2010-09-23, 21:31
ok, so apparently I just like to ramble. Sorry.
osli Wrote:@ teshephe:
I only today discovered this thread. Don't know how I missed it! Great work. I had also a few days ago found a much older thread in the features suggestion forum where I fanatasized about almost exactly what you have done. I rambled on a bit about how this could be useful for much more than multiroom audio support but would rather point you there if you care to read my ramblings than to reproduce the bulk of it here and possibly somewhat derail this thread.
However, I do have a few specific questions that are the core of my thoughts on the subject:
1. It seems that for true multiroom audio in a larger than average house (where distributed whole house audio is typically found), you will have some zones that are audio only with no video display. You could set up a box for each of those rooms that is hidden in a closet (either in each room or a centralized location where all wire pulls for speakers return as is typical in distributed audio), but I have to ask the natural question: can multiple instances of XBMC be launched on one physical box, each tied to a specific output device? For instance six instances of XBMC launched on one box housing six PCIe or USB audio cards? If so, you nearly instantly have support using your plugin for controlling audio in any of those zones from any XBMC installation in the house. If this sounds impossible at a glance (I have no idea whether this would cause serious hardware/driver conflicts or not), would running multiple VM installations of XBMC hooked into separate USB soundcards be a possibility (from my limited understanding, USB is about the only type of physical hardware you can tie a VM application to)? And if "maybe" then would that fubar the unique network ID needed for your plugin to differentiate one instance from another?
2. Each XBMC instance needs an ID, and I've been checking out the way you handle that. Looks great once setup. But for end user simplicity, how difficult would it be for an XBMC instance to have an ID defined at setup and/or in system settings (or in your plugin) that broadcasts its presence whenever connected to the network, such that all XBMC instances on the network auto-populate your plugin without any more setup required? I think this has some basic functional usefulness, since you'd only see XBMC instances that were on at any given time.
3. I'll have to play around with your plugin more when I get home, but does it have the ability to monitor another XBMC instance vs. simply directing a stream there? i.e., can you tell what your kids are watching upstairs, and "tune in" to that stream if you want to say check out a movie that you aren't familiar with?
4. From what I gather, the use of VLC is because streaming content directly to the core players in XBMC is not guaranteed to produce syncronized video/audio rendering at each of those clients? Is that because of possible hardware differences at each client node, or something inherent in the streaming process? I understand that VLC has a clock that can be used for this purpose... is this far outside of the capabilities of XBMC or just something that would have to be patched into the core players? I ask, because I'm curious how it would affect the answer to my question 1 above. If (big if?) multiple instances of XBMC could be launched on a single physical box, would they suffer from the non-synced rendering problem? Would an instance of VLC be needed for each XBMC instance? Is that just asking for even more problems (I can't imagine how one instance of VLC is supposed to know what soundcard to use as render target)?
stefan1983 Wrote:Hey guys,
I am playing around with this plugin and can not get it to work.
I followed the instructions step by step and didn't get it to run (either Video nor Audio).
Everytime the MASTER XBMC instance is started, I get this error message :
Script ERROR:
sendUDP.PY
I attached the log file for better analsys.
Anyone any idea? Would be really cool, if its working!
I am on VLC 1.1.4 actually.
Thanks
Stefan
File "special://xbmc/system/python/Lib\urllib2.py", line 1021, in http_open
return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPConnection, req)
stefan1983 Wrote:Hey man, thanks for your help so far.
But somehow it sill does not work for me.
I don`t get the error message any more, but I do also not get any sound out of my client station.
Thanks
Mnuu Wrote:Would a neater way to do it be via PulseAudio ? The audo syncing on it seems pretty nice .
teshephe Wrote:Your HTTP server on XBMC is not turned on...
Goto System > Network > Services > Allow Control of XBMC via HTTP and set the port to 8081.
Make sure you do this on the clients as well.
That should do it. Let me know if you need anything else.
Rrrr Wrote:Great work, great potential, this is amazing. Now I too am trying hard to get it to work.
1. I have the same sendUDP.PY error on the server (win7) and the client (xbmc live) both running latest Dharma beta2. Both have port 8081 enabled.
Could this be a password issue?
2. I opened the readme, but its not readable even with word wrap. Just many long sentences. Do you have suggestion?
3. XBMC on the server does not want to close properly anymore, perhaps a reason for the sendUDP.PY ?
4. Could you please expand what is powershell and where best to get it, what do I need to do in the powershell?
5. Do I need to install vlc also on the xbmc live client? How should this be done
I apologise for the starters questions
thanks a lot
Quote:Unlike the linux variant where you have the ability to select "MAV Mulicast Sink" as the default audio output device which is how the audio is virtually piped to the streamer for broadcast, we have to hand feed the media to the streamer. BTW... there is a utility that I use to bypass this on my Windows based Master called Virtual Cable which creates a Directshow audio device but it cost $$. Not terribly expensive but if you want to know more about this let me know.