XBMC

Add a single video to the XBMC video library

Posted by davekoelmeyer on June 27, 2012
Posted in: Linux, Misc, Open Source, Ubuntu, XBMC. Tagged: , , , , . 2 comments

In the latest (version 11) release of XBMC, the ability to add single videos manually to the XBMC library has been removed. In version 10, all one had to do was right-click on a video file in the XBMC user interface, and from the contextual menu that appeared select “Manually add to library”. This is no longer the case in version 11, but rather than go into the potential reasons for the removal of the feature, let’s simply describe how to add a single video file manually.

This is obviously most useful for media files which aren’t detected automatically by XBMC’s media scrapers. In the example I’m using, it’s a technical presentation made by the Nuxeo ECM developers.

First, one has to create an NFO file for each video that needs to be added to the XBMC library. Ensure that both the video file and NFO file are both placed in a directory which is already an XBMC media source. Use your favourite text editor to create the file, give it an .nfo extension, and name it after the same name as your source video file:

Create an NFO file

The contents of the NFO file are very simple – the “title” value should match the name of the video file, for example:

<movie>
  <title>Digital_Asset_Management_with_Nuxeo</title>
</movie>

 

Finally, firing up XBMC and running a media scan (or not, if you’ve set it up to do it automatically) will result in the video being available for playback from your XBMC library:

Single video file detected by XBMC

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Stream video content from XBMC to an Android tablet (continued…)

Posted by davekoelmeyer on March 3, 2012
Posted in: Android, Linux, Open Source, Ubuntu, XBMC. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

In my blog entry describing how to stream from XBMC to an Android tablet, a commenter remarked that the ASUS “MyNet” application used in the example was an ASUS-specific product, and therefore not applicable to other non-ASUS Android-powered devices. A quick look in the Android market reveals plenty of other free and paid-for UPnP applications, so let’s briefly repeat this exercise using one such vendor-neutral app, which goes by the name of BubbleUPnP.

I am using the free version of BubbleUPnP (hence the ads visible in the following screengrabs), on the same platforms as described originally here.

After installing BubbleUPnP, fire up the application, browse to the Devices tab where you should be able to see your XBMC server listed. Make sure that the “Local Renderer” is selected as the renderer, and the “XBMC: Media Server” is selected as the library source:

BubbleUPnP - select renderer and library sources

Then, head over to the Library tab, and drill down until you find the relevant movie content:

BubbleUPnP - browsing the media library

BubbleUPnP - selecting available video media

On the first attempted playback, you will observe a prompt to select playback through one of the media player applications installed on your tablet. In my case, I am going to use the built-in Android “Video player” application, and set this as my default (of course, if you have other media player applications installed you would expect to see a different set of apps listed here):

BubbleUPnP - selecting the default video playback application

Et voila:

BubbleUPnP - playing back a streamed video locally

Again, the chunky video quality in the above screengrab is simply because I am using a low-quality example video, not because of any inherent quality issues with the source material, software, or hardware.

Stream video content from XBMC to an Android tablet

Posted by davekoelmeyer on December 27, 2011
Posted in: Android, Hardware, Java, Linux, Open Source, Ubuntu, XBMC. 8 comments

Continuing on from earlier posts here and here (which describe how to stream content from XBMC to an XBox 360, and how to encode a DVD using Handbrake such that it is suitable for playback on the XBox 360 respectively), we can also stream video content from XBMC to an Android tablet device.

In this example, I am using an Android v3.2-powered tablet in the form of the ASUS Eee Slider SL101. I am using the built-in ASUS “MyNet” application to receive the XBMC stream.

You can refer to the official Android documentation for the list of base supported audio and video codecs, pertaining in particular to Android v3.x:

http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html

Generally, files encoded as H264 video and AAC audio in the MP4 container format work fine. Converting your existing media files for basic playback is a cinch in VLC Media Player, which includes a handy preset for this which takes the guesswork out of the equation (leave a comment if you need help with this):

Converting a file in VLC Media Player

Connecting the tablet to my local wireless network, one can immediately see the XBMC media server visible in the list of available UPnP media servers in the “MyNet” application. Ignore the reference to “Windows Media Connect” – this is simply the “MyNet” application assuming that the media server must be a Windows-powered device (*sigh*). By clicking on the “Video” tab, we can see for example recently added video files:

ASUS MyNet application on the ASUS Eee Slider

We simply tap on a file, et voilà:

ASUS MyNet application playing back "Elephant's Dream"

The chunky video quality in the above screengrab is simply because I am using the low-quality version of Elephants Dream, not because of any inherent quality issues with the source material, software, or hardware.

Rip a DVD for streaming to an XBox 360 from XBMC

Posted by davekoelmeyer on May 23, 2011
Posted in: Open Source, Ubuntu, XBMC. 1 comment

This is a quick and dirty guide intended for users to quickly rip a DVD for playback on an XBox 360 using XBMC. We are going to bypass examination of the various supported AV containers and codecs the XBox supports for streaming, and simply work through a procedure which should result in guaranteed playback.

I am using Ubuntu 10.10 x86 to host my XBMC server, and my XBox is using the latest system firmware available at the time of writing.

The first thing to mention is that we don’t need any of the shitty third-party paid apps out there to perform the DVD rip, as seems to be popular on many of the ad-polluted sites out there offering similar how-to guides. We are going with an open-source and easy-to-use utility in the form of Handbrake. Let’s get started.

We are going to use the Ubuntu version of Handbrake, so we first need to add the Handbrake “Personal Package Archive” (PPA) to our software sources on Ubuntu, which will make installing and updating it a snap via the Ubuntu Software Center application.

Visit https://edge.launchpad.net/~stebbins/+archive/handbrake-releases and make a note of the PPA link (which is ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releases at the time of writing). In Ubuntu, launch the Ubuntu Software Center application:

Ubuntu Software Center

In the application, click on Edit -> Software Sources… then click on the Other Software tab. Click on Add…, then copy and paste the link noted above into the APT link field. Click Add Source, at which point you’ll see entries similar to the following:

Added Handbrake PPA as a software source

Go back to the Ubuntu Software Center main window, perform a search for “Handbrake”, and install the handbrake-gtk package which should now be visible:

Installing Handbrake in Ubuntu Software Center

Once Handbrake has been downloaded and installed, launch the application (it may be found at Applications -> Sound & Video. You’ll presented with the main Handbrake window:

Handbrake main window

There are a lot of scary-looking settings here, but we are going to bypass this and simply use one of the included presets. Let’s first select a DVD as the media source. Insert your DVD into the optical drive of the computer (duh), then click on the Source button visible at the top left-hand corner of the Handbrake window, and select dvd from the window that appears:

Handbrake - select a DVD as a source

Next, click on the High Profile preset visible on the right-hand side of the Handbrake window. Give your ripped file a name and destination. Leave all other settings at the defaults, including the file extension. Finally, click on the Start button to begin the transcoding process:

Handbrake - select a preset and begin ripping

Depending on the length of your source material and the performance of your computer, this can take a long time to complete – you may like to rip only a single chapter from your DVD for starters to make sure everything plays back before ripping the entire disc. Once complete, you can then use XBMC to stream the file to your XBox using XBMC.

Stream video content from XBMC on Ubuntu Linux to an Xbox 360

Posted by davekoelmeyer on January 10, 2011
Posted in: Open Source, Ubuntu, XBMC. 20 comments

I’ve recently started to play around with XBMC, a fantastic open-source media server that supports UPnP.

Main XBMC interface.

Following is a quick procedure to stream video content from a machine running XBMC to an Xbox 360 Arcade.

In this example, my XBMC server is an Intel Q8200 machine running Ubuntu 12.04, with XBMC version 11.0 installed. I’ve assumed that the server and Xbox are already connected to a home LAN. XBMC is running the detault Confluence skin.

 

First, let’s enable basic sharing. Launch XBMC, and in the application, goto “System -> Network”. Enable “Share video and music libraries through UPnP”:

XBMC - enable PnP

Now, let’s locate the media server from the Xbox. On the Xbox, go to the Xbox Home screen, then “settings -> System -> Network Settings -> Wired Network -> Test PC Connection”. If successful, you should see your XBMC server listed:

Xbox wired network settings test.

Now let’s add a video to test streaming with. In XBMC, goto “Videos -> Files -> Add Videos…”, and locate a folder containing a compatible video file (see here for compatibility details). If the video is not automatically detected by XBMC’s media scrapers, then you can manually add a video using this guide. Either way, the video file must be in the XBMC library for it to be detected by the Xbox:

Video added to the XBMC library.

Finally, on the XBox, go to the Xbox Home screen, then “movies -> My Video Apps -> System Video Player -> XBMC (Your XBMC Media Server) -> Recently added movies”. You should see the file shared from XBMC listed – select it and play:

Location the Xbox video player app.

Launching the Xbox system video player app.

XBMC server detected on the Xbox.

Recently added movies in XBMC on the Xbox.

Ubuntu 10.10 x86 and older nVidia graphics cards

Posted by davekoelmeyer on January 9, 2011
Posted in: Gnome, Open Source, Ubuntu, XBMC. 5 comments

A couple months back, I upgraded a friend’s computer via software update to Ubuntu 10.10. She had been happily running Ubuntu 10.04 on an old Pentium 4 box, with an equally vintage nVidia Quadro4 380 XGL installed in it. Accelerated 2D and 3D was no problem courtesy of nVidia’s legacy drivers.

Well, all that changed after the update, and post-update-reboot we had no window manager. It took close to an hour of fiddling around before I eventually read the small type in the release notes and realised that the nVidia legacy drivers for the Quadro4 380 were not compatible with the updated Xorg server in the Ubuntu 10.10 release.

You can read the whole saga here, but in short, the good news was we were saved at the time by two things; nVidia’s completely awesome effort in the updating of the driver for a vintage graphics card to work with the new Xorg, and the generosity of a community developer who packaged it into a PPA. It’s just a shame that Canonical didn’t place far more emphasis on warning users with older hardware that an OS update might make their system unusable!

Since then, the nVidia driver update has made it into the Ubuntu maverick-proposed repository, as I found out recently when installing Ubuntu 10.10 on another machine of similar vintage (this time with an nVidia Quadro4 550 XGL installed in it). So, only a simple tick-box needs to be checked for the driver to be downloaded and installed automatically:

Ubuntu 10.10 - enable the proposed repository

After doing this, run a software update, and install both the “nvidia-96″ legacy driver, plus a couple of additional updates, such that it is handled by the GNOME hardware driver installation utility:

Ubuntu 10.10 software update - install nVidia drivers and utilities

Ubuntu 10.10 software update - install nVidia drivers and utilities

After updating, run the GNOME “Hardware Drivers” utility (“System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers”), and install the driver visible there:

Ubuntu 10.10 Hardware Drivers utility

After a restart, accelerated graphics are back in Ubuntu 10.10. A note of thanks to nVidia – it’s stuff like this that makes me want to buy your products! :)