Streaming video files

[Bauldrick]

I have a debian box that acts as a sever for all my video and music files etc...
I used to be able to stream video (divx in this case) files from debian box to my Kubuntu box (and also Ubuntu(s) ), but can't anylonger (actually for sometime I think).

I see lots of stuff about using nfs as opposed to smb - not an option for me, unfortunately. And mounting the share and putting it in /etc/fstab - this seems.

Is this still really an issue, as many of the posts I see are quite old? I'm on Gutsy, streaming mp3's seems to work, but not .avi

I've tried Kaffeine
error:
19:10:19: xine: cannot find input plugin for MRL [smb://linkstation/Films/50%20First%20Dates.avi]
19:10:19: xine: input plugin cannot open MRL [smb://linkstation/Films/50%20First%20Dates.avi]
19:10:17: xine: found input plugin : CIFS/SMB input plugin based on libsmbclient

Totem movie player:
There is no input plugin to handle the location of this movie

Mplayer and Xine try to 'copy' the file to my desktop and then play it

[Bauldrick]

Re: Streaming video files

Anyone?

[arochester]

Re: Streaming video files

Have you tried VLC which seems to be on of the most versatile players?

VLC (also known as VideoLAN Client) is a versatile multimedia player that supports a very large number of audio and video formats -- It plays MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVI/MPEG-4, WMV, QuickTime, MP3, Ogg/Vorbis files, DVDs, VCDs, and multimedia streams from various network sources. VLC can also be used as a streaming server that duplicates the stream it reads and multicasts them through the network to other clients, or serves them through HTTP.

VLC has support for on-the-fly transcoding of audio and video formats, either for broadcasting purposes or for movie format transformations. Support for most output methods is provided by this package, but features can be added by installing additional audio plugins (vlc-plugin-esd, vlc-plugin-sdl, vlc-plugin-arts) or video plugins (vlc-plugin-sdl, vlc-plugin-ggi, vlc-plugin-glide, vlc-plugin-svgalib). There is also a web browser plugin in the mozilla-plugin-vlc package.

[lingenfr]

Re: Streaming video files

I suggest that you mount the drive w/ smbfs under your fstab. That is what I do. Then try kaffeine.

[Bauldrick]

Re: Streaming video files

Thanks, Iv'e read that somewhere before but haven't tried yet....Question is, should I have to do that? Surely it should just work?

[frednet]

Re: Streaming video files

I'd also recommend vlc. It's a very mature project and supports most codecs.
I'm fairly sure it runs on Windows and Mac too so it is cross platform which may be useful.

[Bauldrick]

Re: Streaming video files

Using VLC tries to 'download' the file from my server to /var/tmp and then play it. This is not streaming as I know it?!

I did a fresh install of 7.10 Edubuntu on one of my kids PC's and guess what? When clicking on the file it asks to search for codecs and then installs and streams the film perfectly. Theres nothing wrong with where the files are coming from, I can even use my old PS2 to view them.

I've got it to the point where Kaffeine or Mplayer (the only ones that seem to try streaming) opens the file , but it is extreeeeemeeely slow and stuttered.