This is a "plugin" for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR). Written by: Sascha Volkenandt Current maintainer: Frank Schmirler Project's homepage: http://streamdev.vdr-developer.org/ Former project homepage: http://linux.kompiliert.net/ Latest version available at: http://streamdev.vdr-developer.org/ See the file COPYING for license information. Contents: --------- 1. Description 2. Installation 2.1 Compatibility 2.2 Compiling 2.3 Updating 3. Usage 3.1 Usage HTTP server 3.2 Usage IGMP multicast server 3.3 Usage VDR-to-VDR server 3.4 Usage VDR-to-VDR client 4. Other useful Plugins 4.1 Plugins for VDR-to-VDR clients 4.2 Plugins for Server 4.3 Alternatives 5. externremux.sh 6. Known Problems 1. Description: --------------- This PlugIn is a VDR implementation of the VTP (Video Transfer Protocol) Version 0.0.3 (see file PROTOCOL) and a basic HTTP Streaming Protocol. It consists of a server and a client part, but both parts are compiled together with the PlugIn source, but appear as separate PlugIns to VDR. The client part acts as a full Input Device, so it can be used in conjunction with a DXR3-Card, XINE, SoftDevice or others to act as a working VDR installation without any DVB-Hardware including EPG-Handling. The server part acts as a Receiver-Device and works transparently in the background within your running VDR. It can serve multiple clients and it can distribute multiple input streams (i.e. from multiple DVB-cards) to multiple clients using the native VTP protocol (for VDR-clients), or using the HTTP protocol supporting clients such as XINE, MPlayer and so on. With XMMS or WinAMP, you can also listen to radio channels over a HTTP connection. It is possible to attach as many clients as the bus and network can handle, as long as there is a device which can receive a specific channel. Multiple channels homed on the same transponder (which is determined by it's frequency) can be broadcasted with a single device. Additional clients can be programmed using the Protocol Instructions inside the PROTOCOL file. 2. Installation: ---------------- Let's say streamdev's version is 0.5.0 and vdr's version is 1.X.X. If you use anything else please exchange the version numbers appropriately (this way I don't have to update this section all the times;) ). After compiling the PlugIn as stated below, start either (or both) parts of it by specifying "-P streamdev-client" and/or "-P streamdev-server" on the VDR command line. What's important is that the client requests a channel using its Unique Channel ID. So, in order to find the channel at the server, it must have the same ID that is used on the client. You can achieve this by putting the server's channels.conf on the client, preferably after scanning. If you want to drive additional Input-Devices (with different sources) on the client, you can merge the channels.conf files. VDR will detect if the local device or the network device can receive the channels. Last, but not least you have to copy the streamdev-server folder into the "plugins/streamdev-server" subfolder of VDR's config-directory (which is equal to your video-directory if not specified otherwise). For example, if you didn't specify a separate config-directory, and set your video directory to "/video0", the directory has to be copied to /video0/plugins/streamdev-server. The directory contains a file named streamdevhosts.conf which you must adjust to your needs. The syntax is the same as for svdrphosts.conf, so please consult VDR's documentation on how to fill that file, if you can't do it on-the-fly. There's also a sample externremux.sh script in this directory. It is used by streamdev's external remux feature. The sample script uses mencoder by default. Please check the script for further information. You can specify a different script location with the -r parameter. The VDR commandline would then include a "-P 'streamdev-server -r /usr/local/bin/remux.sh'". Note the additional quotes, as otherwise -r will be passed to VDR and not to streamdev. 2.1 Compatibility: ------------------ This version is not compatible to VDR releases older than 1.5.9. Take one of the streamdev-0.4.x releases if you are running at least VDR 1.4.x. For older VDRs you will probably need one of the streamdev-0.3.x releases. 2.2 Compiling: -------------- cd vdr-1.X.X/PLUGINS/src tar xvfz vdr-streamdev-0.5.0.tgz ln -s streamdev-0.5.0 streamdev cp -r streamdev/streamdev-server VDRCONFDIR/plugins/ cd ../.. make [options, if necessary] vdr make [options, if necessary] plugins To build only the plugin, change into the streamdev source folder and issue make To build only streamdev-server or only streamdev-client, use make server make client 2.3 Updating: -------------- If you are updating streamdev from an earlier release, you might have to perform some additional steps. Check which version you've been running before, then read below for the necessary changes. * Location of files: -------------------- (Affected: 0.3.x, 0.4.x, 0.4.0pre, 0.5.0pre) Starting with streamdev 0.5.0, all additional files are kept in a directory called "streamdev-server" inside VDR's plugin config directory. It is the new default location of externremux.sh and the new place where streamdev-server expects the file "streamdevhosts.conf". You will have to move this file to its new location: streamdev 0.3.x: mv VDRCONFDIR/plugins/streamdevhosts.conf VDRCONFDIR/plugins/streamdev-server/ streamdev 0.4.x, 0.4.0pre and 0.5.0pre: mv VDRCONFDIR/plugins/streamdev VDRCONFDIR/plugins/streamdev-server/ Now check the contents of streamdevhosts.conf. Does it contain a "0.0.0.0/0" entry? If your VDR machine is connected to the Internet, this line gives *anyone* full access to streamdev, unless you took some other measures to prevent this (e.g. firewall). You might want to remove this line and enable HTTP authentication instead. * Handling of externremux script: --------------------------------- (Affected: 0.3.x, 0.4.0pre, 0.5.0pre) Streamdev server's externremux script became responsible for emitting all HTTP headers. A quick and dirty extension to your current script would be: echo -ne 'Content-type: video/mpeg\r\n' echo -ne '\r\n' However I encourage you to try the new externremux.sh script shipped with the streamdev source distribution. To emphasize the required change in externremux, the URL path for passing the stream through externremux has changed from EXTERN to EXT. 3. Usage: --------- Start the server core itself by specifying -Pstreamdev-server on your VDR commandline. To use the client core, specify -Pstreamdev-client. Both parts can run in one VDR instance, if necessary. On the server, the main menu entry "Streamdev Connections" gives you a list of currently connected clients. Use the "red" key to terminate a connection. Note that depending on connection type and client, the client might re-connect sooner or later. Depending on the server setup, the "blue" key might be enabled as well. Please read below. The parameter "Suspend behaviour" allows you to specify how the server should react in case the client requests a channel that would require switching the primary device (i.e. disrupt live-tv). If set to "Offer suspend mode", you enable the "blue" key in the server's main menu. It will put the server into "Suspend Mode" (a picture is displayed on TV). Then, a client may switch the primary card to wherever it likes to. While watching TV (Suspend deactivated), the client may not switch the transponder on the primary device. If you set the behaviour to "Always suspended" (the default), there will be normal live-tv on the server, but whenever a client decides to switch the transponder, the server will lose it's live-tv. Set to "Never suspended", the server always prevents the client from switching transponders. If you set "Client may suspend" to yes, the client can suspend the server remotely (this only applies if "Offer suspend mode" is selected). NOTE: This mainly applies to One-Card-Systems, since with multiple cards there is no need to switch transponders on the primary interface, if on of the other cards is idle (i.e. if it is not blocked by a recording). If all cards are in use (i.e. when something is recorded, or by multiple clients), this applies to Multiple-Card-Systems as well. 3.1 Usage HTTP server: ---------------------- You can use the HTTP part by accessing the server with a HTTP-capable media player (such as XINE, MPlayer, and so on, if you have appropriate MPEG2-codecs installed). In the PlugIn's Setup, you can specify the port the server will listen to with the parameter "HTTP Server Port". The parameter "HTTP Streamtype" allows you to specify a default stream type, which is used if no specific type has been requested in the URL (see below). The supported stream types are: TS Transport Stream (i.e. a dump from the device) PES Packetized Elemetary Stream (VDR's native recording format) PS Program Stream (SVCD, DVD like stream) ES Elementary Stream (only Video, if available, otherwise only Audio) EXT Pass stream through external script (e.g. for converting with mencoder) Assuming that you leave the default port (3000), point your web browser to http://hostname:3000/ You will be presented a menu with links to various channel lists, including M3U playlist formats. If you don't want to use the HTML menu or the M3U playlists, you can access the streams directly like this: http://hostname:3000/3 http://hostname:3000/S19.2E-0-12480-898 The first one will deliver a channel by number on the server, the second one will request the channel by unique channel id. In addition, you can specify the desired stream type as a path to the channel. http://hostname:3000/TS/3 http://hostname:3000/PES/S19.2E-0-12480-898 The first one would deliver the stream in TS, the second one in PES format. Possible values are 'PES', 'TS', 'PS', 'ES' and 'EXT'. You need to specify the ES format explicitly if you want to listen to radio channels. Play them back i.e. with mpg123. mpg123 http://hostname:3000/ES/200 With 'EXT' you can also add parameters which are passed as arguments to the externremux script (e.g. http://hostname:3000/EXT;param1=value1;param2=value2/3) Check your externremux.sh script for the parameters it understands. For details on how to modify or write your own externremux.sh, please see the chapter upon externremux.sh further down. If you want to access streamdev's HTTP server from the Internet, do *not* grant access for anyone by allowing any IP in "streamdevhosts.conf". Instead, pass the "-a" commandline option to streamdev-server. It takes a username and a password as argument. Clients with an IP not accepted by "streamdevhosts.conf" will then have to login. The VDR commandline will have to look like this: vdr ... -P 'streamdev-server -a vdr:secret' ... Note the single quotes, as otherwise "-a" will be passed to VDR and not to streamdev-server. The login ("vdr" in the example above) doesn't have to exist as a system account. 3.2 Usage IGMP multicast server: -------------------------------- IGMP based multicast streaming is often used by settop boxes to receive IP TV. Streamdev's multicast server allows you to feed live TV from VDR to such a settop box. VLC is known to work well if you look for a software client. The advantage of multicasting is that the actual stream is sent out only once, regardless of how many clients want to receive it. The downside is, that you cannot simply multicast across network boundaries. You need multicast routers. For multicast streaming over the public Internet you would even need to register for your own IP range. So don't even think of multicasting via Internet with streamdev! Streamdev will send the stream only to one local ethernet segment and all clients must be connected to this same segment. There must not be a router inbetween. Also note that the client must not run on the streamdev-server machine. Each channel is offered on a different multicast IP. Channel 1 is available from multicast IP 239.255.0.1, channel 2 from 239.255.0.2 and so on. The upper limit is 239.255.254.255 which corresponds to channel 65279 (239.255.255.0/24 is reserved according to RFC-2365). Before you can use streamdev's multicast server, you might need to patch VDR. Binding an IGMP socket is a privileged operation, so you must start VDR as root. If you pass the -u option to VDR, it will drop almost all priviledges before streamdev is even loaded. Apply vdr-cap_net_raw.diff to keep VDR from dropping the CAP_NET_RAW capability required to bind the IGMP socket. The patch is part of streamdev's source distribution. Check the patches subdirectory. There's no need to patch VDR if it is kept running as root (not recommended). The multicast server is disabled by default. Enter the streamdev-server setup menu to enable it and - IMPORTANT - bind the multicast server to the IP of your VDR server's LAN ethernet card. The multicast server will refuse to start with the default bind adresse "0.0.0.0". Now edit your streamdevhosts.conf. To allow streaming of all channels, it must contain "239.255.0.0/16". Note that you cannot limit connections by client IP here. You can however restrict which channels are allowed to be multicasted. Enter individual multicast IPs instead of "239.255.0.0/16". By default, the linux kernel will refuse to join more than 20 multicast groups. You might want to increase this up to "number_of_channels + 1". Note that it's "number_of_channels", not "maximum_channel_number". #First 100 channels: bash# sysctl -w net.ipv4.igmp_max_memberships=101 #All channels: bash# COUNT=$(grep -c '^[^:]' PATH_TO_YOUR/channels.conf) bash# sysctl -w net.ipv4.igmp_max_memberships=$((COUNT + 1)) You need to run the sysctl command *before* VDR is started. The setting is lost after the next reboot. Check the documentation of your Linux distro on how to make the setting persist (i.e. have your distro change the value for you as part of the boot procedure). Most likely /etc/sysctl.conf is your friend. A multicast server never knows how many clients are actually receiving a stream. If a client signals that it leaves a multicast group, the server has to query for other listeners before it can stop the stream. This may delay zapping from one transponder to an other. The client will probably requests the new channel before the previous stream has been stopped. If there's no free DVB card, VDR won't be able to fulfill the request until a DVB card becomes available and the client resends the request. 3.3 Usage VDR-to-VDR server: ---------------------------- You can activate the VDR-to-VDR server part in the PlugIn's Setup Menu. It is deactivated by default. The Parameter "VDR-to-VDR Server Port" specifies the port where you want the server to listen for incoming connections. The server will be activated when you push the OK button inside the setup menu, so there's no need to restart VDR. 3.4 Usage VDR-to-VDR client: ---------------------------- Streamdev-client adds a "Suspend Server" item to VDR's mainmenu. With the setup parameter "Hide Mainmenu Entry" you can hide this menu item if you don't need it. "Suspend Server" is only useful if the server runs in "Offer suspend mode" with "Client may suspend" enabled. The parameter "Remote IP" uses an IP-Adress-Editor, where you can just enter the IP number with the number keys on your remote. After three digits (or if the next digit would result in an invalid IP adress, or if the first digit is 0), the current position jumps to the next one. You can change positions with the left and right buttons, and you can cycle the current position using up and down. To confirm the entered address, press OK. So, if you want to enter the IP address "127.0.0.1", just mark the corresponding entry as active and type "127001" on your remote. If you want to enter "192.168.1.12", type "192168112". The parameters "Remote IP" and "Remote Port" in the client's setup specify the address of the remote VDR-to-VDR server to connect to. Activate the client by setting "Start Client" to yes. It is disabled by default, because it wouldn't make much sense to start the client without specifying a server anyway. The client is activated after you push the OK button, so there's no need to restart VDR. Deactivation on-the-fly is not possible, so in order to deactivate the client, you will have to restart VDR. However requests to switch channels will be refused by streamdev-client once it has been deactivated. All other settings can be changed without restarting VDR. The client will try to connect to the server (in case it isn't yet) whenever a remote channel is requested. Just activate the client and switch to a channel that's not available by local devices. If anything goes wrong with the connection between the two, you will see it in the logfile instantly. If you now switch the client to a channel which isn't covered by it's own local devices, it will ask the server for it. If the server can (currently) receive that channel, the client will show it until you switch again, or until the server needs that card (if no other is free) for a recording on a different transponder. Only the needed PIDs are transferred, and additional PIDs can be turned on during an active transfer. This makes it possible to switch languages, receive additional channels (for recording on the client) and use plugins that use receivers themselves (like osdteletext). With "Filter Streaming" enabled, the client will receive meta information like EPG data and service information, just as if the client had its own DVB card. Link channels and even a client-side EPG scan have been reported to work. With maximum and minimum priority you can keep VDR from considering streamdev in certain cases. If for instance you have a streamdev client with its own DVB card, VDR might use streamdev for recording. If this is not what you want, you could set the maximum priority to 0. As recordings usually have a much higher priority (default 50), streamdev is now no longer used for recordings. The two parameters define the inclusive range of priorities for which streamdev will accept to tune. Setting the minimum priority to a higher value than the maximum, you will get two ranges: "up to maximum" and "minimum and above". If you are running at least VDR 1.7.0, you can also configure the "Broadcast Systems / Cost" of the streamdev-client device. On a pure streamdev-client only system it doesn't matter what you configure here. But if your client is equipped with a DVB card, you should read on. VDR always prefers the cheapest device in terms of supported broadcast systems and modulations. A DVB-S2 card supports two broadcast systems (DVB-S and DVB-S2). From VDR 1.7.15 on, the supported modulations are counted as well (QPSK, QAM32/64/128/256, VSB8/16, TURBO_FEC). So for a DVB-S2 card which does QPSK you'll get a total cost of three. A DVB-C card (one broadcast system) which can do QAM32,QAM64,QAM128,QAM256 would give you a total of five. Check your log for "frontend ... provides ... with ..." messages to find out the cost of your DVB cards. Then pick a suitable value for streamdev-client. With equal costs, VDR will usually prefer the DVB card and take streamdev for recordings. If streamdev's costs are higher, live TV will use your DVB card until a recordings kicks in. Then the recording will take the DVB card and live TV will be shifted to streamdev (you'll notice a short interruption of live TV). Note that streamdev-client acts similar to a DVB card. It is possible to receive multiple channels simultaneously, but only from the same transponder. Just add additional instances of streamdev-client and you will be able to receive as many transponders at a time. The same trick allows a client to receive channels from different servers. To create an additional instance, copy the streamdev-client binary to a different name (e.g. streamdev-client2): cd VDRPLUGINLIBDIR cp libvdr-streamdev-client.so.1.X.X libvdr-streamdev-client2.so.1.X.X Now add -Pstreamdev-client2 to the VDR commandline. In the VDR plugin setup a second streamdev-client entry should show up. Both instances have to be configured individually. 4. Other useful Plugins: ------------------------ 4.1 Plugins for VDR-to-VDR clients: ----------------------------------- The following plugins are useful for VDR-to-VDR clients (i.e. VDRs running the streamdev-client): * remotetimers (http://vdr.schmirler.de/) Add, edit, delete timers on client and server * timersync (http://phivdr.dyndns.org/vdr/vdr-timersync/) Automatically syncronizes timer lists of client and server. All recordings will be made on the server * remoteosd (http://vdr.schmirler.de/) Provides access to the server's OSD menu * epgsync (http://vdr.schmirler.de/) Import EPG from server VDR * femon (http://www.saunalahti.fi/~rahrenbe/vdr/femon/) Display signal information from server's DVB card. SVDRP support must be enabled in femon's setup 4.2 Plugins for Server: ----------------------- * dummydevice (http://phivdr.dyndns.org/vdr/vdr-dummydevice/) Recommended on a headless server (i.e. a server with no real output device). Without this plugin, a budget DVB card could become VDR's primary device. This causes unwanted sideeffects in certain situations. 4.3 Alternatives: ----------------- * xineliboutput (http://phivdr.dyndns.org/vdr/vdr-xineliboutput/) With its networking option, xineliboutput provides an alternative to streamdev. You will get the picture of the server VDR, including its OSD. However you won't get independent clients, as they all share the same output. 5. externremux.sh: ------------------ When selecting streamtype "EXT", the TS stream from VDR is passed through an external program for further processing. By default a script installed at VDRCONFDIR/plugins/streamdev/externremux.sh is expected, however you may specify a different location as parameter -r to the streamdev-server plugin (see chapter upon Installation above). The TS stream is passed to the script on stdin, the resulting stream is expected on stdout. The following parameters are passed to the script in the environment: * Information on the channel: REMUX_CHANNEL_ID VDR channel ID REMUX_CHANNEL_NAME Channel name REMUX_VTYPE Video type (2 for MPEG-2) REMUX_VPID Video PID (undefined if audio only) REMUX_PPID PCR PID (undefined if equal to VPID) REMUX_TPID Teletext PID (undefined if not available) REMUX_APID Space separated list of audio pids REMUX_ALANG Space separated list of audio languages REMUX_DPID Space separated list of dolby pids REMUX_DLANG Space separated list of dolby languages REMUX_SPID Space separated list of subtitle pids REMUX_SLANG Space separated list of subtitle languages REMUX_PARAM_* All (user supplied) parameters (e.g. REMUX_PARAM_x) * Information on the connection (CGI like) REMOTE_ADDR Client IP SERVER_NAME Local IP SERVER_PORT Local port SERVER_PROTOCOL Streamdev protocol (HTTP, VTP, IGMP) SERVER_SOFTWARE Streamdev version All HTTP headers converted to uppercase, '-' replaced by '_' (e.g. USER_AGENT) The script should perform the following steps (pseudocode): if (SERVER_PROTOCOL == HTTP) write headers (including Content-Type) to STDOUT write empty line to STDOUT if (REQUEST_METHOD == HEAD) exit endif endif while (read STDIN) remux to STDOUT wend onSIGINT/SIGKILL: cleanup and exit 6. Known Problems: ------------------ * There have been reports that channel switching with VDR 1.5.x/1.6.x clients sometimes fails. Current version includes a workaround which seems to work, but YMMV ;) * Viewing encrypted channels became an issue with VDR's new CAM handling code. Streamdev doesn't provide a (dummy) CAM, so out of the box, VDR won't ever try to receive encrypted channels from streamdev. Pick one of the following solutions to work around the problem: 1. Force VDR to use streamdev. Open the channels menu on the client (or edit its channels.conf if you know how to do this) and set the CA field of all channels that only the server can decrypt to streamdev's device index. Usually streamdev will get number 9 or 10. Streamdev logs the actual device number when starting up. So please consider the logs for the correct value. Remember to fill in hexadecimal values if you are using an editor to modify your channels.conf (number 10 becomes an "a", number 11 a "b", ...). 2. Apply either patch "patches/vdr-1.6.0-intcamdevices.patch" or patch "patches/vdr-1.6.0-ignore_missing_cam.diff" to your client VDR. Intcamdevices is the clean solution, but it modifies the VDR API. So you will need to recompile all of your plugins. The ignore_missing_cam patch is trivial, no need to recompile other plugins. However it is not suitable for clients with a DVB card of their own.