media server applications

[Gregory Didycz]

Hi Everyone,

There are multiple media server applications for alt-f, and I have a couple of questions in regards. Does anyone have experience with any of these applications? Which application is the best one to use? and any other details that you may know about any of the media server programs.

Thank you in advance,

Regards,
Gregory Didycz

[kKimmell]

I am interested in this as well. I have a trove of old movies and cartoons ripped from VHS and DVDs that I'd love to be able to transcode and server from the box.

[Rich G]

You don't need to transcode them if you have a media player capable of doing it itself.  My old WDTV SMP can play video off of the files on the NAS, and my Amazon Fire TV Box has the app Kodi that plays all the files I throw at it.  Transcoding on the NAS is CPU intensive espcially when you get to higher resolutions, not saying it won't work but if you have something that will run Kodi I think it might be a better solution.

[kKimmell]

On Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 12:33:02 AM UTC-4, Rich G wrote:

You don't need to transcode them if you have a media player capable of doing it itself.  My old WDTV SMP can play video off of the files on the NAS, and my Amazon Fire TV Box has the app Kodi that plays all the files I throw at it.  Transcoding on the NAS is CPU intensive espcially when you get to higher resolutions, not saying it won't work but if you have something that will run Kodi I think it might be a better solution.

I am aware of all of that. I have one of the stonger CPU/Memory boxes and the need for transcoding is based on multiple kids with multiple levels of device (old ipad, cell phone, etc.). Something that is able to transcode to lower res on the fly from the NAS would be great for those situations. My Kodi machines and even the WDTV Live handle the full size stuff fine.

I don't know that the box can handle it, but I'd be willing to try.

[Paulo Elifaz Andrielli]

Transcoding in the box itself will need to much resource. Imagine multiple channels for each device (iPad, cell phone, TV) being transcoding inside the machine. I believe only a desktop with Plex or something like that will fit your need.

Better to make the transcoding on the fly, in the device.

From my side, I have Kodi in my AndroidTV, and it works really well. If I need to watch in the cellphone, I use MX Player, opening the file via File Explorer.

[]´s
Paulo

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[Rich G]

PLEX might be your answer but don't know if it can run on one of these boxes.

[João Cardoso]

On Thursday, 23 March 2017 12:32:23 UTC, kKimmell wrote:

On Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 12:33:02 AM UTC-4, Rich G wrote:

You don't need to transcode them if you have a media player capable of doing it itself.  My old WDTV SMP can play video off of the files on the NAS, and my Amazon Fire TV Box has the app Kodi that plays all the files I throw at it.  Transcoding on the NAS is CPU intensive espcially when you get to higher resolutions, not saying it won't work but if you have something that will run Kodi I think it might be a better solution.

I am aware of all of that. I have one of the stonger CPU/Memory boxes

Of the supported machines, only the 327L, which has an armv7 CPU, has hardware math, and it is not handled by Alt-F, which uses arm-v5. Transcoding implies a really powerfull CPU.

If you are on the *327L*, perhaps only installing and running the Debian. Alt-F installs a Debian version built for armv7.

But I never had hands-on on that scenario, so can't comment if that box is powerful enough to transcode. It might looks to be a simple resolution downscale, apparently not involving the video container or codecs, but in my noob view even demuxing and decoding has to be done to downscale, and then again encoding and muxing before streaming.