Develop Bugs

[Q] Best way to stream and add data from PC - GN via WIFI?

What I would like to do is send files to my GN via my wireless network (movies, music files, pictures etc) and also stream files directly (i.e .mkv 720p video files). Would be very happy if you could point me in the right direction!

GN_ICS said:
What I would like to do is send files to my GN via my wireless network (movies, music files, pictures etc) and also stream files directly (i.e .mkv 720p video files). Would be very happy if you could point me in the right direction!
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I'm not so sure about streaming, but for transfer, Dropbox may help.

bennettm89 said:
I'm not so sure about streaming, but for transfer, Dropbox may help.
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Problem with that is, I first have to upload to the Dropbox servers and then download from the phone. What I want is a faster method since my upload speeds are very slow. I am thinking along the lines of a ftp server perhaps, but not sure if that is the best option?

GN_ICS said:
Problem with that is, I first have to upload to the Dropbox servers and then download from the phone. What I want is a faster method since my upload speeds are very slow. I am thinking along the lines of a ftp server perhaps, but not sure if that is the best option?
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FTP seems that you would go through too much trouble setting it up just for that. I see your point about upload speeds though, and you are correct. I can't say I know of any other solution .

there's an app I use. its called wifi file explorer. you can use it to transfer files from your PC to the phone over wifi

If you are just looking to stream videos, look into mirage beta in the market, and use it in conjunction with a windows app called "air video server" it works great together, and it will even transcode subtitles, and transcode on the fly high res video down to something more compatible for streaming with. This setup is especially nice because you can stream your entire video collection at will to your phone, and not use up any space on the phone at all, (provided you have network)
For normal files, wifi explorer or dropbox work fine. If you want, you can even run a FTP server on your android device and connect into it from your computer using the IP address of your phone.

I use Plex - not only transcodes but the grabs box art, descriptions etc. and has a very slick interface. Might be overkill for your needs though...
Wifi file explorer is really nice for just getting general files to the phone. There's also a DAV server available (forget the name of it) so you could then mount the phone as a drive and copy directly.

ES File Explorer, all you needs in 1 app. Streams mkvs perfectly with dice player, no need for extra software on your PC
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gabster21 said:
ES File Explorer, all you needs in 1 app. Streams mkvs perfectly with dice player, no need for extra software on your PC
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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Slightly off topic but can ES access twonky servers? Would be nice to have the dice player integration and avoid the twonky app.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

gabster21 said:
ES File Explorer, all you needs in 1 app. Streams mkvs perfectly with dice player, no need for extra software on your PC
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
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That doesn't seem to work on the GN. All that happens is you get a dialog that says 'Dice player has stopped' (the same file plays fine if copied to the phone).
Edit: Seems to be ICS compatibility issue..
Code:
W/dalvikvm(32485): No implementation found for native Lcom/inisoft/mediaplayer/MediaPlayer;.setDataSource (Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/util/Map;)V
D/AndroidRuntime(32485): Shutting down VM
W/dalvikvm(32485): threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x40a531f8)
E/AndroidRuntime(32485): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
E/AndroidRuntime(32485): java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: setDataSource
E/AndroidRuntime(32485): at com.inisoft.mediaplayer.MediaPlayer.setDataSource(Native Method)
E/AndroidRuntime(32485): at com.inisoft.mediaplayer.MediaPlayer.setDataSource(Unknown Source)
E/AndroidRuntime(32485): at com.inisoft.mediaplayer.VideoView.p(Unknown Source)

Hi, try mobo player for the streaming part
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Does the Galaxy Nexus not feature dlna? That sounds perfect for OP's needs. Older androids feature this out of the box.
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The Gingerbread Man said:
Does the Galaxy Nexus not feature dlna? That sounds perfect for OP's needs. Older androids feature this out of the box.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
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If you're talking about Allshare, that only comes with TouchWiz not stock Android.

gabster21 said:
If you're talking about Allshare, that only comes with TouchWiz not stock Android.
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no I mean dlna, you use it to stream video, pictures or music over wifi. For example I connect my x10 to wifi and enable dlna and activate dlna on my TV and I can then browse through my phones media contents and play them.
Was just looking through the settings on nexus and couldn't see it but also found wifi direct here's a good http://www.wi-fi.org/Wi-Fi_Direct.php its not the same as dlna, can't find it anywhere in the phone. Surely it has it?!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

The Gingerbread Man said:
Does the Galaxy Nexus not feature dlna? That sounds perfect for OP's needs. Older androids feature this out of the box.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
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I actually use Upnplay and Moboplayer on my Nexus S (and Ps3 media streamer on my PC) to stream MKVs from my desktop to my phone. Works pretty well and it's via dlna.

BinaryTB said:
I actually use Upnplay and Moboplayer on my Nexus S (and Ps3 media streamer on my PC) to stream MKVs from my desktop to my phone. Works pretty well and it's via dlna.
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No sign on any settings for dlna or galaxy nexus, should be under settings/wireless and networks. Unless those apps have some kind of dlna built in to them? I want to use dlna just I can't find it or know if its even supoorted
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BinaryTB said:
I actually use Upnplay and Moboplayer on my Nexus S (and Ps3 media streamer on my PC) to stream MKVs from my desktop to my phone. Works pretty well and it's via dlna.
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do you mean ps3 media server? and if so, can you tell me how it works on your phone? I have it on my PC and it works great on my ps3

Don't care about not included DLNA Apps. So far my experience was that most of the DLNA Apps the manufacturer added were crap :/
But well, there is one which worked always pretty well for me. It's the app "Skifta" by Qualcomm
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.skifta.android.app
Try this in combination with a good videoplayer (Diceplayer,Vplayer,Rockplayer) and it should work pretty fine. This way I could always stream my videos from PC to my Android phone without any problems. Just share the media in windows media player or any similar software which supports DLNA.
Couldn't test skifta on ICS so far because I'm still waiting for my phone but I hope it runs as well on ICS as it was running on older Android versions.

MysteriousDiary said:
Don't care about not included DLNA Apps. So far my experience was that most of the DLNA Apps the manufacturer added were crap :/
But well, there is one which worked always pretty well for me. It's the app "Skifta" by Qualcomm
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.skifta.android.app
Try this in combination with a good videoplayer (Diceplayer,Vplayer,Rockplayer) and it should work pretty fine. This way I could always stream my videos from PC to my Android phone without any problems. Just share the media in windows media player or any similar software which supports DLNA.
Couldn't test skifta on ICS so far because I'm still waiting for my phone but I hope it runs as well on ICS as it was running on older Android versions.
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Legendary, had an update 28/11/11 to support ics. Your a star for sharing, about to test now
It works!! Thanks man
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

rock7632 said:
do you mean ps3 media server? and if so, can you tell me how it works on your phone? I have it on my PC and it works great on my ps3
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Whoops, sorry, yeah, that's what I meant. Let me check my settings... I installed it a while ago and once it worked, I haven't touch it since.
On my HTPC Server, installed it, pointed it to whatever folders I want to share (currently only video for when I'm in bed at night and don't want to wake the wife with an episode of whatever), set the transcoding settings to use multi-cores, almost everything else on default.
On upnplay on my Nexus S... (horrible GUI btw), started up the app, the PS3 Media Server I just set up shows up automatically (it's all on the same wifi network, haven't tried it via 3G), click on it, my folder shares show up, I click on a video and it starts up via moboplayer.
I use moboplayer, tried a few others, found moboplayer to be the most stable for me while playing mkvs and any other video I throw at it.
A tip. I found (this was months ago, maybe it's better now with new versions) that mkv streaming of high res video on the Nexus S was unstable or really slow. So I used Handbrake to transcode a season of a show at time from MKV/720p to MP4/800x480. It was super simple, they have a phone profile you click on and voila. Downside? a bit more harddrive space it used, upside? Instantaneous playback.
Also, streaming MP4 h264 videos (which are natively supported by the Nexus S) via Upnplay would sometimes just quit the app randomly. Moboplayer was more stable in that regard too.

Best App for Streaming Video?

I have a collection of video files on my Windows XP PC that I would like to view on my A100 without downloading the multi-GB files to the Tablet.
What combination of PC server/Android player does the best job in terms of picture quality, user interface, file/format compatibility, etc.?

I use Gmote,it works great.you have the option to control the pc like a remote,or you can set it to stream from pc.uses wifi to connect.for my player i use Vplayer.
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Hooride707 said:
I use Gmote,it works great.you have the option to control the pc like a remote,or you can set it to stream from pc.uses wifi to connect.for my player i use Vplayer.
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Thanks for the reply!
I don't understand how you use Gmote - what do you run on the PC?
I will give it a try and report back..

I have been using Playon for a few years now. there are some open source variations, I'll see if I can find some links for you later today.

Update on Gmote:
You install a small Gmote server program on your PC (Windows/Mac/Linux) and the Gmote client on your tablet. You then browse the media paths you have configured on the server. You select whether to play the file on the PC or on the Android device. If you select to play on the "phone", you have to select which player app to use. I had installed Vplayer, and selected it.
Update on Vplayer:
It works, but just barely. Lots of pixellation on my A100. It seems to be designed only for playing local files from /mnt/sdcard, doesn't even "see" /mnt/ext_card.

dharr18 said:
I have been using Playon for a few years now.
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Me, too. I have the Playon server running on my Windows PC, and the free Playon for Android player "sees" the server OK. But I can't get the channels/plugins/files to play - there is no "Play" button on the Honeycomb screen!

Update:
I am having excellent results with:
- ES File Explorer to browse the media files on my PC. Once a film is selected, the File Explorer asks you which player to use.
- MX Player is the best option I have found so far. Very fast seeking, no pixellation.
Does anybody have good results with another program or programs?

Icestream is a great app to use to stream TV shows or movies. Works best with mx player or mobo player.
Sent from meXdroid Acer Iconia A100

I also have used vital player for the device,but i dont have any problems with the Vplayer.im using the full version,idk if that makes a diff how the player is.
Sent from my HD2 Gingerbread using XDA App

kascend video play not for tablet but it works great
even plays 1080p and mkv files

I am also having good results with Skifta (free on the Market). (www.skifta.com/)
The advantage with Skifta is it sees all of the media servers that are running on my PC (tVersity, Playon, Serviio) and lets me browse them for files and channels. For playback, I am still happy with MXplayer.

I use BS player. I can browse straight to my nas thru a file share and play a movie. No need to stream anything from a pc or upnp. Lite version is free and works great.
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+1 for BSplayer. It includes hardware acceleration for Arm v7. It has gesture control for volume, brightness, zoom.

Nice
Sent from my HD2 Gingerbread using XDA App

App for Streaming Video

I have looked around, and can't find any information in threads that are not at least a year old. I use airplayit on my ipad to stream videos stored on my desktop to the tablet and it works fairly well. However, their android app crashes on my phone when I try to add a computer for it to stream from. I also tried an app called skifta from the play store, however it crashes when I open it. I am trying to find, Ideally, one program that will work for both my ipad and my phone, but if that is not possible, just a good one for my phone would suffice.
Any ideas?

I like BS player. It has a LAN mode that you can use to stream media. It so far Plays all of my .mkv files without stutters.

I use Plex media server
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Somewhat on this same note...Do any of you use p2p4u.net for streaming sports? If so, have you been able to use it on your E4GT?
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shakewell said:
I use Plex media server
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This seems to be exactly what I was looking for. 5 bucks is the most I've paid for an android app, but I just might have to do it.

I for one would love to see Google do for video files what they did for music (Google Play Music). Streaming videos via your pc to phone while on the same network is a nice feature but having it in the cloud would be a plus.

I use bs player as a player, but have set up an ftp server on my home pc and navigate to it through es file explorer.
Sent from my SPH-D710

Okay in the process of trying to find an app that could stream video files as well as music & document files I came across an app called ZumoCast. This app is specifically made to run on certain Motorola devices but doing some searches here on XDA I found a patched version, installed it on my phone and thus far it works flawlessly (well almost), no widget support & album art doesn't always show up.
I haven't tried it while I'm away from home so I can't really tell you how well things would stream outside the network but in house it works great.
Attached you will find the apk & here is the link to the windows install file (sorry iOS users no support for you guys at this time)
Enjoy

EL TEJANO said:
Okay in the process of trying to find an app that could stream video files as well as music & document files I came across an app called ZumoCast. This app is specifically made to run on certain Motorola devices but doing some searches here on XDA I found a patched version, installed it on my phone and thus far it works flawlessly (well almost), no widget support & album art doesn't always show up.
I haven't tried it while I'm away from home so I can't really tell you how well things would stream outside the network but in house it works great.
Attached you will find the apk & here is the link to the windows install file (sorry iOS users no support for you guys at this time)
Enjoy
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Thanks. I'll have to give this a try. I was getting weird errors with plex and it didn't want to play back most of my video files for some reason

I use ES file explorer to access all my files: system, network, ftp, and cloud. They all stream flawlessly and I just play them on DICE player. Love the new popup player.

Archos Video Player

Normally I don't really advertise for apps, but this one was pretty awesome. Its kind of like xbmc or boxee, so it can autosearch posters and info on your media providing its properly labelled. In my (limited) testing, it was able to play both (sd) avis and (sd & 720p) mkvs without breaking a sweat.
But where it really shines is it has built in support for smb and upnp drives! I've got a tb of videos on an smb share and before this, my go to way to play it on android was: browse smb on file expert, open video location as a link in the browser and then stream that link from mxplayer/vlc. That worked, but it was really limited (couldn't skip ahead or behind, couldn't resume after leaving the app, even just for a second). This archos player can do all of that. Definitely worth my five bucks because that's something I use almost every day.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.archos.mediacenter.video
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Why not use vlc
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edikt said:
Why not use vlc
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Vlc is fine for stuff that's on my memory card, but its pretty limited when it came to playing files from my network shares. For example, it would freeze if I tried to skip ahead on the timeline or more annoying, if I left the app for any reason. Archos is more comparable to vlc on my PC with the network shares. I can skip ahead, exit out and fire off a text and it even saves my place in a video if I were to start watching something else. Not to mention its got its own in-app smb browser tha's super easy to use (maybe vlc has this too, I just had used file expert to find my files on smb, same way I always did with mxplayer before that)

Videp Player with SMB

Hi all!
Very new here, and to Android! I've just purchased a Tab S 10.5 and it's my first try away from Apple products. So far definitely enjoying the freedom
I notice on the Samsung video app that you can click 'nearby devices' and browse through my SMB file share on my network, however it's not in folders and you can't search! I've been using VLC Beta for 'on device' media but are there any good video players that have better SMB browsing?
Thanks!

A very good free SMB capable file manager is ES File Manager on the playstore. It definitely shows the network share in a folder hierarchy but to the best of my knowledge does not have a search feature. If you tap on a specific file you can associate the file type with a specific app. For example a mpg video with a media player app. On Android I would recommend MX Player as the best all around video player app handling the widest range of video formats plus hardware acceleration. There is a free version you can try.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using XDA Premium HD app

3DSammy said:
A very good free SMB capable file manager is ES File Manager on the playstore. It definitely shows the network share in a folder hierarchy but to the best of my knowledge does not have a search feature. If you tap on a specific file you can associate the file type with a specific app. For example a mpg video with a media player app. On Android I would recommend MX Player as the best all around video player app handling the widest range of video formats plus hardware acceleration. There is a free version you can try.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using XDA Premium HD app
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Thank-you! I will check it out. Sounds like it'll be exactly what I need Cheers!

Just a word of advice. SMB is a terrible profile and you will get much better video playback over dlna or plex than SMB, assuming you have at least a cheap PC capable of running a DLNA server(several free).

You can also use BS Player to play your videos over SMB and support many codecs

leojab said:
You can also use BS Player to play your videos over SMB and support many codecs
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+1 for BS Player. It can also find subtitles online for the videos if needed.

gottahavit said:
Just a word of advice. SMB is a terrible profile and you will get much better video playback over dlna or plex than SMB, assuming you have at least a cheap PC capable of running a DLNA server(several free).
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I dunno.....I run all my videos over smb to my Android box, don't require an extra PC, external subs works fine, and all my other PCs can access those files just fine.
Fiddling with DLNA just introduces more overheads....no thanks.

kenkiller said:
I dunno.....I run all my videos over smb to my Android box, don't require an extra PC, external subs works fine, and all my other PCs can access those files just fine.
Fiddling with DLNA just introduces more overheads....no thanks.
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Are you running 1080p full blu ray streams? I didn't say it wasn't a little setup, just much better throughput. Either way whatever works for you.
BTW why do you need another pc? Are you running your drives right off you router?

The SMB player I'm using is Archos Video Player. Played everything I threw at it.

I love plex for all my devices. If only they didn't remove the RAR support...
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