnulty

asedt wrote:

Now when I think about it you already use Mediatomb to stream over you LAN right? UPnP I read on there page: http://mediatomb.cc/dokuwiki/faq:faq

I'm not sure but is it not possible to access the LAN with OpenVPN mentioned in the faq I linked above.

Yeah, I was reading the mediatomb stuff earlier.

I *could* use vpn (actually I'd use samba tunnelled over SSH as I use tunnelling all the time for VNC while away anyway) - I used to use the vpn setup on ip-cop a lot at work and at home, the problem I have then is getting mediatomb to a) not transcode when I'm on the PS3 at home and b) transcode to a lower bitrate when I'm out of the house at my girlfriends. From looking at the mediatomb setup I can set transcodes by filetype, but not by machine accessing the file. Obviously I'd prefer to keep full quality for LAN viewing, but even a 5mb upload won't work reliably at full data rate.

I'll have a look at getting a later version of vlc - I got the webgui working no problem, just no stream and then I found the notes about the old version not coping well with streaming. The VLC website wasn't too helpful at first glance for finding the later versions, but I'll keep looking.

As for the sid version - I'll look, but it depends on just how many includes it needs. I have Lenny as the server needs needs to be rock solid stable (it's an external-facing web/mail server as well), I know it's probably over-cautious (my IT manager background), but I want to keep experimental packages off it.

Thanks for the help!

Joe

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May 8, 2011
jmcnulty

Just an update - have got vlc to work by running the latest windows version in a VM on the server. It's horribly inelegant from a resources point of view and I'd prefer an all-linux solution on the server side, but it works fine.

I'll keep looking :)

Joe

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May 9, 2011
Lman

Just wondering but what Debian 64-bit are you running?

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May 11, 2011
jmcnulty

Lenny at the moment. As the server is external facing I prefer to stick to proven versions for as long as possible.

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