Youtube like media server

[G-Stress]

I'm going to be setting up a media server to host all my music, video and pictures soon. What I'm wanting to do is setup and interface to stream the video and audio. Kind of like a youtube interface where instead of accessing a shared folder or network drive I would like to have a direct link say http://10.0.1.20 and from there it would give a links for video or audio or even pictures and when clicking on video it will load a page with a listing of all the movies and when a movie is selected it will then stream it like youtube.

Just not sure the best way to go about it or if there is a commercial product that will do this. Help/advice is greatly appreciated.

[gcninja]

vlc and a script or apache + script?

[digip]

Mediacenter?

[G-Stress]

I thought about vlc I read somewhere how to set it up on a webserver and embed it to stream. I'm going to be running Vista Ultimate just a spare box with massive storage that's gonna hold all of my media. I just want to set it up similar to youtube instead of just accessing shared resources and have the ability to allow friends outside the network access it as well the same way.

[psydT0ne]

http://blog.go4teams.com/?p=56

took me less than 30 sec in google dude...

[G-Stress]

Excellent. This looks like it will work perfectly. I wasn't exactly sure what to google, but this seems perfect.

Appreciate it.

[h3%5kr3w]

umm.. what about winamp remote? comes standard w/ winamp these days, is a snap to setup and it works pretty good.

there are a bunch more out there though. There is one (cant remember right now tomorrow ill post the link) but you can stream in any format so you can even say.. watch it on your cell phone!

[psydT0ne]

Excellent. This looks like it will work perfectly. I wasn't exactly sure what to google, but this seems perfect.

Appreciate it

No problemo dude...its given me some ideas too!

[Reflux]

Tversity has a http interface at http://localhost:41952/lib. Sure its not very youtube like but it works and they said they are working on a better one based on flash. Also you will be able to stream to all your DLNA devices such as xbox 360 and ps3.

[G-Stress]

@ h3%5kr3w, I'll give winamp remote a check and see if it seems to fit my needs. It would be nice to stream .avi which is what most of my movies are. I haven't had much time to read the link Mnemonic posted, but it seems that I'll be doing alot of converting to .flv.

Even though it is exactly what I'm looking for, also once this is all setup you think the movies will stream smoothly without much lag across the internet? I'm not too concerned about watching them that way, but it would be nice.

Thanks again guys for all your suggestions and input. h3%5kr3w if you remember the other app that streams anything I would be interested in checking it out.

[Webhostbudd]

It totally depends on your internet connection speed and the bitrates / compression ratios of the video being streamed.

[SETone]

True that your Internet connection might be a problem for streaming videos. But these days most ppl have no problem streaming music.

Some years back i had about the same idea about my music. Why not just put everything on a box and set up a streaming server.

And then i found http://edna.sourceforge.net :)

It took me less then 5 minuts to set it up, and been working like a charm for years now :) A update every now and then, but been stable and i never had any problems with it.

mini howto:

1. Create a directory in /home

mkdir /home/mp3

2. Go into the directory and download edna

wget http://edna.sourceforge.net/edna-0.6.tar.gz

(To see if its the last version, please check http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=18761)

3. Extract the downloaded file

tar -zxvf edna-0.6.tar.gz

4. Go into the fresh directory and edit the edna.conf

vi edna.conf

and change it for your needs and settings.

5. Create your jukebox dir

mkdir /home/mp3/albums

6. Set owner of the folder to nobody

chown -R nobody:nobody /home/mp3

Remember to do this after you have added some files.

9. Start your server

cd /home/mp3/edna ; sudo - u nobody python edna.py &

10. Add files to your /home/mp3/albums directory

Use whatever you want to upload your music to the /home/mp3/albums directory

There ya go, you have a edna streaming server up and running.

-SETone

[G-Stress]

@SETone

Thanks for the advice. That sounds interesting, but is there a version for windows? I'm trying to set this up on a box running Vista Ultimate. I'm still a bit n00bish with *nix.

I'm more concerned about the movies then the mp3's. I'm wanting to setup an http site basically just like youtube only with thumbnails where when the mouse hover's over the image it will show a few different thumbnails of the movie.

The link Mnemonic provided seems to be exactly what I'm looking for, but it also seems to lean more toward *nix I would even attempt to use it, but I'm trying to avoid using *nix for this purpose. I googled for a couple hours recently and found a few things, but nothing really for windows. I found podesk for anyone else interested and who owns a mac it looks pretty interesting.

http://www.podesk.com/

Anyone else with any suggestions or advice is greatly appreciated. I'm not really familiar with any coding languages besides some basic http, but if that's what it takes and someone could tell me what language and what I should be trying to code in that language I will do what I can to make it work.

[SETone]

yes, G-stress i understand your problem. But if you want a service like this, without have to pay a lot for it, you should look at the open source scene. http://sourceforge.net is a nice plays for searching. But you will find that most are for nix systems.

Maybe this project can be a nice time for you to get more into Linux? :) if you got a old box laying around, that you don't use anymore. It can be a nice linux server. Its always best with a dedicated server also, so you still can play around with your vista box without making problems for the jukebox server.

If your not that used to Linux, a distro like Clarkconnect can be a good start. http://www.clarkconnect.com/

It got all you need right out of the box. So after the install you got a running server with all needed services.

Just send me a pm if you need any help. Or send me a message on IRC.

Cheers

[G-Stress]

You do have a good point. I am linux familiar, but haven't done anything serious with it yet. I mainly use BT3 as far as linux goes. If it's going to be easier to get this running in linux what version/flavor would you recommend? The community edition of ClarkConnect is it completely free?

The last time I checked ClarkConnect there wasn't any available free products.

[SETone]

The Community Edition of clarkconect is free.

But you can use what distro you like ofc. Edna also runs on windows with Python/Win32 extensions :)

[G-Stress]

Took a look at Tversity and it actually is almost just perfect. The only issues I see is it took an extremely long time to load a video. The only real thing that it doesn't have that I was wanting is when I click on video it just displays the names instead of thumbnails.

[stingwray]

My suggestion would be Jinzora, you don't have to transcode everything to flash and lose lots of quality.