Consolidate MediaPortal Web Applications (3 Viewers)

[DieBagger]

This diagram reflects a singleseat install (tv server + mp client) and a standalone client, there should also be the facility to run a standalone TV server, which is why I went down the client plugin route, the iPiMP web app interfaces with TV server for tv/radio/recording functions and also interfaces with the client plugin for MP client video/audio/control.

But this would mean that the webserver has to be installed on the same machine as the tvserver, right? With the drawing I was going more for a modular setup. So if you install it on a machine you only want to use as a tvserver, only the tvserver webservice is installed/activated. Same for a pure client (only video/pictures/music) is installed. If you want to use the machine as your webserver, the "master" webservice and the websites you want are installed. This machine can then use other webservices (either on the same machine or on the network) and serve everything to the user/application. Of course this would mean that an apache has to be installed on every machine but from a programmers POV I think this is a very nice solution because the only thing a webservice method has to do is to e.g. get all available videos is to:

1. Loop through all the videos that are available in the local database and
2. Call itself (or rather the same webservice method) on every machine it is connected to
3. Return both, the local result and the remote results (if any) to the caller

No need for duplicate code, you could run the same method for master/slave or singleseat.

You could stream it from the plugin to the server, but the easiest option would be to insist MP clients used UNC shares for video/audio files - I was going to do the latter for iPiMP. You'd have to give clear instructions on why this was required and how exactly to do it, or there's probably some automation that could help. All my sources for My Music, My Videos, Moving Pictures & TV Series are on UNC, it makes a multi seat environment easier to setup & maintain.

Not sure if this is possible but how about virtual directories on the apache webserver? This is possible with IIS but no clue if it works with apache. UNC is quite the obvious solution but it also needs a lot of extra configuration by the user. It will also be difficult for Moving Pictures/MP-TvSeries because the video files can be in different locations.

 

[Mike Lowrey]

AW: Consolidate MediaPortal Web Applications

At first, the idea of one MP Weblayer is really good, also the usage of something like apache or IIS is something supportable, but because it's especially in my interest i want to focus on this point:

Authentification
Imo its very important to have authentification also for webservices because I don't want to have a publicly available webservice that anyone can access.

I think it's very important to have a really abstracted authentication method , to be able to implement nearly all kind of authentication.
As a Windows Home Server user it should be possible to use Single Sign On based on the whs website.
As normal windows user you may prefer NTLM authentication, as another user you may prefer OpenID or any other method, so each developer should be able to add extensions for the authentication method.


Referring to the rest... the main important thing is to find an opportunity to stream the rtsp stream on nearly all devices without special software on these clients.

Or the best way would be if the media streaming module check the ability of the device and chooses the best codec.
For example if you're using firefox it should choose VP8 or theora (yes i know there is no real transcoding tool...) if you're using an iphone it should choose mp4 and so on...

 

[cheezey]

DieBagger
I was just trying to reduce the number of web server installed on the network, but it does have advantages for streaming etc., possibly used in conjuction with the proxy module in Apache.

Virtual directories on Apache are no problem (iPiMP has two vir dirs).

Mike Lowrey
Authentication - i'd say keep it simple to bein with - most users are happy with a username/password and a tick box to 'Remember Me'

Streaming - I think http streaming is the way forward - the smooth streaming module will support Silverlight & Flash as well as the iPhone. This would cover a vast majority of clients.

 

[Mike Lowrey]

AW: Consolidate MediaPortal Web Applications

cheezey
Yeah of course, most users don't need more, but you should keep in mind that also such a authentication needs a user management.

With something like OpenID or the SSO on WHS you have one central management for different software, not everyone needs something like that but it's really nice if you have it.

 

[DieBagger]

@DieBagger
I was just trying to reduce the number of web server installed on the network, but it does have advantages for streaming etc., possibly used in conjuction with the proxy module in Apache.

Virtual directories on Apache are no problem (iPiMP has two vir dirs).

Can you set them up on the fly or do you need to restart apache? Otherwise you could maybe add the root directories of videos as an virtual directory on the web server and stream the files that way?

@Mike Lowrey
Authentication - i'd say keep it simple to bein with - most users are happy with a username/password and a tick box to 'Remember Me'

Yeah I would also say user management should be kept simple since this is for single users and not to setup streaming portals...

Streaming - I think http streaming is the way forward - the smooth streaming module will support Silverlight & Flash as well as the iPhone. This would cover a vast majority of clients.

It offers a lot of advantages but I don' think you can use it with VLC (which sucks for my MP-TvViewer ). So I'd at least also make the rtsp stream available.

@cheezey: do you know if there are any external players that can play the streams of Smooth Streaming ?

 

[cheezey]

@DieBagger
I was just trying to reduce the number of web server installed on the network, but it does have advantages for streaming etc., possibly used in conjuction with the proxy module in Apache.

Virtual directories on Apache are no problem (iPiMP has two vir dirs).

Can you set them up on the fly or do you need to restart apache? Otherwise you could maybe add the root directories of videos as an virtual directory on the web server and stream the files that way?

You'd have to restart Apache I think - but MP config (and pluging config) has a list of configured video/audio folders so the Apache install could read those configs and set them up during install. Mind you if every client is running Apache then it could run the smooth streaming module and transcode locally on the fly, the 'master' Apache could then just proxy that web request. I'm sure we'd come up with a solution for this.

Streaming - I think http streaming is the way forward - the smooth streaming module will support Silverlight & Flash as well as the iPhone. This would cover a vast majority of clients.

It offers a lot of advantages but I don' think you can use it with VLC (which sucks for my MP-TvViewer ). So I'd at least also make the rtsp stream available.

@cheezey: do you know if there are any external players that can play the streams of Smooth Streaming ?

Hmm - no - I'll have a look around.

 

[DieBagger]

iPIMP is iPhone only.. I was planning to make a Desktop version of it. But it's harder then I thought, because I'm not a VB programmer or something.. I can't find the source files on the server?

So I take it you are a webdesigner? Would you stilll be interrested in making desktop website if other people would code a backend like it is discussed here?

@cheezey: Could you maybe send me a version of iPimp with the included streaming module? I'd like to check how it works and how it could be used in the future.

 

[Dragy]

iPIMP is iPhone only.. I was planning to make a Desktop version of it. But it's harder then I thought, because I'm not a VB programmer or something.. I can't find the source files on the server?

So I take it you are a webdesigner? Would you stilll be interrested in making desktop website if other people would code a backend like it is discussed here?

@cheezey: Could you maybe send me a version of iPimp with the included streaming module? I'd like to check how it works and how it could be used in the future.

Possibly I was actually a PHP developer and I was a HTML god. So I can definitely do the HTML (and JS, CSS) and the design won't be a big problem either. Didn't do much with it the last year, but I think I still have the skills.

 

[bodiroga]

This starts to sound really nice...

Looking forward to see what you are able to do guys! (Dragy, DieBagger, cheezey and gemx, great team)

Best regards,

Aitor

 

[cheezey]

@cheezey: Could you maybe send me a version of iPimp with the included streaming module? I'd like to check how it works and how it could be used in the future.

As soon as I have one