Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Hei briand :)

You are a user. We tried helping them, they don't listen. They have a lot of problems in their architecture, they are for sure widely used by they will loose momemtum because of the way the community is lead. But what I'm saying is:

Is too much work. We don't have man power. MythTV is not widely used by our target users to justify the free development of that. So if I have to do priorities, unfortunately we will support the STANDARD, not a solution. So, lot's of small UPNP servers do work better in streaming this than the monster mtv became.

I told you: it was 3 years ! dev for mythTV like. We did Maemo Myth, mythTV for the VideoCenter, gMyth, python bindings... we even invited the guys to the conference so we could get more people working.. on it..
all in Vain.

marcelo

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Nah, it works in the built in media player.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

I can confirm that flac files served with mediatomb and gmediaserver show up in mediastreamer. When I go to an album with flac files in the Canola plug-in, it says "no items found". Hope this helps.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Hi Mudhoney : i just check, our upnp plugin is not adding the flac mime type.
I will see if we can add this without side effects.

Briand :
I missed a little bit this part. Come one dude, we know that we have flaws. We know that we can make the plugin work adapting to mythTV faults. But we like to do things the right way not hacks. If we cannot help them (because they are not easy inclined to change, and because it's a mess) it's complicated for us. Put that together with the fact that a regular users will never be able to use it correctly (it's just a nightmare sometimes to install and configure it) then you have part of the equation.

Then check MorpheuZ profile. He is the media guy on canola, and has more experience in developing with MythTV than you can imagine, and sorry if we say that about it, it's not defending the plugin, but sharing our experiences with MythTV usage, development and hopes that went underwater because of the way it's done.

Mark my words: other linux project will override mythTV in the future, because the way it is today is simply not right.

Marcelo

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

My media player is also empty :)

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

sorry, I'm just calling them as I see them. I'm not here to evangelize MythTV or any other software. If Canola won't work with MythTV, and you're happy with that, then that is your decision. I'm only reporting what I saw.

One thing I did fail to point out in my previous post, though: The "networked media" (ie: my MythTV system) shows up in the built-in File Manager; It can't see (or, I'm not patient enough to wait to see if it sees) the audio files, but it does list out the available Videos and Recorded Programs. If I double-click on an entry in the recorded programs, it "slide-shows" on me (probably because they're recorded at a fairly high bit rate).

Each and every item in the Videos folder opens via File Manager, and plays (via mplayer) fine on the tablet. So, there's obviously no issue with the file format of the videos, and apparently the UPNP support (okay, let's call it 'networked media support') in the File Manager has no real issue in figuring out the metadata it is fed, and allowing me to access the media. This would indicate that there isn't any low-lying, fundamental "problem" with the UPNP implementation in MythTV, wouldn't it?

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

I am confirming this problem with Fuppes Version: SVN-r578 running on XP. Almost every time Canola2 crashes while accessing Fuppes.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Unm, On XP? ok we will setup a machine to test it!

Marcelo Oliveira

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Well, that's the difference between assume things and doing them :)
The regular browsing uses GnomeVFS, so it actually copies the file to the harddisk and then start streaming from this file not the network (what would be the correct thing to do) so they do have this advantage, but the point is :(don't worry about canola) get the URI and throw in mplayer. It must play there than we can improve our side.

What I can say to you is what you've find out : if we downloaded the media, it would work, but that's not the right way to do it. call us purist or whatever, but we will not do it. If mythTV supports good enough the protocol, the support will be natural. If the bug is on our side it will be tested and depured yes. But we will not modify to work solely with it. That's the point. It's not passing our flaws to mythTV.

My final summary : :)

- What I would like to let clear is : we will not "enter" in the quest to provide good and full support (official) to mythTV, because we know the size of the hole. Indeed can be used (I told you, we had a lot of work in the videocenter application, exactly in the mythTV, so we know the size of the hole here ! : ) and to say "we support mythTV" is something that I cannot afford.

But in the end, like in the other things: if you are not satisfied, you have the choice of the other applications, that's the beauty of open source! :) and your money back of course (joking)

Marcelo

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Marcelo --

Again, I'm not here to perpetuate an argument, or to convince you to do something you don't want to do.

I do take issue with you dismissing, wholesale, issues I've found with your plug-in, simply because my UPNP server happens to be MythTV, and casting dispersions on MythTV and assuming the issue must be with MythTV because (a) they have sloppy code, and (b) their programmers are rude, arrogant, or difficult to get along with.

I don't accept that (a) is a given, and don't generally agree with (b), either (with a few notable exceptions).

Nokia's built-in File Manager "sees" my media server, and it'll (apparently) pass the network URL to the media player and I can view a media stream from my MythTV box to my N800. The file is not copied, en masse, (as you stated, above) to the device and then played; it is streamed.

In the specific instance of my Videos folder, all of the videos are capable of being played on the N800 with no intermediary adjustment in resolution or bitrate. They will all play (via streaming) by double-tapping them in the File Manager.

Attempting to do the same thing in Canola causes the application (Canola) to immediately and completely exit, upon trying to "enter" the Videos "folder", before it ever attempts to display a list.

I don't agree with your conclusion that this must be due to some "non-standard" UPNP implementation in MythTV -- tools on the tablet itself (File Manager, Media Player, and mplayer) obviously have no issue in parsing the returned information or, in the case of the media players, handling the incoming stream. The logical conclusion, given this information, is that Canola is having some difficulty that the built-in tools on the NIT apparently do not have, so the fault must lie within Canola and/or its plug-in.

I was hoping Canola would provide me with an nicer interface than the File Manager currently allows, so that I could occasionally serve media from my MythTV system to my NIT. It is clear, through your replies in this thread and your invitation for me to "go elsewhere", that I should not hold my breath waiting for this to happen. Okay, I won't. I'll suffer through the pedestrian interface provided by the File Manager, and I'll take you up on your invitation.

I wish you success with your software.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

That's you :P It works with every orb setup on my network.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Well briand, I told you the final conclusion:

We are not going to officially support it. That's final. Officially supports means to do everything to keep it working, etc etc. if you don;t agree with what we said, you have the total right to do so, but I do also state OUR opinion based in 3 years of maemo-mythtv projects. And of course (it's not everyone there that are rude, but some key persons, that unfortunately decided the future of the device)

We will debug the plugin, and improve it's features as we go, so if the mythtTv is providing correctly it will be supported.

The problem is that I told you that we are not going to support it, and anyhow you provided a lot of feedback that was not related to our goals.

I agree that we shouldn't break (even if we don;t support) but remember what you said? "don 't assum album.. don;t assume that" and this we don't have nothing to do with. And please, when I said copy the file, I did't say a "real" conventional copy THAN play, gnomeVFS writes the files in the disk and then stream as it downloads. Anyhow I'm not a developer, I can be saying a wrong thing, but we do not use the same components, that's why we don't support the same way.

I'm not invite you to go elsewhere, but I was inviting you to understand that we don't work for a particular problem / server / solution. And as much as you like and use it, we decided no to go there. Simply that. and so, if you wanted to talk / report bugs on something that we said previously it would not be supported, then you know what you are going to have as answer. It's not rudeness, you talk what you want? you listen/read what you don;t want. It's that simple unfortunately.

We (particulary me) try to keep this as polite as possible even when things goes really beyong the respectable level (it's not your case) but if I told you "we don't support" and you kept hitting the button, then we will also hit ours :/

I think we can close this topic on mythTV ok?

BR

Marcelo

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Yes. You've made it abundantly clear that you will immediately dismiss any issue I report regarding your UPNP plug-in as an issue with my MythTV server, largely due to your bias and previous experience with the MythTV development team. I guess that seems prudent, to you.

[shrug]

I note that others, not running MythTV, have reported the very same issue. Do you think their issue is because I'm running a MythTV server, too?

From message number 47 in this thread:

Quote:

Originally Posted by st5150 I am confirming this problem with Fuppes Version: SVN-r578 running on XP. Almost every time Canola2 crashes while accessing Fuppes.

Umm... I believe you did. Is it not exactly what you were inferring in 49 in this thread.

Seems pretty clear to me; you've made your choice. I, of course, am free to make mine.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Fuppes (non-svn) doesn't crash. We don't use bleeding edge for testing. But anyhow again:

I think you still haven't figured the point here:

We are going to improve the plugin. It may end up working quite nicely with mythTV, The source code is going to be on the website quite soon, so even for those servers that are more specific it can be tweaked.

The fact is : we are not officially going to support it. Yes you can call it bias, but for me is simple :
The team is smaller, I have less development power, and I need to choose. So I choose only a smaller compatibility with smaller (more end-user-focused) servers, even if that means the ugly windows media player. I think the medium-experienced linux user knows how to deal with the problems in any other servers and can do their trick better than the average guy on windows. The community is full of software for those that are more into this hardcore features, than in the simple ones..
that's what I was telling you that you have choice. I always say that an dI have more than 1000 posts here to prove that even under unfair comments I do not "throw" any one out of the game, actually I can't. I said that just to make sure there's no commitment between my team's work and this NEED. not "you". the need of "supporting" mythTV. I have this demand coming even from high managers inside the company and I deny in the same level I deny to "you". It's just not worth for us. So if I'm not mistaken, you said that you did some mythTV coding right? So you can do the best thing in communities and tweak the code to fit the Mtv needs also. If you want, not only we can give you early access but also all the help through the channels (IRC, mail).

But please understand the point : under the circunstances (small team) is out of queue to "officialy" support it. If our improvements make it work. Nice. If not : / we will not create a task force for that :/.
If it was a paid software, then we would have a bigger team, and force to get most of the request done. But now, based on canola1 and 2 I know that I prefer to use a couple of other server as automated testing then mythTV just that.

You have my permission to continue to topic with me in private message, I will answer you asap there.

BR

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Okay I guess I finally found the answer to why it takes long time to start streaming video, it seems mplayer accesses the server differently than the built in player, when transcoding to avi(divx) it downloads the whole file before trying to play it (or atleast very much of ite), but when trascoding to mpeg it seems to open it straight away without delay, I guess I can live with mpeg2 trasncoding I just need to find good settings for maximum quality. So in the end this is not a problem with the plugin but different behaviour with the media playing engine.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Andy, it's true,
that's why we also are suggesting some users to change the default player to be again the maemo one, not mplayer. But it really depends on the kind of quality you are aiming also : /

But please, share your transcoding settings, etc that can be helpful to the others! :)

MArcelo

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

I read through the whole thread and just want to be sure:

The only way to use canola (with UPNP support) on the N770, is by running HE2008 ?

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Sure I'll share them when I find the best quality/performance, im away this weekend so ill try them monday or tuesday, btw what you mean by setting the default player back to maemo one? I thought canola allways uses mplayer as video engine?. Btw what user agent string does canola use when connecting to upnp server, it would help as I can then do automatic profile to tversity whenever I connect with canola. Of course I could just capture the header with wireshark but I guess asking is easier =).

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Yes, for now.

Hmm, there is a upnp plugin for bora which you can try to install:
http://repository.maemo.org/extras/p...a-upnp-plugin/

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Hi,

I tried out Canola's UPnP support yesterday with a Twonkyvision server on a Linkstation (Linux). Comparing to the Media Streamer application provided by Nokia, Canola is slower to start playing music. Also, the album art embedded in the mp3 is not displayed in Canola but is in Media Streamer. Also it was not obvious to me that there was a way to queue multiple albums in a playlist (again, comparing to Media Streamer). Other than that, great work.

The album art and queuing are not that big of a deal. The slowness in starting to stream is something that will keep me using Media Streamer.

Frank

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Frank : indeed, we deployed a new version today trying to improve the list with twonky and others but we still have a lot of problems. As we said in the topic, it's alpha and we thank you for your feedback because it makes us focus on the higher priorities, like the list etc. There's no way now to do recursive adds to the playlist, and also not ways of control point features usage.

Yeah, we can improve it and we will, but it needs a lot of testing before becomes better. The thing is that mediastreamer uses other strategy / components for the downloads and we are trying to come up with an alternative inside our plugins as fast as possible.

Thanks frank!

Marcelo

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Orb works great now, but videos have stopped working with MediaTomb (I think) :(

Anyone else having problems with videos and long lists of music (1000+) in mediatomb?

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

hi Navi :/ well it was not supposed to happen : /// but let's work on it!
Long lists are the issue now : some servers don't send "a limited amount" of items... and this makes the current list slow, and also playback... so we are limiting/testing trying alternatives.. let's see what's becomes the best...

BR

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Actually, I might be because I updated tablet-encode (everything else is the same). I downgraded the plugin and it still doesn't work.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Earlier, when I expressed this concern, you blamed it on my UPNP server and said it wouldn't be fixed. Now that others (who aren't running the same UPNP server I am) are reporting the same problem, I see you've changed your mind, and have decided to work on this.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

briand, I am following what I' ve said: we work on the biggest problems not with a specific server etc. Even before people reported we were doing the update, and to work with this issue is beyond one server and even on those which support the list behavior is not good. I think you are trying to create situations that are not going anywhere

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

marcelo --

I'm simply pointing out that you dismissed each and every concern and observation in my messages as "problems with mythtv" and (eventually) indicated that developer resources wouldn't be used in troubleshooting them, because you didn't have the time or inclination to work on "issues" with other (UPNP server) software. Now, it's becoming clear that the issue isn't, in fact, a problem with a specific server, but with the canola plug-in; and now, you're putting some resources into investigating the issue.

I guess my problem (if I, indeed, have one) is to have my 20+ years of real-world experience in computers, networking, internet, and software development completely and entirely dismissed (and disregarded) because I'm using MythTV (..and you don't like MythTV). As I opined in my previous messages in this thread, the problem(s) probably exist regardless of server, but (at that time) you had no data points from anybody else having those specific problems (in a non-MythTV environment); now you are getting such reports, and are "looking at the problem" (and, as one would expect, prioritizing the issues in accordance with common/prudent software development practices).

In short, whether it was your intention or not, you summarily dismissed every observation I had regarding your (UPNP plug-in) software because you have a predisposed bias against the server software I happen to be running. i.e.: you don't like my choice of software, so all my observation points are invalid and I should be ignored. I understand you may not have consciously decided to do this, but it is what you have done. My last message was simply observing that other (non-mythtv-using) users are starting to find the same exact issues, and you are not immediately dismissing the problem.

I'm not trying to "create situations that are not going anywhere", because it doesn't matter to me, personally, whether you choose to address these issues or not; I am no longer using, testing, or eagerly awaiting upgrades/changes to your software, so it simply doesn't affect me. I am truly happy that others are now seeing these issues and reporting them, and that your team are now investigating how to address them... not because you'll "win me back" (you won't) as a Canola user, but because you'll be improving the product so that you don't lose other users.

I didn't stop using Canola because of any problems it may have (I understand it was an alpha release, and I understand that there are problems to be expected-- I have no unrealistic expectations of software released in this state); I stopped using Canola because, frankly, I didn't like the way you treated me (as an individual) and totally dismissed everything I had to say because you (personally) didn't care for my choice of server software. I'm not an idiot just because you don't like MythTV.

Again, not to belabor the point further, I wish you and your team continued success in your software development endeavors.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Well, I will try to be really short.

1. We tested the plugin with a couple of servers and 15-25k collections. with the tested plugins it worked reasonable well, thus we closed to release it.

2. One user complained about mythTV, and I said : we are not going to support MythTV. So you can assume: we are not going to install / listen to problems BASED on mythTV.

3. Even knowing that (you wrote on the beginning) you came, with a handful of bugs, and even more things like "don't assume this, don't assume that" -you also may not have mean that- but sounded like you thought that canola SHOULD do that, and it was unnaceptable if not.

4. I gave (you can look in several other post of mine to other people) you our standard procedure : Sorry, we are not going to support, but there's choice out there.

5. At any, I mean any Moment I would make ANY judgment of you, because like you don't know me, I don't know you and I only talk about the small section of text you wrote, complaining about supporting something that we said that we wouldn't support.

6. with the update, the list problem became clear. Ok, it's beyond mythTV, so we need to go back and solve. You are right that I dismissed it when it was mythTV based the complaint. But not because it was you. It was the decided before : no mythTV support. But if other server-users started complaing of course we would look at it briand.

7. You came back with, apart from your 20-years of experience, what take you at least to my age if you started at 8 with computers, with a behavior that I consider to be of a child of 13. Please read my other posts on for example (canola doesn't live to the hype) or other guys, or even on my blog about canola not suiting their needs. I WAS NEVER, EVER nothing directly to you, but to the need you have that we cannot fulfill.

So, even if you think the same, I'm deeply disappointed that you still carry on this, decided to drop the software because of my post (I don't think my buddies developers deserve to lost an user because of me) and from now on, I will try to give more simple, mechanical answers, instead of being a real person.

I don't believe any of the software you use today for UPNP client on maemo would answer, give the attention, reasons in the level of detail I gave you, neither I believe they could care about you not using the software. So if even with all the respect that I DID gave you just by reading and answering ALL your messages since you got to this forum, and even a message that you started acknowledging that no mythTV was going to be supported... I really cannot do more to explain the situation.

A shame, but I think I learned something valuable: I should be more "machine" when it comes to "user support / listening / feedback" instead of being a real listener.

Take care.

Marcelo

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

That's really rather sad, Handful, as I think most everybody appreciate's the 'Human face' of Canola. :(

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Did this happen before it was released here? I didn't participate in the testing, so I would have had absolutely no way of knowing or assuming your stance expressed in point #2.

Your initial post in this thread specifically asked for bugs and feedback, and my initial post in this thread (after installing and trying the software) did exactly that; I gave you the feedback you asked for.

...and, after you said you wouldn't support "working around MythTV problems", I pointed out that everything in my initial post that indicated a bug/failure in Canola, worked just fine on my tablet without using Canola, and asked how you could possibly consider it to be a MythTV problem with "a non-standard UPNP implementation".


As an aside, when I asked for something other than a list of song titles (like song length, genre, artist, year, etc) you indicated that MythTV probably wasn't sending it, and you could only display what it sent. I have looked at the code in MythTV, and I can assure you that a very complete and comprehensive set of metadata is returned for each and every item on the catalog it sends out.


Here, you all but state that, yes, you dismissed my issues because I'm running MythTV. Now that others are seeing the issue, you'll look into it.

I have not read, posted, or participated, in the threads or blogs you mention here. I don't feel my writing in this thread is coming off as being from "a child of 13". I understand, from your writing, that there may be a bit of a communications gap due to native language differences, so perhaps you perceived a tone that wasn't there.

Let me ask you to participate in a brief experiment: Go back and read my first post in this thread (a thread specifically asking for feedback on this 0.1.0 Alpha Release), but this time remove all references to what sort of media server I'm running. Ask yourself (and, please, be honest with yourself) if your responses to me about any of my points, observations, opinions, or suggestions would have been any different in this thread.

I ask this only because, later in the thread, someone else posted a much less detailed description of one of the very same problems I posted about in my first post in this thread, and your immediate answer to them was that you guys would have to look into the problem. While you may not have intended to personally insult me, I would think that you can easily see how I might be offended by this.

Indeed, it is a shame (and I agree with GA's post, below yours). What you should have learned is that you shouldn't immediately dismiss any and all issues brought up by someone, simply because you're not a fan of another piece of software that person happens to run. While it may seem expeditious to simply dismiss everything as "a MythTV issue, which we will not support", it is not necessarily the best or most accurate assessment of the issues raised.

One of the things I liked about the Canola effort was the approachability of you and the folks on your team. If this discussion has led you to believe you shouldn't be so approachable, then you clearly haven't been understanding any (or most) of what I've written here. I would encourage you to remain open and approachable, and if you feel you should learn something from this dialog, it is my opinion that you should read what was written and analyze the problems noted without injecting a personal bias because some software you don't like has been mentioned. (See the thought experiment above, responding to your point #7)

Likewise.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

They were just standard AVI's that mplayer can play, they didn't show up in the menu as videos that could even be played, when I selected the xbox or azureus they just showed empty folders.

I'm yet to install media tomb as i haven't had much time of late.

Cheers
Rip

EDIT:

xbox shows nothing when I select the server (could be xbox setup as I only have n800 as a upnp device in the house aside from the xbox itself running XBMC)

and Az just shows empty folders (but Az can be used as a media server from my xbox client)

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Guys, as a developer of Canola-UPnP plugin I have some words to say about UPnP:

"UPnP is a crappy bloated %$#& protocol !! "

So, please, don't blame the servers, don't blame the plugin...
The UPnP specification is very week, basically, any http server can fit in the UPnP specification and that's the reason to have 10000 of servers implementations and only 10 or 15 players.

Anyone can implement a UPnP server (even Microsoft) but nobody can create a player supporting all servers (nobody did) .

If you would like to see a better alternative to share your media, try DMAP, or if you don't agree with me, ask to SONY why they are pushing DLNA (DLNA == UPnP + restrictions)...

We (Canola Team) will try to fix all issues with UPnP but this takes time and we need help, so as soon as possible we will publish the source code of the plugin (developers can get using apt-get source) and every user will be able to do tests with your very special UPnP server :-)

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

I've got mediatomb working fine with tablet encode with movies I have previously transcoded, but it runs choppy with non-tablet encoded movies, what settings did you use to get mediatomb working with tablet-encode? I'm pretty new to mediatomb and can't seem to get it working at all.

Cheers
Rip

EDIT:

Finally works. yay! with

<transcode mimetype="video/x-msvideo" using="tablet-encode"/>

and in profiles

<profile name="tablet-encode" enabled="yes" type="external">
<mimetype>video/x-msvideo</mimetype>
<accept-url>yes</accept-url>
<first-resource>yes</first-resource>
<accept-ogg-theora>no</accept-ogg-theora>
<agent command="tablet-encode" arguments="-p best %in %out"/>
<buffer size="14400000" chunk-size="512000" fill-size="120000"/>
</profile>

I'm not sure if these are the best settings but it seems to work with the latest stable edition of mediatomb :)

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Ok, so let's finish the whole history, let's try to start again, and dismiss any problems in communications.

Resume :

a. this guy http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...9&postcount=23 posted that mythTV was crashing.

b. I gave him the same answer you're going to receive: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...6&postcount=24

c. you are right, that I didn't look into it, I gave a answer based on history projects not on actual test (this could be my fault) so I could have ended everything here by saying simple : we are not going to support it.

d. you entered and if "I read your statement above about mythTv (first post on this thread) and so on...

e. we went under a flame about this.


---------
So now it's time to look forward, I will measure more carefully my words, sometimes I'm too eager to give fast feedback, and I do mistakes as anyone.

I apologize for sounding like "sending you away" but I do not apologize for not supporting mythTV. :)

There's one thing that bothers me a lot (not related to you) that I would like people to understand where we try to make the difference:

a. we don;t do dirty hacks.

So, I can assure you there's a couple of hacks we could do to improve the software.
Example : we could kill the non-fullscreen video, and open mplayer fullscreen twice, to avoid : the wrong aspect and the performance. But we chosed not to do so, and then we pay.

So we can indeed make it work (like it's working on the other media players) but it would need a hack (to use gnome things inside our code) or even to create a specific parser for it (not a big deal, but still a specific code) and we are avoiding it. So we will answer the guys from the other media serves indeed, but not going to add support to any of them in particular. That is the whole point : /

But no worries, not hurt feelings then?

Marcelo

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Thanks to the Canola team for putting out such a great free application! The new UNPN plugin works with the latest XP SVN of Fuppes. It is also much faster than the first release. I did notice one bug which I haven't investigated deeply. When loading an extremely large directory, it stops loading part way through the alphabet. Anyone else notice this running fuppes on XP?

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

okay. :)

regarding (a): I did see that post, and your (b) reply, but I didn't comment at the time.

In fact, MythTV no longer uses a "non-standard" container for videos by default. I assume, here, you're talking about the *.NUV files --they stopped using that container by default after version 0.18 (current version is 0.21, so there have been 3 releases [and 2.5 years] since the *.NUV files were created by default on most MythTV systems). The standard video format is now the raw capture of what the encoder card produces; in most cases it's an MPEG2 stream, as extracted from the VIDEO_TS in the case of satellite and terrestrial cable tuner cards, or MPEG2 as created natively by the analog encoder cards (Hauppauge, etc). There are a few cards out there that will create MP4 files directly, but those cards are relatively uncommon (even though the format, itself, is quite common). The only issue Canola (or any other UPNP product) should encounter is with the bitrate of the encoded video --and that has nothing to do with interpreting the UPNP stream, and everything to do with decoding the video file (and, in Canola's case, Canola isn't doing anything with the video other than sending it off to the media renderer [Media Player or mplayer]).

The problem stated in (a), and reiterated by me in this thread is that the application (Canola, along with the UPNP plug-in) exits immediately upon selecting either the Videos menu item (which can [and in my case, does] contain a list of transcoded video at an appropriate bitrate for the Nokia tablets) or the Recordings menu item (which contains [probably; see above] a list of standard MPEG2 video files.

In any case, it's not a problem with MythTV using a "non-standard" video container in which to store the video, because a) they don't use that format anymore, in most cases, and b) we're not even at the point of trying to play anything yet --we're still looking for a list of what's there. If Canola can successfully get the list of audio files from the Music section, it should be equally capable of getting the list of Video or Recording items in those sections. This particular issue has nothing to do with what format the video files are stored in; the failure occurs well before that point in the process. I don't know if there's a fundamental difference in the response sent via UPNP when one selects Videos or Recordings, versus the response sent when one selects Music. If you'd like, I'd be happy to run some code (if you have any) to capture the first few kilobytes of returned information for each of these menu selections, and you can determine if there's an issue with the server sending a fundamentally different UPNP stream for those two choices than it's sending for the Music choice...

Regarding (c), you said, "I gave a answer based on history projects not on actual test". To this I can only reiterate what I said above regarding the "non-standard" video container files. Also, please note that UPNP was added to MythTV in version 0.20, well after the *.nuv video container was (largely) dropped... so I don't see how you could have used a UPNP-enabled version of MythTV that was squirting out *.nuv files in your testing, unless you had a very non-standard MythTV installation.

And, I don't think anyone here is asking for that. If Canola can read and understand the UPNP data sent when selecting Music, then it logically follows that it should also be able to read and understand the UPNP data sent when selecting Video or Recordings -- regardless of whether it'll be able to play any/all of the presented items once the list is displayed. Right now, Canola is not behaving well with either of the video selections... even if it doesn't understand what it's being sent, it probably shouldn't crash/exit... I would expect some sort of "unknown error" dialog or message box to be displayed. Whether or not Canola ever works with any specific media server, it should gracefully handle situations where it might receive something it didn't expect, and not segfault and/or crash and close the application.

Again, if you have some tool that will allow me to capture the UPNP data stream that is sent, I would gladly gather together some testing/evaluation files for you guys to look at.

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

I am using windows media player (upnp media share) as the media server, and canola with upnp plugin for the client. I can only see divx.avi files if I change the file extension to .mpgs on the media server. If I don't change the extension, they will not show up at all in canola.

Any ideas?

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

yok : divx are not supported. You can try using another enconding on the server or some transconding to better formats (better to the tablet playback I mean) than divX.

Marcelo

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Hi Briand:

yeah I agree with you that the crashing bug is unnaceptabble , and at least an error should be thrown. I think I didn't noticed that I needed to say
"yeah, we are going to look at this CRASH" but I kept saying "we are not going to support mythTV"

I think this shows where the mess began, I was not "blaming" but actually I was running from the responsibility of testing with mythTV. If we are breaking it's our fault. period. It will be fixed.

I think Chenca is preparing the upnp code, with it and the the development build you can do the tracing, and I will let you know more about our things with mythTv when Artur comes back of his vacations :) I think the clearest point here is that I shouldn't have said that without his approval :)

Marcelo

Re: Canola beta9 UPNP (0.1.0 Alpha Release) Known issues, Bugs Feedback! Please Test
 

Does unsupported just mean not offically supported (take your own risk)? Because I can get xvid videos under an avi container to play by changing extension from avi to mpg.

Also on the Canola site where it states supported format, MP4 is listed. So I assume divx/xvid is supported on local playback, but not over upnp plugin?