How to make a streaming server to stream media from computer to mobile phone in wifi?

Question

Usually we have many HD movies in our computer, but we want to see them by our mobile phone. This requirement produces some questions:

1、the HD videos are too big to transfer to phone timely and it it hard to play on phone smoothly, so we have to transform the videos smaller and fit the screen of phone.

2、the coded format of the videos are varied, but limited types are supported by mobile phone, so we should transform the coded format to those supported by mobile phone.

I've leaned the streaming media fit this problem, what I want is:

1、are there any good opensource projects fit this(ffmpeg?live555? darwin?)?

2、are they quick enough to transform coded format and transfer to mobile phone to play with no delay?

Thank u very much!

Answer 1

There are few ways to do it depending on available resources. I have done this by two different ways/tools.

Using RTSP

Tools Used:

• DSS Darwin Streaming Server with
• ffmpeg + VLC
• MP4Box hinting
• Both DSS host and Mobile in same network OR both on internet.

as said in above answer by @kamer_beboy . This is bit old tech stuff to hind 3gp and mp4 mobile compatible files. However it works well in LAN as well as WAN (internet). Bit rate has to be managed as per available bandwidth else you see that annoying buffering screen. No HD quality here. However, you can run indefinate stream like TV channel using this. Supports Audio and Video. As protocal is RTSP, you will have to open some special RTSP specific ports in firewall. It might be painful task sometimes.

Using HTTP

There are few open source free (as cost and as freedom) projects. mediatomb and miniDLNA. I tried both.

Mediatomb

http://mediatomb.cc as UPnP media streaming server. It works with my smart TV. Setup is pretty simple. You don't need to explicitely hint or process media files. No extra tools required exceot ffmpeg. I liked mediatomb as it has compability to transcoding on the fly using ffmpeg to provide media compatibility. You will need router with UPnP enabled. Oldest of them support it. There are other features to auto-scan and add content if you download and put some new content. Plays most of video format, didn't worked for .MOV for me.

Supports:

• Music/audio
• Video HD, FHD (I tried 720p, 1020p videos) smoothly on TV and mobile. No delays/buffering while watching on mobile. If any, tune your router QoS.
• Pictures (photoes/images)

Google for more blogs and procedure on how to. Refer mediatomb.cc/dokuwiki/faq:faq

miniDLNA

This also works on UPnP. Simple, light weight but doesn't do transcoding on the fly. Good to use if need something easy going.

Refer:

• help.ubuntu.com/community/MiniDLNA
• ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1866520

For Mobile app

So, you will also need a media player on mobile device. For RTPS, older Symbian and J2ME based devices use to support. However, it's gone with new technology and dominant players like Android and iOS.

For Android, I use this app called: GinkgoDlna . There are many apps with dlna name. I suppose, any of them should work. It's helpful in browsing media server but you will still need media player to play video. Best in class is VLC. You can find similar app for iOS and Windows Mobile as well.

If you want to host DLNA/UPnP server from mobile, you can use BubbleUPnP app (for Android) . I hope this anwsers your question.

Note, above setups are tested OK with raspberry pi with raspbian connected to router. TV on wifi.

Answer 2

I use DSS (Darwin Streaming Server) to streaming video to my Mobile Phone (Nokia C3) using RTSP protocol. First, you need to convert all your videos to formats which supported by you mobile. 3GP with h263 codec is pretty good. Resolution must be the same for all files(320x180 or 640x360 for video in 16/9 ; 320x240 or 480x360 for video in 4/3).

Second, Hinting MP4/3GP files is recommended. MP4Box do the job.

Third, Installation and configuration of DSS is simple but require a few times. Search tutorials about DSS.

Fourth : Don't forget to edit filenames (because with DSS, you can access to a specific files and to avoid errors about ASCII encoding). Don't forget playlists if you like to have a continuous streaming.

Fifth: If you know how to programming Perl scripts (.pl), you should be able to stream your TV to your mobile.