[Q] streaming video player(s) and protocols (UDP, Multicast, RTSP) - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

First question:
does Android support video playback of multicast UDP streams?
Second:
I am in need of a streaming video player for Android. I need it to do one or all of the following:
1. enter a URL/MRL to connect to
2. support UDP video streams (especially multicast)
3. support rtsp streams
The setup is this: I have a H.264 video encoder outputting UDP unicast and/or multicast video to a LAN. I have X number of android handsets connecting via wifi to the LAN to receive the streaming video.
However, I am unable to find any player that will receive the UDP multicast or unicast video. The current undesirable workaround is to use something like VLC to "re-stream" the UDP stream in an RTSP format. RTSP is the only format that I have been able to achieve playback success with.
The only two players I have been able to get working with rtsp streams (manually entered URL/MRL) is vPlayer and VLC stream and Convert. I don't want to use VLC stream and Convert as it's tied to VLC.
vPlayer's video playback is poor, no matter what the settings are. it glitches/pixelates, even with buffering enabled, whereas VLC S&C works quite well.
I have searched the market, xda, app brain, etc... without finding much. I have tried:
yxplayer, androstream, stream player, etc... only the two above got me anywhere.
Any suggestions on apps? And I don't mind if there is a server component that must be installed, but I prefer it to be a linux application.
The only other alternative is to roll my own video player, which I intend on doing, but I need to do an early proof of concept before going that route.
Thanks for any input.

bump...
can anyone at least answer the question about multicast UDP video?

did you ever find a solution for this? I am in the same boat.

no sorry, I have not found an answer.

Related

VLC Stream & Convert - Awesome new market app...

Only been playing with it for a little bit, but there's a new VLC compatible streaming client available on the Market called VLC Stream & Convert.
It allows you to run VLC on a client on your lan (be sure to add the Web control interface from VIEW/ADD INTERFACE) and connect to it. You can either remote control VLC from the phone....or..you can stream video to your phone from the client side app with a simple filesystem browser.
Though the realtime conversion and streaming isn't the best quality it's most definitely handy and orders of magnitude more seamless than dealing with DLNA.
Maybe everyone else isn't a hardcore media geek with terabytes of video spread about a home lan like me. But this addition to the market makes me happy!
Thought I'd share.
Scott
This looks really cool. Will definitely try this tomorrow after work!
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
masterotaku said:
Only been playing with it for a little bit, but there's a new VLC compatible streaming client available on the Market called VLC Stream & Convert.
It allows you to run VLC on a client on your lan (be sure to add the Web control interface from VIEW/ADD INTERFACE) and connect to it. You can either remote control VLC from the phone....or..you can stream video to your phone from the client side app with a simple filesystem browser.
Though the realtime conversion and streaming isn't the best quality it's most definitely handy and orders of magnitude more seamless than dealing with DLNA.
Maybe everyone else isn't a hardcore media geek with terabytes of video spread about a home lan like me. But this addition to the market makes me happy!
Thought I'd share.
Scott
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may have just solved a problem for me... I am having some issues though.
I have it installed and working. I find my VLC player through the app and can start videos no problem, but there is no audio.
What AAC encoder are you using on your system? Im running on Win7 and cant seem to get it working.
ritalin said:
You may have just solved a problem for me... I am having some issues though.
I have it installed and working. I find my VLC player through the app and can start videos no problem, but there is no audio.
What AAC encoder are you using on your system? Im running on Win7 and cant seem to get it working.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On all the PC's on the home lan I now only ever install VLC, Media Player Classic Home Cinema, and FFDSHOW. VLC's built in AAC decoder generally handles things fine, but if it gets confused (in the case of some encodes with weird FOURCC headers) FFDSHOW usually picks up the slack externally.
I'll run through my collection (it's well over 3 terabytes now so it might take a bit) and see if I run across anything with AAC that this stumbles over. I'm running Win7 x64 on this laptop, so it'll be my guinea pig.
I have a good idea of a few known encodes I have with weird AAC audio header info, primarily because they also won't play natively correctly in the phone's built in video player or rock player. I'll let you know what I find out.
EDIT: Well that didn't take long. It seems that the same encodes with .AAC audio that give the built in player grief (as well as Rockplayer) also refuse to have their audio play correctly in this streaming app. Even more interesting, these all play natively within VLC on the desktop. However, VLC, FFDSHOW, and my universal backup plan when encountering weird stuff that won't play (KMPlayer) all use LIBFAAD for .AAC decoding. Upon further investigation it appears that some .AAC profiles (there are actually six baseline types of .AAC audio...go figure) aren't properly supported by Android's native .aac parser (found this info on DoubleTwists support forums).
Looks like this is a native flaw in Android itself at this point. Going to investigate further. Thank god that there are literally only a handful of encodes in my collection that have this problem or I'd be pulling my hair out.
Can someone show me how to use this to stream over 3G??
I opened ports on my router and got my WAN IP entered but it won't let me connect.
Did you enable the Web Interface in VLC on the client PC? It is not on by defaut.
Start VLC on a PC on your lan, go to the VIEW menu....ADD INTERFACE...WEB INTERFACE. With that selected the android client should automatically find the VLC instance running on your lan connected PC. This assumes no additional firewall is blocking the app on the PC.
I got it working pretty good using wifi inside my network, so I think VLC is setup properly.
What I'm trying to do is to stream through t-mobile 3G.
I did the port forwarding in my router, but couldn't get the app to connect my home PC via 3G.
I've been able to get it to connect via 3G here, though only HTTP audio streaming seems to work. RTSP video streaming seems to be broken via 3g, and again this appears to be an Android issue from what I'm reading.
vcxzfdsa said:
I got it working pretty good using wifi inside my network, so I think VLC is setup properly.
What I'm trying to do is to stream through t-mobile 3G.
I did the port forwarding in my router, but couldn't get the app to connect my home PC via 3G.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
masterotaku said:
I've been able to get it to connect via 3G here, though only HTTP audio streaming seems to work. RTSP video streaming seems to be broken via 3g, and again this appears to be an Android issue from what I'm reading.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From the dev's site, found here
"Why does rtsp streaming not work over 3G?
Some operators don't allow rtsp on their network. Http streaming should work instead but for videos you can only stream the audio track."​
If its true that t-mobile is blocking RTSP then that sucks. Im going to play with it tomorrow and see for myself.
If this doesnt work then Im back to square one. I really wanted to find a way to use the Twonky media server I already have setup and streaming. I have been streaming videos to friends and family for about half a year now. My Fios 30mb up 30mb down even allows me to stream 720p content over UPNP without so much as a hiccup.
First person that can manage to remove the wifi only option in AllShare gets access to my collection. . I have been trying to find it but im not really sure what im looking for in the code.

Odd question about IP camera

Has anyone used an IP camera to stream to your HD2? If so what kind and the software used. Thanks
It all depends on what the codecs the camera supports and how it streams the video. The obvious choices are the HTC streaming media app for RTSP feeds and probably tcpmp or coreplayer for everything else. But if the camera outputs the feed to a central server which has a web interface you may be able to use that (as long as it doesn't use flash)

Streaming movies remotely

This is for those of us that are like me and don't have a server deicated to there movies, music, tv shows, etc.
I was looking for a way to stream all the movies that I have on my desktop to my Prime when I am either home or away. I stumbled upon Skifta. Skifta is a program you run on your computer that will let you stream movies to/from any upnp/dlna device. Worked really well last night when I was testing it. I streamed day breakers from my computer to the Prime and played it in Dice Player. The picture quality was perfect. Like I was watching it on my computer. Sound was typical Prime sound. What really surprised me was how long it took to start the movie with load times and such, it was fast as hell. I click got a little buffering icon for about 30 seconds and then it was playing. Granted this was on my own wifi and I haven't tested elsewhere yet but it seems promising so far
Links:
Skifta For your phone
Skifta For your computer
Is it Free?
MrCapcom said:
Is it Free?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
Can you play mkv and avi files from it? If so im downloading now!
MrCapcom said:
Can you play mkv and avi files from it? If so im downloading now!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The movie I watched was mkv with subs. Works flawlessly.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
I haven't tried an avi yet.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
The best app for streaming is PLEX hands down, streams anything you throw at it, wifi or 3g. great interface and pretty easy to setup. Android app costs $5 but definately worth it. Nothing else compares. I tried Skifta myself in the past but could never get it to work consistently outside my own wifi network.
i prefer VLC pro myself. plays anything and everything, and all you have to do is enable the Web Interface setting on VLC on your PC.
highly suggested to anyone who actually uses VLC on their PC.
Using windows media player to share your files, combined with "mynet" or whatever app it is that comes with the prime is all you need.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk
Plex without a doubt
chrisaba1 said:
The best app for streaming is PLEX hands down, streams anything you throw at it, wifi or 3g. great interface and pretty easy to setup. Android app costs $5 but definately worth it. Nothing else compares. I tried Skifta myself in the past but could never get it to work consistently outside my own wifi network.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Plex is the best option. It is worth the $4.99 investment. You can use it for all forms of media and file types.
PLEX.......
Definitely looking for something like this. I have a WHS that is loaded with blu-ray movies. Will either of these play ISO files? I have My Movies installed on my home server so the files are ripped into iso.
smashingtool said:
Using windows media player to share your files, combined with "mynet" or whatever app it is that comes with the prime is all you need.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does mynet work outside of your wifi?
Any recommendations for streaming (off network) Video_TS/VOD movies? It looks like plex does not support it...
+ 1 for plex
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
When I get a chance I'll post my round up of over 20 applications I've tested for this purpose. Plex is towards the bottom of the list.
As a quick summary the two best are :
Qloud Media (free version also available, ad supported)
Lightweight/simple to use server
Supports multiple MKV audio tracks (choose before video playback)
Works with every video I've thrown at it
Remembers last folder browsed
Remembers last video location
Works with MKV embedded subtitles and SRT subtitles
Video quality is very good at higher bitrates. Bitrates are customizable (I recommend 3072 for WiFi Connections).
Very stable over low bandwidth 3G, streamed an entire 1080p movie over a ****ty Sprint connection that topped out at 350 k/b (player set for 250/kb streaming) with no problem.
Includes photo and mp3 streaming, both work great
Has a weird quirk that requires you to press the "play" button after using the seek bar on the video client.
Ability to setup multiple users/allowable shared folders
Only requires one TCP port forward for direct remote connection
Server component available only for Windows
Emit (free version also available, ad supported)
I actually found out about Emit after evaluating Qloud, it's probably my #2 choice under Qloud Media. Their featuresets are very similar and I'm betting they're based on similar technologies. I actually bought Emit too because I like the ability to stream via a PC web browser via the Emit web app. On higher end devices capable of high bitrates/resolutions Emit can produce better video quality than Qloud.
If I could only pick one video streamer to purchase I would still pick Qloud Media, the server and client are simply more stable (especially over 3G) and mature (Qloud client shows video thumbnails in the file browser and remembers last folder/video location between restarts). The Qloud photo viewer is a nice added bonus I actually use. On Emit one video I tested had no audio, restarting playback seemed to fix it, starting it again later had the same issue (may be a tablet issue). So if you get no audio try restarting playback.
Lightweight/simple to use server component
Capable of producing best video quality of all streamers tested
Video frame rate seemed a bit choppier when compared to Qloud
Can be very CPU intensive on the server side
Works with every video I've thrown at it
Works with MKV embedded subtitles and SRT subtitles
Supports multiple MKV audio tracks (single button switcher in video player)
Video quality is excellent at higher bitrates. Bitrates and resolution are customizable.
Includes MP3 streaming capability
Playback on PC via web client/Flash
Ability to pre encode video files for later download
Remote direct connection requires one TCP port (http streaming), UDP port range forward for RTSP fallback support (port numbers not customizable, what If I want to run multiple Emit servers?)
Server component available for Windows, MAC and Linux
Awesome info TalynOne, thanks! I tried Plex and since the folder I want to stream has many subfolders that change often it doesn't seem to be the app for me.
TalynOne said:
When I get a chance I'll post my round up of over 20 applications I've tested for this purpose. Plex is towards the bottom of the list.
As a quick summary the two best are :
Qloud Media (free version also available, ad supported)
Lightweight/simple to use server
Supports multiple MKV audio tracks (choose before video playback)
Works with every video I've thrown at it
Remembers last folder browsed
Remembers last video location
Works with MKV embedded subtitles and SRT subtitles
Video quality is very good at higher bitrates. Bitrates are customizable (I recommend 3072 for WiFi Connections).
Very stable over low bandwidth 3G, streamed an entire 1080p movie over a ****ty Sprint connection that topped out at 350 k/b (player set for 250/kb streaming) with no problem.
Includes photo and mp3 streaming, both work great
Has a weird quirk that requires you to press the "play" button after using the seek bar on the video client.
Ability to setup multiple users/allowable shared folders
Only requires one TCP port forward for direct remote connection
Server component available only for Windows
Emit (free version also available, ad supported)
I actually found out about Emit after evaluating Qloud, it's probably my #2 choice under Qloud Media. Their featuresets are very similar and I'm betting they're based on similar technologies. I actually bought Emit too because I like the ability to stream via a PC web browser via the Emit web app. On higher end devices capable of high bitrates/resolutions Emit can produce better video quality than Qloud.
If I could only pick one video streamer to purchase I would still pick Qloud Media, the server and client are simply more stable (especially over 3G) and mature (Qloud client shows video thumbnails in the file browser and remembers last folder/video location between restarts). The Qloud photo viewer is a nice added bonus I actually use. On Emit one video I tested had no audio, restarting playback seemed to fix it, starting it again later had the same issue (may be a tablet issue). So if you get no audio try restarting playback.
Lightweight/simple to use server component
Capable of producing best video quality of all streamers tested
Video frame rate seemed a bit choppier when compared to Qloud
Can be very CPU intensive on the server side
Works with every video I've thrown at it
Works with MKV embedded subtitles and SRT subtitles
Supports multiple MKV audio tracks (single button switcher in video player)
Video quality is excellent at higher bitrates. Bitrates and resolution are customizable.
Includes MP3 streaming capability
Playback on PC via web client/Flash
Ability to pre encode video files for later download
Remote direct connection requires one TCP port (http streaming), UDP port range forward for RTSP fallback support (port numbers not customizable, what If I want to run multiple Emit servers?)
Server component available for Windows, MAC and Linux
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would you mind if I put this in the OP?
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
Haro912 said:
Would you mind if I put this in the OP?
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure, go ahead.
What does it mean to "stream"? I have a server in my home that holds all my media, pictures, movies, documents, ya know everything. I downloaded the app ES File Explorer (free) and used the LAN mode to find my server, which listed all my shares. Navigate through the folders, find a movie I want to watch (AVI, MKV, WMV, MP4, WMV, etc) and click on it. Plays fine with MX Player. I didn't need any "streamer" software running on my PC or anything else running or to install. Why doesn't everyone use a method similar to this? I don't see the advantage to have to install additional streaming software on a PC to access media. Anyway, just curious.

[Q] How to record the received rtsp video streaming on android client?

How to record the received rtsp video streaming on android client.
I need record the received video by a android smartphone via rtsp streaming (DSS 6) in mp4 or yuv file format.
I can do this using a pc/linux client but i do know how to do this on android.
Also, can an i access a android device using ssh and execute vlc, mobo or mplayer on it? How?
Thanks,
Diego.
+1

Streaming videos from NAS locking up...

i guys,
when using MX Player , VLC Player and so on I cant stream movies, the alwys lock up after a few minutes of playback.
When I use the Sony OEM player it works fine. Would be ok but a) it has no on screen volume and brightness and b) doesnt play all video formats.
Anybody know why all the other players dont work? When stored local, movie playback is fine, only happens when streaming from NAS.
Thanks,
I would start by checking the strength of the Wifi signal. Use Wifi Analyzer.
Change your channel number or move the Wifi router to a better location.
I use Plex Server to host and catalogue my videos and the plex client on the device for playback. In the client you can change the settings to allow a direct stream with no transcoding of the video or audio, set your device profile as external and then choose which client to playback the video. I use Archos with the codecs plugin.
If your wifi signal/bandwith is low you can choose a max bit rate and the server will transcode the video reducing the bitrate.

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