Playing video files off of a network HD

[Shibblet]

I have a 1TB USB hard drive plugged into my router. It is full of MP4 files. With Ubuntu, I could connect to the drive, double click on any video I wanted, and VLC would just kick up and start a-playing.

With Kubuntu, I can see the drive no problem, and I can double click on file, but VLC won't play it. I literally have to download the file from the network drive to the local computer in order for VLC to play.

Anyone know how I can fix this?

[arist]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

1. How do you connect to the network drive? (NFS, Samba...)
2. Is VLC set to be the default app for MP4 files?
3. What happens when you double-click on the file? Does VLC open? Does it tell you anything? Any error messages?

I use Kubuntu (9.10) and have my laptop and main computer networked via NFS. I can view videos on the laptop that are stored on a hard drive in the main computer, no downloading necessary.

[Shibblet]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

I connect to:

smb://login@###.###.###.###/MyBook 1TB/

Then when I double click on the video file, VLC says...

Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'smb://login@###.###.###.###/MyBook%201TB/Movies/0-9/300.mp4'. Check the log for details.

The login names and ip address have been changed to protect the innocent.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

Well, what's your log say

[Detonate]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

Is the drive mounted?

[Detonate]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

The reason I ask about if the drive is mounted is, if this is just a data drive formatted to NTFS you should not need samba to access it. Samba is used to access files in Windows. If the drive is not running Windows but is merely a data drive, you should be able to merely mount it and you would have full access to it.

[sithlord48]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

ok since your NAS box uses samba, you will have to download the files unless you mount the disk (as opposed to finding it via network). if the drive is not mounted you will have access to the drive BUT, you can not stream data off of a samba share. in the background it will have to copy all that data to a temp folder. if possible you want to either mount the drive or use NFS to have the box share the device, and then mount the nfs share.

the reason its working in gnome is that there is not smb browsing and it is literally mounting it for you when you try to access it.. meaning a simply adding this disk to your /etc/fstab as a smbfs should fix this for kubuntu as well as make it a "local" disk as seen by gnome.

[Shibblet]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

Great! So, then the question persists, how do you mount a network drive in Kubuntu?

I'd like to make this drive mount automatically as well. So that when I boot Kubuntu, the drive is already there.

[Detonate]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

OK, we can do that. First open a terminal and run

ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid

and see if the drive is listed. Copy the UUID of the drive. Then in the terminal

sudo mkdir /mnt/NetworkDrive

I used NetworkDrive but you can name it anything you want.
Then

kdesu kedit /etc/fstab

This will open the fstab file for editing.
In fstab add the following entry at the bottom of the file.

UUID=Put the uuid here /mnt/NetworkDrive ntfs uid=1000,gid=1000,utf=8,umask=00000 0 0

This will mount the drive with you as the owner if you are the first user on your system. If you are not the first user you will have to change the uid and gid above to match you.

Save the file and close kedit. BTW if you don't have kedit installed, you can use kate instead.

Back in the terminal issue the command

sudo mount -a

This mounts all of the entries in fstab. If you get any errors post them and we will figure them out. Once we get fstab to mount the drive it will automatically mount at boot.

[blobfish]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

...
smb://login@###.###.###.###/MyBook 1TB/
...
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'smb://login@###.###.###.###/MyBook%201TB/Movies/0-9/300.mp4'. Check the log for details.
...

This is unrelated, but do yourself a favor and get out of the habit of putting spaces in folder names. See what VLC is doing? It is replacing the space in the path with %20 because spaces are considered delimiters in a lot of contexts.

[Detonate]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

That is very good advice. I never use spaces or characters in file names. My wife does it on her computer to which I am networked and it cause me grief.

[arist]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

Great! So, then the question persists, how do you mount a network drive in Kubuntu?

I'd like to make this drive mount automatically as well. So that when I boot Kubuntu, the drive is already there.

In case you find yourself without a connection after following Detonate's suggestion, try this: http://mostlylinux.wordpress.com/network/nfshowto/. Extremely simple and straightforward.

[Detonate]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

Arist, he is trying to mount a NTFS drive, NFS won't work.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

Arist, he is trying to mount a NTFS drive, NFS won't work.

I don't believe that is entirely accurate. One may not be to without a few more steps: You have to use the FUSE kernel module included in the Linux 2.6.27 and later kernels.

I've never done this, but I believe you have to have both ntfs-3g and fuse support in your kernel. Then you mount the ntfs partition with fusemount and then you can export it.

[jeremy1701]

Re: Playing video files off of a network HD

Not to interject, but I can play/stream files/videos off of my smb share just fine. Have you tried using DragonPlayer? Or have you tried opening the file with VLC rather than just 2x clicking?