Archive for August, 2010

Droid-X DLNA streaming make sure you optimize for streaming in Handbrake…

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

In handbrakecli you need to use the –optimize flag

At least it’s the only way I’ve had any luck.

Try using Handbrake to make a streaming version with the following command arguments (remember if you have spaces in your file name or path you will have to put the input file and output file in quotes):

handbrakecli –input –output –format MP4 –markers –x264opts level=30:bframes=0:cabac=0:ref=1:vbv-maxrate=768:vbv-bufsize=2000:analyse=all:me=umh:no-fast-pskip=1:subq=6:8x8dct=0:trellis=0:weightb=0:mixed-refs=0:ref=1:subme=2 –vb 1536 –two-pass –optimize –keep-display-aspect –turbo –audio 1 –aencoder faac –ab 160 –mixdown dpl2 –arate 48 –drc 2.0 –native-language eng –subtitle-forced scan –subtitle scan

If you are having trouble setting up a DLNA server it’s real easy to pop up mezzmo and it will stream files encoded with the above command line without fail here.

Mezzmo DLNA server…

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

Just as a FYI… Of all the DLNA servers I have played with in the effort to get the Droid-X to stream transcoded media my favorite so far is the Mezzmo DLNA server from Conceiva. The support people are “Johnny on the spot” with bug fixes so far, they actually have a profile set up for the Droid-X, and the features are coming fast and quick. It runs on Windows so transcoding is slower, but the menus etc are better than the rest and so far it has been less finicky than the others I’ve tried.

DLNA, Droid-X, and wasted time…

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

Ok here are my experiences so far getting a DLNA server to transcode to the DroidX:
I have tried nearly every UP&P/DLNA server out there on virtually every platform (Mac, Linux, Windows).

Observations so far:

I’ve put up about 12 different DLNA server/platform combinations, so far there isn’t one that does everything I want. Mezzmo is the closest, but it still doesn’t have a few features I really crave.

Windows is the slowest at transcoding everything. So my current recommendation is to run in Linux or Mac (Linux is quickest so far)

The droid-x processor only supports MP4 natively (maybe wmv or some other format that I will not use, but MP4 as far as I’m concerned). That is the only format that will spool from a DLNA server to the phone.

Problem is that the phone requires the MP4 files to have specific data at the beginning of the file (lookup MP4 ATOMs for more detail). Well it seems that the information for some of the required ATOMs cannot be calculated until the file is converted to MP4 (it is also possible the FFMPEG could but just does not create these up front, since almost everyone uses FFMPEG for transcoding…). Most of the media servers will stream you a MP4 file that does not require transcoding. And most of the media servers will transcode the MP4 files into whatever format your other devices like. So it appears that your best convergence option is to re-encode (and take the quality hit) your video as MP4 so your phone can view it natively, then let your media server transcode for all the other systems (XBOX/TV/DVR/PS3/etc…). Note if you are using handbrake to convert, I have to set the file to enable streaming to get the phone to play it.

Other than that I’m off to my next level of convergence… The phone captures in .3gp I have one media server on a Linux VM (twonky I believe) that supports DLNA uploads. So I can seamlessly upload video to the server. Unfortunately I haven’t found one of the DLNA servers that will transcode the .3gp files… It would be really nice if I could simply DLNA copy videos and pics from my phone to the DLNA server then have them instantly available via transcode on the other DLNA clients around the house…

Anybody else have a DLNA that supports uploads or .3gp transcode?