DLNA using GMediaRender

[mcow]

I've been looking into rolling my own DLNA setup. I've got an ancient laptop connected to the stereo; it's got a fresh Debian Linux install and a build of GMediaRender which uses the gstreamer library. There is no "player" (e.g. DLNA Control Point) on the laptop itself; the intent is to run it headless (and, if this works out, replace it with a tiny fanless computer). For a Control Point—at least until MediaMonkey implements Control Point support itself—I'm using a program called MediaStreamer that runs on my Nokia tablet.

The good news: MediaStreamer sees both MediaMonkey and GMediaRender. I can browse the library and exposed playlists; create a playlist to run; and start it up. So long as the data stream is MP3, it works, which seems to be a limitation of MediaStreamer. I would like to send FLAC across without conversion, but that's not happening. (I've verified that gstreamer can handle FLAC, and GMediaRender recognizes when I try to send a FLAC over, but reports "Error: Stream contains no data.")

I don't have M4A support installed for gstreamer, but MM4 has successfully transcoded one track from M4A to MP3, and that plays. Very nice, but I haven't been able to duplicate that yet with a second track.

Two things:
[1] For M4A support, I have that free-codecs package installed. The first time I selected an M4A to play from the Control Point software, MM4 threw up a message that QuickTime was needed (or something like that, I didn't write down the error). But then it transcoded the track just fine; and subsequent playbacks of the track have not put that error up.
I am pretty sure that when that error appeared, I was looking at the Options dialog for the server.

[2] Instead of specifying "Supported format" in preferences, shouldn't MM be querying the renderer directly to see what it supports? MediaStreamer can act as its own renderer, and the Nokia tablet has M4A support built in -- I shouldn't need to transcode if I'm sending it to the tablet.

I didn't originally think DLNA was going to mean much, but I'm starting to see possibilities now. Pretty slick!

[Ludek]

Re: the FLAC stream problem.
Are you sure there is no auto-conversion rule FLAC->... ? If there is no such a rule than MM streams the original FLAC file.
If this fails for you then debug log should tell us more why it fails, so please generate debug log using the DbgView app as described here: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... ?f=6&t=341

Re: specifying "Supported format" in preferences
We prefer specifying of supported formats for several reasons:
1. Every client that access the MM server supports different formats and thus we would need to have separate auto-convert profile for every client and this would make auto-convert settings even more complicated
2. Various users prefer auto-conversions to various custom formats based on individual preferences (quality, bitrate, samplerate etc.).

[mcow]

Re: the FLAC stream problem.
Are you sure there is no auto-conversion rule FLAC->... ? If there is no such a rule than MM streams the original FLAC file.

I'm pretty sure the problem here is not with MediaMonkey, but with MediaStreamer (which is five years old and won't see any updates). If I ever learn differently, I'll come back to this, but I'm only trying DLNA to see how it works; I don't expect to use it for my day-to-day use.

Re: specifying "Supported format" in preferences
We prefer specifying of supported formats for several reasons:
1. Every client that access the MM server supports different formats and thus we would need to have separate auto-convert profile for every client and this would make auto-convert settings even more complicated

Well, that's true, but that means any user with multiple clients needs to manually change the settings each time a different client is used. In other words, the user needs to maintain the separate auto-convert profile. Computers are supposed to handle the complex data management.

[rusty]

Well, that's true, but that means any user with multiple clients needs to manually change the settings each time a different client is used. In other words, the user needs to maintain the separate auto-convert profile. Computers are supposed to handle the complex data management.

Good Point. Added at: http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=8272

-Rusty