Can't get streaming to work in or outside home network

[ScaryBox]

Let me start by saying nextpvr and newa are excellent! I havn't been here for a while and I'm quite happy to see how far everything has come along!

Here is my problem. No matter what I do (I've read every forum/post/topic I can find), I can't get streaming to work either inside my home lan/network or outside my lan. As far as I can tell I've opened ports, set virtual server in my router, set up everything ok. I've turned AllowRemoteTranscoding and AllowRemoteStreaming to true in the config.xml. The Admin login to Newa allows me to set the bitrate etc. but VLC will not play a stream. I keep getting a MRL http://myipaddress:7648 cannot play error.

I know everyone is reluctant to give instructions has to how to make all this work for fear of security issues, but I am willing to take the risk.

Question #1: Is the inability to stream built into the Newa interface?
Question #2: Is there a way to get Newa to trancode/compress live tv for a better remote experience. (This doesn't seem to happen automatically.
Question #3: Could it possibly my VLC setup/install that is keeping the streaming from working or interfering with the transcoding of the remote/local stream?

Hopefully someone can help me here. Again, Everything else is working great!

Thanks
Ken
Inside The Big Scary Box!

[UncleJohnsBand]

Let me start by saying nextpvr and newa are excellent! I havn't been here for a while and I'm quite happy to see how far everything has come along!

Here is my problem. No matter what I do (I've read every forum/post/topic I can find), I can't get streaming to work either inside my home lan/network or outside my lan. As far as I can tell I've opened ports, set virtual server in my router, set up everything ok. I've turned AllowRemoteTranscoding and AllowRemoteStreaming to true in the config.xml. The Admin login to Newa allows me to set the bitrate etc. but VLC will not play a stream. I keep getting a MRL http://myipaddress:7648 cannot play error.

I know everyone is reluctant to give instructions has to how to make all this work for fear of security issues, but I am willing to take the risk.

Question #1: Is the inability to stream built into the Newa interface?

I am thinking you meant...ability.....the answer is yes....but not without VLC installed on the Client for Live streaming......or on the Server if you want to stream recordings.

Question #2: Is there a way to get Newa to trancode/compress live tv for a better remote experience. (This doesn't seem to happen automatically.

Yes....that is the option with VLC on the Server.

Question #3: Could it possibly my VLC setup/install that is keeping the streaming from working or interfering with the transcoding of the remote/local stream?

Anything is possible.....if you see the steam option when looking in managed recordings then you know NEWA has picked it up from your settings in the Config......if you do not see the Stream option and you have VLC installed then there is something wrong with your Config settings for VLC on the program location for VLC.

Hopefully someone can help me here. Again, Everything else is working great!

We can help you get through this....it is most often just configuration.

Do you run your nrecordservice under a System or Local account? If System.....try changing it to be a Local account.

Thanks
Ken
Inside The Big Scary Box!

Sure....that is what we are here for......

[ScaryBox]

Thanks for the reply UncleJohnsBand.

Here's the thing. I've been all through the instructions.

Yes. the Program directory for VLC is set to "C:\Program Files (x860\VideoLan\VLC.
Yes. VLC is installed on both the client and the server.
Yes. NRecordService is running as a local account.

When I click on stream (either in video recordings or library) the window pops up, I choose my settings (using the default right now) and click on start stream. The window changes and I click on Launch Plugin. The VLC plugin launches but then nothing happens.
If I click on the play button in the vlc plugin still nothing happens. (the server doesn't seem to be doing anything) If I click play on the server controls I get an error page pop up which states "Server Error in '/' Application." Runtime error. I think this is indicating where the problem is, but I am not sure how to interpret it. If I log in from within the lan I get an error page pop up which states "Server Error in '/' Application. No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:8080.

Question of the day: Should the port used for streaming be the port used for connection to the NEWA interface or (maybe) the default streaming port that vlc uses, or maybe something else???

Still stumpted. lol

Ken
Inside the Big Scary Box

[UncleJohnsBand]

The streaming port is whatever you set it to be.....it is defaulted to 7648 and can be changed on the Config tab. I am sure that is not the issue.

What stream options are you using? Post shots of the player and transcode options.

Try not using the VLC plugin....I haven't tested this in some time and it may be that they have changed something.....I will look into it. Simply check the box to Open Stream in External Player.......you can permanently set this so it is always the default by clicking the same option on within the VLC area on the Config tab.

Update to most current VLC 2.0.4. If you are x64 they now have an x64 version.....you just need to make sure you change the program location on the Config tab if you goto x64. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

Post your web.log following a start of a stream....I can see what is happening there too.

Let me know how this stuff goes.....I'll be checking the plugin today.

[ScaryBox]

Everything seems right and should work.....

Here's a zip of my captures and logs.

Ken
Deeper in the Big Scary Box

[UncleJohnsBand]

I'll look at your logs....in the meantime the VLC plugin got a new classid which is why it was not loading.

I discovered that unless you are using x64 based browsers the VLX x64 does not give you plugins that work with the standard browser.....so on my client I had to also install the 32-bit version of VLC so FireFox, Chrome and IE would have a plugin to use when accessing a stream from the NEWA server. Both the x64 and 32-bit VLC clients can live on the same machine without issue......just having the x64 on my server is fine since I just use that to generate the stream.

Attached is a patch that should fix the plugin issue on both the table based and CSS based player pages.

Below is my favorite internal stream setting in case you are interested....it transcodes the source recording to a H264 video encoded stream.
[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

[UncleJohnsBand]

Looked at your attachment.....

Use the manual setting I used above and let me know how it goes.....the preset you are using does not seem to work any longer.

Also....do not use port 8866.....that is the port NEWA runs on....you do not want to intermix the NEWA port with the streaming port. You will need to make sure whatever port you use (i.e. 7648) is open in the firewall on the server.

[ScaryBox]

Well. I am officially frustrated now.

I've tried everything you have suggested and still streaming will not work. I keep getting a message (external Launch) from vlc saying that it could not open the MRL http://myipaddress:7648
I am fairly certain the port is open in the server's firewall and have tried opening the port both as a virtual server or a forwarded port in my router. (my understanding is that vlc.exe just needs to be added to the inbound and outbound lists with a "carte blanch" anything goes setting.
It works if I use the play button, but this does not transcode at all so it is only good withing the home lan/network.

If I had to guess...... I'm wondering if the NEWA interface is having trouble calling vlc.exe and launching the vlc stream, although it looks like the processer on the server is doing something when streaming is supposed to start. Odd though that vlc or ffmpeg does not show up in the list of processes at the time.

Of course, it's a very uneducated guess.

Any other thoughts??

Ken
Very deep inside The Big Scary Box

[ScaryBox]

Further thought....

Is it possible that an older version of vlc will work??

Ken

[UncleJohnsBand]

Well. I am officially frustrated now.

I've tried everything you have suggested and still streaming will not work. I keep getting a message (external Launch) from vlc saying that it could not open the MRL http://myipaddress:7648
I am fairly certain the port is open in the server's firewall and have tried opening the port both as a virtual server or a forwarded port in my router. (my understanding is that vlc.exe just needs to be added to the inbound and outbound lists with a "carte blanch" anything goes setting.
It works if I use the play button, but this does not transcode at all so it is only good withing the home lan/network.

If I had to guess...... I'm wondering if the NEWA interface is having trouble calling vlc.exe and launching the vlc stream, although it looks like the processer on the server is doing something when streaming is supposed to start. Odd though that vlc or ffmpeg does not show up in the list of processes at the time.

Of course, it's a very uneducated guess.

Any other thoughts??

Ken
Very deep inside The Big Scary Box

You would see vlc.exe under the processes in task manager if it was starting.

Stop the nrecord service, go to your npvr data directory and edit the config-web.xml file setting the debugVLC attribute to True, save and then restart the nrecord service.

This was added in 12-2010 so I am not sure if still works with current VLC or not....

◦Added debug setting for VLC when streaming.
◦◦◦◦Set debugVLC to True in configweb.xml file to have a command window open on the server showing VLC processing as well as having a c:\temp\vlc.log file created.
[Edit]: To get the command window to come up on the server you need to set the recording service to run as a system account and allow interaction with desktop. If you do no have a c:\temp directory create one.

Also...have you tried starting the stream and then on the server start vlc and open network steam http://localhost:7648 This would get rid of any firewall considerations.