Media Server

[RAZEHELL]

Hi all I was wondering if there is some software to make a media server that I can acces from anywhere. can anyone help me with this thanks.

[BattZ]

First off, this is more of a question for the questions forum I think.

Access from anywhere, would you want to be able to stream music/video anywhere? or just be able to access the machine from anywhere?

Edited August 26, 2010 by BattZ

[RAZEHELL]

I would like to be able to stream from anywhere Sorry if this is something for the question forum it seemed like a project at least to me it did

[dimaj]

I would like to be able to stream from anywhere Sorry if this is something for the question forum it seemed like a project at least to me it did

Check out subsonic (http://www.subsonic.org)

[WiDoW_MaK3R]

i know most people would hate me, since its not linux and "free" lol.

Windows Home Server (i think) does what you need. simple and easy to use.

i've tried it out and it wasn't too bad. its based off Windows Small Business Server 2003.

i'm waiting for the new one to come out but that'd be ages lol.

[Infiltrator]

Try vibe streamer!

[Charles]

+1 to subsonic. It works great for music.. not sure about video.

[G-Stress]

I'd like to hear suggestions on a good media server app that streams video smoothly. I've tried Tversity and a few other's I'm looking for one that I could set multiple user accounts. I was really liking Jinzora, but support wasn't the greatest for streaming on windows.

[Mr-Protocol]

Quality of video and audio all depends on bandwidth. Local network vs over the internet.

For me anything over my gigabit internal network will look awesome (as long as the source is good quality to start).

But streaming over the internet will do two things.

1) Eat up all your bandwidth.

2) Probably look like crap.

[G-Stress]

hmmm... yea that's pretty much the case. I don't have any problems internally. This may be a dumb ? but why is that? Why is streaming audio over the internet from your average home user not an issue, but video is? File size, encoding, both?

Is it just impossible no matter the connection to the internet?

[dimaj]

hmmm... yea that's pretty much the case. I don't have any problems internally. This may be a dumb ? but why is that? Why is streaming audio over the internet from your average home user not an issue, but video is? File size, encoding, both?

Is it just impossible no matter the connection to the internet?

I don't know much about these things, but this should be generally correct...

It all boils down to your upload connection speeds and what is the size of several seconds of your stream. If you have a slow upload connection, you would not be able to upload data fast enough to keep up with your video stream. Thus you will have constant stutter. This is where transcoding comes into play. You can decrease the quality of the video you are trying to stream and therefore you don't have to upload as much data to show the same several seconds of your stream as with the original file.

Again, I don't know much about these things (yet), but I hope my answer somewhat makes sense and somewhat correct.

dimaj

[Infiltrator]

I don't know much about these things, but this should be generally correct...

It all boils down to your upload connection speeds and what is the size of several seconds of your stream. If you have a slow upload connection, you would not be able to upload data fast enough to keep up with your video stream. Thus you will have constant stutter. This is where transcoding comes into play. You can decrease the quality of the video you are trying to stream and therefore you don't have to upload as much data to show the same several seconds of your stream as with the original file.

Again, I don't know much about these things (yet), but I hope my answer somewhat makes sense and somewhat correct.

dimaj

You are absolutely correct, Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another. This is often done in cases where a target device does not support the format or has limited storage capacity that mandates reduced file size, or to convert incompatible or obsolete data to a more supported or modern format.

Transcoding is commonly a lossy process, introducing generation loss; however, transcoding can be lossless if the input is losslessly compressed and the output is losslessly compressed or uncompressed. The process of lossy to lossy conversion introduces varying degrees of generation loss. In other cases, the transcoding of lossy to lossless or uncompressed is technically a lossless conversion because no information is lost, however the process is irreversible and is more suitably known as destructive.

The key drawback of transcoding in lossy formats is decreased quality. Compression artifacts are cumulative, so transcoding causes a progressive loss of quality with each successive generation, known as digital generation loss. For this reason, transcoding is generally discouraged unless unavoidable.

It is better to retain a copy in a lossless format (such as TTA, FLAC or WavPack for sound), and then encode directly from the lossless source file to the lossy formats required. For image editing, one is advised to capture or save images in a raw or uncompressed format, and edit (a copy of) that version, only converting to lossy formats for distribution.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcoding