Maemo Wiki Mirror - User contributions [en]

Knots2

2009-12-29T16:38:30Z

83.175.82.70: /* Server */

Knots is a feature rich GPLv2 Video Streaming Application for Windows, Mac OS X Leopard, Linux and FreeBSD by Janne Mäkinen. Knots consists of a server, written in Ruby, and client, written in Vala. The server can be configured to stream video files (any format/codec supported by VLC), DVB-broadcasts, custom playlists or any other media to a Knots client on a N8x0 or to any other computer, via the Knots' Web-frontend.

Non-tableteers can access the Knots Web-frontend from any platform / location (including Windows). Firefox & Adobe's Flash Plugin 10 are suggested and work best. Knots will automatically transcode all streams to flv, so they can be watched directly in the browser. It is also possible to view videos without transcoding, using the VLC browser plugin.

= Features =
* Fully thumb driven intuitive GUI for the Nokia N8x0 tablets
* Stream videos with on-the-fly transcoding to a Knots client or to a remote computer via the web-frontend. Seeking is supported when possible.
* Stream VDR Live-TV and recordings
* Playlist support (WorldTV99, etc.)
* Automatic subtitle fetching for movies, provided by http://www.opensubtitles.org
* Automatic thumbnails for local clips using ffmpeg
* Integrated search function
* Additional info for movies, provided by http://themoviedb.org

=Installation=
To get Knots running, some dependencies have to be met. After that, the server package and the tablet client must be installed. The following steps will guide you in those tasks.
==Dependencies==
Knots server uses [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ VLC] for streaming and [http://www.ffmpeg.org/ FFmpeg] for encoding. The following steps explain how to setup those dependencies.
===Linux===
This instructions are for Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) 32 and 64 bit. Other Debian derivates might use slightly different package names, but the general concept of the install is the same for all distros.

apt-get install ruby1.8 ruby rubygems libsqlite3-ruby libopenssl-ruby vlc ffmpeg

* Add the [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu Medibuntu repository] (for ffmpeg), reload your Package information, update your system and open a root terminal (sudo -s), and:

apt-get install libavcodec-unstripped-52 libavdevice-unstripped-52 libavfilter-unstripped-0 libavformat-unstripped-52 libavutil-unstripped-49 libpostproc-unstripped-51 libswscale-unstripped-0 ubuntu-restricted-extras

To get the best result, ubuntu users should compile ffmpeg themselves. [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=786095 Here] and [http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6963607&postcount=360 here] are good guides, you only need to copy-paste few lines.

===OS X===
Install latest [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html VLC] and [http://www.ffmpegx.com/ ffmpegX] to ''/Applications''.
===Windows===
Download and install latest [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html VLC]. For easy setup, install it under ''C:\Program Files'', otherwise you will need to edit the path in server settings.
==Server==
===Linux / FreeBSD / OS X===
*nix compatible OS users can get the latest client and server with git:
git clone git://github.com/solmis/knots.git

Then start the server with
cd knots
./knots.rb

OS X users can create a standalone app too:
./install/create_osx_app

knots2 application should appear in your home folder. You can move to that to /Applications. After running the application an icon appears in the dock which then disappears, but knots should be running.

===Windows===
Install Git for Windows from [http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list here]. Select the defaults if you don't know what the options mean. Once it's installed, open cmd.exe and run these commands:

cd c:\
git clone git://github.com/solmis/knots.git

Then download the server package from [http://mtron.mine.nu/files/knots/knots_win.zip here]. Unzip it somewhere (not c:\) and copy the ruby folder and run.cmd to c:\knots. Then copy ''win32/sqlite3.dll'' to ''Windows\System32'' with administrator rights. If you accidentaly skip this step and get the error about missing sqlite3.dll, delete the .config folder inside knots folder or the needed programs are not automatically scanned. Double click on run.cmd to start the server. Be sure to close the window with ctrl-c, otherwise VLC is left running.

==Setup==
Just point your browser to http://localhost:1978 and add your media under settings. If you don't see the ''Update collection'' button, please make sure that both ffmpeg and VLC paths are correct.

[[Image:Screen shot 2009-12-22 at 10.24.11 PM.png|HTML-frontend|500px]]

==Client==
Knots2 N8x0 Client is available from the extras-repository for OS2008 (Diablo).

'''The Client for the N900 (Fremantle) is still in alpha state''' and not ready for prime-time yet. Although advantageous people can have a peek in the current develpoment state by enabling extras-devel repository and pull the client from there.

'''NOTE:''' Please bear in mind that the N900 client is still unfinished. You might come across bugs and other strange behavior (like quickly draining battery ect.) since mplayer currently can't utilize the full potential of the N900's hardware. If you are not willing to deal with those limitations you should NOT use the Knots2 Client on your shiny new device yet.

=Screenshots=
[[Image:Knots-0.2.6-homescreen.png|Knots2 Client Start Screen|500px]]

[[Image:Knots-0.2.6-tvchannels.png|Knots2 Client browsing tv channels|250px]]
[[Image:Knots-0.2.6-movieinfo.png|Knots2 Client displaying movie info|250px]]

[[Image:Knots-0.2.6-searchfile.png|Knots2 Client searching for video files on server|500px]]

[[Image:Knots-0.2.6-mp3playlist.png|Knots2 Client with a mp3 playlist|250px]]
[[Image:Knots-0.2.6-mp3lyrics.png|Knots2 Client showing song lyrics and rating dialog|250px]]

=Questions & Answers=
==Windows==
* '''I get no screenshots, even when i click on ''Grab screenshot'' button.'''
*:Make sure knots' path doesn't contain spaces or weird characters. Will try to fix this issue later.
* '''I want to run knots as a windows service.'''
*:Follow [http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=302977&postcount=62 these steps].
==Linux==
* '''I can't view any videos.'''
*:Did you install the -unstripped packages of the FFmpeg libs? FFmpeg in Linux is a problem because all the license issues etc. so if your distro doesn't provide unrestricted builds you need to compile your own FFmpeg with at least libmp3lame and xvid support. Run ./scripts/vlctest to check what is wrong with your VLC/FFmpeg combo.

==OS X==
* '''Seeking freezes the video for a while and then stops it.'''
*:This is a VLC issue. It seems to have problems with certain codecs, mainly xvid/divx. Try updating VLC from time to time and see if it that helps. Or better yet, issue a bug report.
==Server==
* '''Page content doesn't seem to update.'''
*:That's because all tabs keep their state. Double click on the tab to force a refresh.
* '''I don't see the Update collection -button under settings.'''
*:Make sure both VLC and FFmpeg have correct paths.
* '''Certain videos only have sound.'''
*:Go to settings, edit the n8x0 transcoding profile and add a value 24 to fps and save. Try playing the video again.
* '''Lyrics don't work.'''
*:Lyrics-site seems to be down from time to time, try leaving it alone for few days and try again.
* '''Can I use VLC browser plugin to view the video without transcoding?'''
*:Sure. Edit the passthrough profile and add a value vlc to embed and save. VLC plugin doesn't seem to close properly though, so you may need to restart the browser to kill it.
* '''I downloaded a video from Youtube. It plays in the browser, but the sound is funny.'''
*:You need to use 22050 audio rate. Edit the profile you are using or create a new one for it.
* '''I want to use VDR / MythTV but can't find a setting for them.'''
*:Stop the server, run "./install/vdr" or "./install/mythtv" and answer the questions. Double click on Settings tab and you should see a button that updates them. If your VDR has several channels, be sure to change Capture screenshots for external urls to 0 before scanning them. Then change it back to 1 and use the Edit button to grab only the screenshots you want.
* '''How can I make the server output some debugging messages to the terminal?'''
*:Stop the server, run "./scripts/setup devel 1 Developer" and restart the server.
* '''Can I use the server to view stuff from the internet?'''
*:Yes, just enable SSL and add an admin user account. You need to open/forward the port you are using and then 19780 for the actual http-stream (and +1 for each additional streams). Client won't work with SSL unless you install some additional libs, so you need to disable ssl if you want to use the client on your lan. This feature is for more advanced users, but if you want to use it, drop by at our irc channel and we will help you with it.
* '''I get black borders around the video on the N8x0 client. How can I force it to fullscreen?'''
*:Knots client tries to maintain the aspect ratio of the source material. To override this, stop the server and run
./scripts/setup disable_aspect 1 "Disable video aspect"

==Client==
* '''How come the video plays fine with the client, but not when moved to the device?'''
*:Knots transcodes everything to a format your tablet supports. If your VLC can play it on your desktop, chances are your tablet then plays it as well.
* '''My Client does not have icons as shown in the screenshots above. How do I add them?'''
*:The icons shown in the screenshots can be downloaded [http://talk.maemo.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=4722&d=1259071591 here]. Assign them in the web-frontend to the Main Categories (Video, Music, Television) on the "Edit Media" Tab. Icons for Virtual Categories (Latest, Unviewed, Unwatched) can be assigned on the "Settings" tab.
* '''I see no rotation menu item.'''
*: Please see [[Rotation]]
* '''I'm using [[Mer]] and I want to use Knots as a music player, but I can't connect to server.'''
*:That's because Mer has no support for libconic. Restart the client after running this command in terminal:
gconftool-2 -s /apps/knots/ignore_conic true -t string

==Media==
* '''Some of my audio/video files aren't scanned.'''
*:You can add the the missing file extensions under settings and do a rescan. To keep the dependencies low, I only support mp3-tags out of the box. But it doesn't mean other audio formats won't work, they just don't get tagged properly.
* '''I have a folder with recorded tv-series and I want to move them all to Series category. How do I do that?'''
*:Go to Edit media, limit search results to - to list them all and use the path as a search criteria. Once they are listed, click on Select all, add a category or select the one you want to move them to, select Set category action and press Apply to selected. All selected videos are then moved to that category. Same idea works with all the actions.
* '''My mp3-tags are messed up and I have the same album with 3 different names. Can i easily fix that?'''
*:Sure. Just go to Edit media, select the album tag, then select the wrong value and rename it to the correct one. All the songs that are in that album are moved to the correct album. Do it for all the wrong names and all the songs should be in the same album.
* '''Can I play DVDs with Knots?.'''
*:Possibly. Go to settings and click on Add a new setting. Name it DVD Drive, key is dvd_drive and value is a path to your CD-ROM drive. In Windows this is possibly D:\, in Linux /media/dvd and in OS X it's /Volumes. Insert the DVD in drive and select Go to root from the client menu. You should see the name of the DVD. Make sure the DVD is recognized before trying to update the page or it may not be properly scanned.

=Bugs=
If you come across bugs report them at the [http://github.com/solmis/knots/issues Knots bugtracker]. Please attach the necessary information (used Operating System, Tablet Revision, terminal output) and clear steps to reproduce the malfunction.

=Contact=
Please join our IRC channel #knots at Freenode or email janne dot makinen at surffi dot fi

=Donate=
Knots 2 is free software, but if you feel like donating, you can donate via [http://nakkiboso.com/knots2/donate.html Paypal].

[[Category:Users]]
[[Category:Media]]
[[Category:Software]]
[[Category:Power users]]

Knots2

2009-11-11T21:08:00Z

83.175.82.70: /* Linux / FreeBSD / OS X */

Knots is a feature rich GPLv2 Video Streaming Application for Windows, Mac OS X Leopard, Linux and FreeBSD by Janne Mäkinen. Knots consists of a server, written in Ruby, and client, written in Vala. The server can be configured to stream video files (any format/codec supported by VLC), DVB-broadcasts, custom playlists or any other media to a Knots client on a N8x0 or to any other computer, via the Knots' Web-frontend.

Non-tableteers can access the Knots Web-frontend from any platform / location (including Windows). Firefox & Adobe's Flash Plugin 10 are suggested and work best. Knots will automatically transcode all streams to flv, so they can be watched directly in the browser. It is also possible to view videos without transcoding, using the VLC browser plugin.

= Features =
* Fully thumb driven intuitive GUI for the Nokia N8x0 tablets
* Stream videos with on-the-fly transcoding to a Knots client or to a remote computer via the web-frontend. Seeking is supported when possible.
* Stream VDR Live-TV and recordings
* Playlist support (WorldTV99, etc.)
* Automatic subtitle fetching for movies, provided by http://www.opensubtitles.org
* Automatic thumbnails for local clips using ffmpeg
* Integrated search function
* Additional info for movies, provided by http://themoviedb.org

=Installation=
To get Knots running, some dependencies have to be met. After that, the server package and the tablet client must be installed. The following steps will guide you in those tasks.
==Dependencies==
Knots server uses [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ VLC] for streaming and [http://www.ffmpeg.org/ FFmpeg] for encoding. The following steps explain how to setup those dependencies.
===Linux===
This instructions are for Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10). Other Debian derivates might use slightly different package names, but the general concept of the install is the same for all distros.

apt-get install ruby1.8 ruby rubygems libsqlite3-ruby libopenssl-ruby vlc ffmpeg

* Add the [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu Medibuntu repository] (for ffmpeg), reload your Package information and open a root terminal (sudo -s), and:

apt-get install libavcodec-unstripped-51 libavdevice-unstripped-52 libavformat-unstripped-52 libavutil-unstripped-49 libpostproc-unstripped-51 libswscale-unstripped-0

To get the best result, ubuntu users should compile ffmpeg themselves. [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=786095 Here] and [http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6963607&postcount=360 here] are good guides, you only need to copy-paste few lines.
===OS X===
Install latest [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html VLC] and [http://www.ffmpegx.com/ ffmpegX] to ''/Applications''.
===Windows===
Download and install latest [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html VLC]. For easy setup, install it under ''C:\Program Files'', otherwise you will need to edit the path in server settings.
==Server==
===Linux / FreeBSD / OS X===
*nix compatible OS users can get the latest client and server with git:
git clone git://github.com/solmis/knots.git

Then start the server with
cd knots
./knots.rb

OS X users: After starting the Server it shows an icon in the dock and then disappears, but knots should be running.

===Windows===
Install Git for Windows from [http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list here]. Select the defaults if you don't know what the options mean. Once it's installed, open cmd.exe and run these commands:

cd c:\
git clone git://github.com/solmis/knots.git

Then download the server package from [http://mtron.mine.nu/files/knots/knots_win.zip here]. Unzip it somewhere (not c:\) and copy the ruby folder and run.cmd to c:\knots. Then copy ''win32/sqlite3.dll'' to ''Windows\System32'' with administrator rights. If you accidentaly skip this step and get the error about missing sqlite3.dll, delete the .config folder inside knots folder or the needed programs are not automatically scanned. Double click on run.cmd to start the server. Be sure to close the window with ctrl-c, otherwise VLC is left running.

==Setup==
Just point your browser to http://localhost:1978 and add your media under settings. If you don't see the ''Update collection'' button, please make sure that both ffmpeg and VLC paths are correct.
==Client==
Client is available from extras-repository.
=Screenshots=
[[Image:Knots2-Vertical1.png|Knots2 Client: items arranged vertically|250px]]
[[Image:Knots2-Vertical2.png|Knots2 Client: track info|250px]]
[[Image:Knots2-horizontal1.png|Knots2 Client: rotation menu|400px]]
=Questions & Answers=
==Windows==
* '''I get no screenshots, even when i click on ''Grab screenshot'' button.'''
*:Make sure knots' path doesn't contain spaces or weird characters. Will try to fix this issue later.
* '''I want to run knots as a windows service.'''
*:Follow [http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=302977&postcount=62 these steps].
==Linux==
* '''I can't view any videos.'''
*:FFmpeg in Linux is a problem because all the license issues etc. Make sure you compile your own FFmpeg with at least libmp3lame and xvid support. Run ./scripts/vlctest to check what is wrong with your VLC/FFmpeg combo.
==OS X==
* '''Seeking freezes the video for a while and then stops it.'''
*:This is a VLC issue. It seems to have problems with certain codecs, mainly xvid/divx. Try updating VLC from time to time and see if it that helps. Or better yet, issue a bug report.
==Server==
* '''Page content doesn't seem to update.'''
*:That's because all tabs keep their state. Double click on the tab to force a refresh.
* '''I don't see the Update collection -button under settings.'''
*:Make sure both VLC and FFmpeg have correct paths.
* '''Certain videos only have sound.'''
*:Go to settings, edit the n8x0 transcoding profile and add a value 24 to fps and save. Try playing the video again.
* '''Lyrics don't work.'''
*:Lyrics-site seems to be down from time to time, try leaving it alone for few days and try again.
* '''Can I use VLC browser plugin to view the video without transcoding?'''
*:Sure. Edit the passthrough profile and add a value vlc to embed and save. VLC plugin doesn't seem to close properly though, so you may need to restart the browser to kill it.
* '''I downloaded a video from Youtube. It plays in the browser, but the sound is funny.'''
*:You need to use 22050 audio rate. Edit the profile you are using or create a new one for it.
* '''I want to use VDR / MythTV but can't find a setting for them.'''
*:Run ./install/vdr or ./install/mythtv and answer the questions. Double click on Settings tab and you should see a button that updates them. If your VDR has several channels, be sure to change Capture screenshots for external urls to 0 before scanning them. Then change it back to 1 and use the Edit button to grab only the screenshots you want.
* '''Can I use the server to view stuff from the internet?'''
*:Yes, just enable SSL and add an admin user account. You need to open/forward the port you are using and then 19780 for the actual http-stream (and +1 for each additional streams). Client won't work with SSL, so you need to disable ssl if you want to use the client on your lan. This feature is for more advanced users, but if you want to use it, drop by at our irc channel and we will help you with it.
==Client==
* '''How come the video plays fine with the client, but not when moved to the device?'''
*:Knots transcodes everything to a format your tablet supports. If your VLC can play it on your desktop, chances are your tablet then plays it as well.
* '''I see no rotation menu item.'''
*: Please see [[Rotation]]
* '''I'm using [[Mer]] and I want to use Knots as a music player, but I can't connect to server.'''
*:That's because Mer has no support for libconic. Restart the client after running this command in terminal:
gconftool-2 -s /apps/knots/ignore_conic true -t string
==Media==
* '''Some of my audio/video files aren't scanned.'''
*:You can add the the missing file extensions under settings and do a rescan. To keep the dependencies low, I only support mp3-tags out of the box. But it doesn't mean other audio formats won't work, they just don't get tagged properly.
* '''I have a folder with recorded tv-series and I want to move them all to Series category. How do I do that?'''
*:Go to Edit media, limit search results to - to list them all and use the path as a search criteria. Once they are listed, click on Select all, add a category or select the one you want to move them to, select Set category action and press Apply to selected. All selected videos are then moved to that category. Same idea works with all the actions.
* '''My mp3-tags are messed up and I have the same album with 3 different names. Can i easily fix that?'''
*:Sure. Just go to Edit media, select the album tag, then select the wrong value and rename it to the correct one. All the songs that are in that album are moved to the correct album. Do it for all the wrong names and all the songs should be in the same album.
* '''Can I play DVDs with Knots?.'''
*:Possibly. Go to settings and click on Add a new setting. Name it DVD Drive, key is dvd_drive and value is a path to your CD-ROM drive. In Windows this is possibly D:\, in Linux /media/dvd and in OS X it's /Volumes. Insert the DVD in drive and select Go to root from the client menu. You should see the name of the DVD. Make sure the DVD is recognized before trying to update the page or it may not be properly scanned.

=Contact=
Please join our IRC channel #knots at Freenode or email janne dot makinen at surffi dot fi

[[Category:Users]]
[[Category:Media]]
[[Category:Software]]
[[Category:Power users]]

Knots2

2009-11-11T21:02:52Z

83.175.82.70: /* Windows */

Knots is a feature rich GPLv2 Video Streaming Application for Windows, Mac OS X Leopard, Linux and FreeBSD by Janne Mäkinen. Knots consists of a server, written in Ruby, and client, written in Vala. The server can be configured to stream video files (any format/codec supported by VLC), DVB-broadcasts, custom playlists or any other media to a Knots client on a N8x0 or to any other computer, via the Knots' Web-frontend.

Non-tableteers can access the Knots Web-frontend from any platform / location (including Windows). Firefox & Adobe's Flash Plugin 10 are suggested and work best. Knots will automatically transcode all streams to flv, so they can be watched directly in the browser. It is also possible to view videos without transcoding, using the VLC browser plugin.

= Features =
* Fully thumb driven intuitive GUI for the Nokia N8x0 tablets
* Stream videos with on-the-fly transcoding to a Knots client or to a remote computer via the web-frontend. Seeking is supported when possible.
* Stream VDR Live-TV and recordings
* Playlist support (WorldTV99, etc.)
* Automatic subtitle fetching for movies, provided by http://www.opensubtitles.org
* Automatic thumbnails for local clips using ffmpeg
* Integrated search function
* Additional info for movies, provided by http://themoviedb.org

=Installation=
To get Knots running, some dependencies have to be met. After that, the server package and the tablet client must be installed. The following steps will guide you in those tasks.
==Dependencies==
Knots server uses [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ VLC] for streaming and [http://www.ffmpeg.org/ FFmpeg] for encoding. The following steps explain how to setup those dependencies.
===Linux===
This instructions are for Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10). Other Debian derivates might use slightly different package names, but the general concept of the install is the same for all distros.

apt-get install ruby1.8 ruby rubygems libsqlite3-ruby libopenssl-ruby vlc ffmpeg

* Add the [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu Medibuntu repository] (for ffmpeg), reload your Package information and open a root terminal (sudo -s), and:

apt-get install libavcodec-unstripped-51 libavdevice-unstripped-52 libavformat-unstripped-52 libavutil-unstripped-49 libpostproc-unstripped-51 libswscale-unstripped-0

To get the best result, ubuntu users should compile ffmpeg themselves. [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=786095 Here] and [http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6963607&postcount=360 here] are good guides, you only need to copy-paste few lines.
===OS X===
Install latest [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html VLC] and [http://www.ffmpegx.com/ ffmpegX] to ''/Applications''.
===Windows===
Download and install latest [http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html VLC]. For easy setup, install it under ''C:\Program Files'', otherwise you will need to edit the path in server settings.
==Server==
===Linux / FreeBSD / OS X===
Git users can get the latest client and server with git:
git clone git://github.com/solmis/knots.git
You can also download the server from [http://ugz.ath.cx:1415/knots_nix.zip here].

Then start the server with
cd knots
./knots.rb

OS X users can use the above package, but they can also download an executable app from [http://ugz.ath.cx:1415/knots_osx.zip here]. It shows an icon in the dock and then disappears, but it should be running.
===Windows===
Install Git for Windows from [http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list here]. Select the defaults if you don't know what the options mean. Once it's installed, open cmd.exe and run these commands:

cd c:\
git clone git://github.com/solmis/knots.git

Then download the server package from [http://mtron.mine.nu/files/knots/knots_win.zip here]. Unzip it somewhere (not c:\) and copy the ruby folder and run.cmd to c:\knots. Then copy ''win32/sqlite3.dll'' to ''Windows\System32'' with administrator rights. If you accidentaly skip this step and get the error about missing sqlite3.dll, delete the .config folder inside knots folder or the needed programs are not automatically scanned. Double click on run.cmd to start the server. Be sure to close the window with ctrl-c, otherwise VLC is left running.

==Setup==
Just point your browser to http://localhost:1978 and add your media under settings. If you don't see the ''Update collection'' button, please make sure that both ffmpeg and VLC paths are correct.
==Client==
Client is available from extras-repository.
=Screenshots=
[[Image:Knots2-Vertical1.png|Knots2 Client: items arranged vertically|250px]]
[[Image:Knots2-Vertical2.png|Knots2 Client: track info|250px]]
[[Image:Knots2-horizontal1.png|Knots2 Client: rotation menu|400px]]
=Questions & Answers=
==Windows==
* '''I get no screenshots, even when i click on ''Grab screenshot'' button.'''
*:Make sure knots' path doesn't contain spaces or weird characters. Will try to fix this issue later.
* '''I want to run knots as a windows service.'''
*:Follow [http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=302977&postcount=62 these steps].
==Linux==
* '''I can't view any videos.'''
*:FFmpeg in Linux is a problem because all the license issues etc. Make sure you compile your own FFmpeg with at least libmp3lame and xvid support. Run ./scripts/vlctest to check what is wrong with your VLC/FFmpeg combo.
==OS X==
* '''Seeking freezes the video for a while and then stops it.'''
*:This is a VLC issue. It seems to have problems with certain codecs, mainly xvid/divx. Try updating VLC from time to time and see if it that helps. Or better yet, issue a bug report.
==Server==
* '''Page content doesn't seem to update.'''
*:That's because all tabs keep their state. Double click on the tab to force a refresh.
* '''I don't see the Update collection -button under settings.'''
*:Make sure both VLC and FFmpeg have correct paths.
* '''Certain videos only have sound.'''
*:Go to settings, edit the n8x0 transcoding profile and add a value 24 to fps and save. Try playing the video again.
* '''Lyrics don't work.'''
*:Lyrics-site seems to be down from time to time, try leaving it alone for few days and try again.
* '''Can I use VLC browser plugin to view the video without transcoding?'''
*:Sure. Edit the passthrough profile and add a value vlc to embed and save. VLC plugin doesn't seem to close properly though, so you may need to restart the browser to kill it.
* '''I downloaded a video from Youtube. It plays in the browser, but the sound is funny.'''
*:You need to use 22050 audio rate. Edit the profile you are using or create a new one for it.
* '''I want to use VDR / MythTV but can't find a setting for them.'''
*:Run ./install/vdr or ./install/mythtv and answer the questions. Double click on Settings tab and you should see a button that updates them. If your VDR has several channels, be sure to change Capture screenshots for external urls to 0 before scanning them. Then change it back to 1 and use the Edit button to grab only the screenshots you want.
* '''Can I use the server to view stuff from the internet?'''
*:Yes, just enable SSL and add an admin user account. You need to open/forward the port you are using and then 19780 for the actual http-stream (and +1 for each additional streams). Client won't work with SSL, so you need to disable ssl if you want to use the client on your lan. This feature is for more advanced users, but if you want to use it, drop by at our irc channel and we will help you with it.
==Client==
* '''How come the video plays fine with the client, but not when moved to the device?'''
*:Knots transcodes everything to a format your tablet supports. If your VLC can play it on your desktop, chances are your tablet then plays it as well.
* '''I see no rotation menu item.'''
*: Please see [[Rotation]]
* '''I'm using [[Mer]] and I want to use Knots as a music player, but I can't connect to server.'''
*:That's because Mer has no support for libconic. Restart the client after running this command in terminal:
gconftool-2 -s /apps/knots/ignore_conic true -t string
==Media==
* '''Some of my audio/video files aren't scanned.'''
*:You can add the the missing file extensions under settings and do a rescan. To keep the dependencies low, I only support mp3-tags out of the box. But it doesn't mean other audio formats won't work, they just don't get tagged properly.
* '''I have a folder with recorded tv-series and I want to move them all to Series category. How do I do that?'''
*:Go to Edit media, limit search results to - to list them all and use the path as a search criteria. Once they are listed, click on Select all, add a category or select the one you want to move them to, select Set category action and press Apply to selected. All selected videos are then moved to that category. Same idea works with all the actions.
* '''My mp3-tags are messed up and I have the same album with 3 different names. Can i easily fix that?'''
*:Sure. Just go to Edit media, select the album tag, then select the wrong value and rename it to the correct one. All the songs that are in that album are moved to the correct album. Do it for all the wrong names and all the songs should be in the same album.
* '''Can I play DVDs with Knots?.'''
*:Possibly. Go to settings and click on Add a new setting. Name it DVD Drive, key is dvd_drive and value is a path to your CD-ROM drive. In Windows this is possibly D:\, in Linux /media/dvd and in OS X it's /Volumes. Insert the DVD in drive and select Go to root from the client menu. You should see the name of the DVD. Make sure the DVD is recognized before trying to update the page or it may not be properly scanned.

=Contact=
Please join our IRC channel #knots at Freenode or email janne dot makinen at surffi dot fi

[[Category:Users]]
[[Category:Media]]
[[Category:Software]]
[[Category:Power users]]

Knots

2009-01-18T23:58:16Z

83.175.82.70: /* VDR Streaming Client */

{{lowercase}}
[[Image:Knots.png|52px|left]]
Knots is a feature rich GPLv2 Video Streaming Application for Linux, FreeBSD and OS X by Janne Mäkinen. It's written in Ruby and uses VLC 0.9.8+ to do the transcoding. Knots consists of a server and client. The server can be configured to stream video files (any format/codec supported by VLC), DVB-broadcasts, custom playlists or any other media to a Knots client on a 770/N8x0 or to any other computer, via the Knots' Web-frontend.

Non-tableteers can access the Knots Web-Frontend from any platform / location (including Windows). Firefox & Adobe's Flash Plugin 10 are suggested and work best. Knots will automatically transcode all streams to flv, so they can be watched directly in the browser.

It is also possible to use the Knots client without the server as a thumb friendly fronted for MPlayer. The client will scan your tablet for media files, and you can create & save custom playlists.

There is no server for Microsoft Windows so if you are running Windows, you might want to try Orb [http://www.orb.com/] or TVersity [http://tversity.com/] instead.

= Features =
* Fully thumb driven intuitive GUI for the Nokia 770 / N8x0 tablets
* Gesture support (for CPU frequency scaling (rootsh required), information and volume)
* Stream videos with on-the-fly transcoding to a Knots client or to a remote computer via the web-frontend. Seeking is supported when possible.
* Watch Live TV (DVB) with VLC directly or make Knots act as a VDR Streaming Client.
* Stream VDR Live-TV and recordings, browse the EPG & adjust VDR recording timers from the client
* Playlist support (WorldTV99, etc.)
* Automatic subtitle fetching for movies, provided by http://subtitlesource.org
* Automatic thumbnails for local clips using ffmpeg
* Integrated search function
* Thumb friendly MPlayer frontend with playlist editing (in offline mode) and gestures support
* Remote play feature for playing videos on the server and controlling it with the client (doesn't work on OS X yet)
* Additional info for movies, provided by http://themoviedb.org

= Knots Server =
=== Install ===
Knots Server can be installed on any *nix based OS like Gnu/Linux, BSD & OSX.

==== Ubuntu ====

This instructions are for Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10). Other Debian derivates might use slightly different package names, but the general concept of the install is the same for all distros.

* Enable the Multiverse & Universe software sources, and add the [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu Medibuntu repository] (for ffmpeg), reload your Package information and open a root terminal (sudo -s), to install the Ruby Dependencies:

apt-get install ruby1.8

* install unzip for automatic subtitle download feature
apt-get install unzip

* get vlc and a 'unrestricted' ffmpeg build
apt-get install vlc-nox vlc-data libvlccore0 libvlc2 ffmpeg

If you have Xorg running on your Knots-Server you can also install the packages "vlc" and "vlc-plugin-pulse" to get a GUI and PulseAudio Output (default Ubuntu sound server) for the VLC player.

now install these unrestricted ffmpeg libaries (they will remove the restricted builds, if installed)
apt-get install libavcodec-unstripped-51 libavdevice-unstripped-52 libavformat-unstripped-52 libavutil-unstripped-49 libpostproc-unstripped-51 libswscale-unstripped-0

* download and install Knots - Server

Still in the root terminal change to the directory where you want to keep the Server Files (in this example I use /opt/kserver , change the path accordingly) and download & extract Knots - Server :
cd /opt
wget http://nakkiboso.com/knots/dl.php?file=server
tar xvzf knots_server.tar.gz
chown -R youruser:yourgroup /opt/kserver

That's it! knots is installed under /opt/kserver. You still need to configure it though!

==== Mac OSX ====

OS X 10.5 (Leopard) comes with Ruby 1.8. Knots should also work on 10.4 (Tiger) if you install the latest Ruby from http://rubyosx.rubyforge.org. Download the latest VLC from http://videolan.org and install it to /Applications. Download and extract the Knots server to a directory of your choice. You should also install ffmpegX from http://www.ffmpegx.com to /Applications to enable the screenshots support. Then proceed to setup.

=== First run ===

Knots server keeps its config at the folder ~/.config/knots . It is located under the home directory of the user who runs the following setup script, so '''do NOT run ./scripts/setup from a root terminal''' !

su yourusername
cd /opt/kserver
./scripts/setup

Setup script will ask you various questions about your installation and has reasonable default settings. So if you are not sure, accept the default settings.

* Server name : enter a custom name for your Knots server
* Select interface to bind to: choose the network interface Knots binds to
* Is all your media under one directory? : if you keep all you video files under one directory answer yes here.
* Full path to your media files: Full path to your video archive (e.g. /media/video)
* Do you have the program Video Disk Recorder (VDR) with streamdev-plugin installed? : Knots can interact nicely with VDR. If you have a VDR running somewhere on your local home network, or on the same computer as knots, answer yes here . The next VDR specific questions are about the used VDR osd, file system charset (different from UTF-8 in VDR releases < 1.7) and you can also supply a directory where your local VDR recordings are stored.

You can accept the default values for any other questions asked by the setup script.

After the script has gathered the necessary info it shows you the location of the generated config.yaml file:

Configuration saved to /home/''yourusername''/.config/knots/config.yaml.
You can edit this file with a text editor for more advanced settings.
You can now start the server with './knots start'

=== Advanced Server Configuration ===
If you want to customize your configuration file, open it in a text editor. The full path to the configuration file was printed to the terminal when you ran './scripts/setup'

==== Configuration Options ====

* cache: You can enable cache for one (or more) of your categories. Keep in mind that it's not wise to cache the "Latest Videos" or VDR categories. 100 directory contents are kept in memory by default. You can force a rescan by using the search.

* vlc: This section configures VLC. You can customize the port_range used by VLC. Keep in mind that you need to forward those ports from your router (or firewall) to the Knots server if you want the Web-frontend to be remotely accessible.

* vdr: You can connect as many VDR's as you wish to Knots. All you need to do is to add another vdr2, vdr3 ... section to your config file and adjust the IP - addresses, streamdev_ports & svdrp_ports to fit your configuration.

* server: you can configure some general server settings in this section. If you need more verbose logging, you can change log_level to 2 to generate much more debug output in the logfile.

* media: adjust the streamable Media Container Formats, and the full patch to your ffmpeg installation

* transcoding: Knots ships with some transcoding presets (video dimensions, target bitrate, codecs), that should be optimal for your tablet (you can switch the preset on the fly from the client). If you want to use the Web-frontend remotely, you might want to set smaller dimensions in the Flash profile (see example configuration below)

* categories: this section lists your categories. Use these names in the 'cache' section above.

==== Example Configuration ====
~/.config/knots/config.yaml for Knots-Server 0.4.2 with local VDR 1.6.0 (VDR using german charset ISO-8859-1):
---
cache:
- Video
- Recordings
vlc:
startup_wait: 5
tmpdir: /var/tmp
remote_play_options:
freetype-effect: 2
vout: xvideo
freetype-fontsize: 12
volume: 100
fullscreen: ""
path: /usr/bin/vlc
resume_rollback: 5
port_range: 4214-4244
vdr:
vdr1:
timer_interval_before: 0
address: 192.168.1.100
streamdev_port: 3000
svdrp_port: 2001
disable_epg: false
timer_interval_after: 0
charset: iso-8859-1
force_charset_conversion: false
disable_streamdev: false
server:
log_level: 2
name: panta-rhei
remote_auth: false
port: 4212
os: linux
ip: 192.168.1.100
bind: eth0
vdr_charset: iso-8859-1
service_discovery: 4212
force_update: false
auth_timeout: 60
local_auth: false
log_append: false
media:
extensions: avi,mpg,mpeg,wmv,vdr,img,iso,mkv,vob,flv,mov,nuv,sh
ffmpeg_path: /usr/bin/ffmpeg
subtitles: sub,srt
avfs_extensions: tgz,gz,bz2,zip,rar,arj,uha,lha
transcoding:
N800:
audio_format: mpga
resolution: 400x240
audio_channels: 2
audio_bitrate: 128
video_bitrate: 900
video_format: xvid
High:
audio_format: mp3
resolution: 608x256
audio_channels: 2
audio_bitrate: 128
video_bitrate: 900
video_format: xvid
Flash:
stream_extension: flv
audio_format: mp3
resolution: 400x300
audio_rate: 44100
audio_channels: 2
audio_bitrate: 128
video_bitrate: 1000
mux: ffmpeg{mux=flv}
video_format: FLV1
categories:
TV:
- vdr1
Recordings:
- /media/recordings/vdr
Video:
- /media/video

You can also make client specific categories. You can find your clients' ids from the log file after you have connected to the server:

[2009-01-11-15:02:08] Request: /scanner/scan?client_id='''a5f225de12c2f4795cef627ae115afad'''&locale=fi_FI&dir=/ from 192.168.0.101:64940

You can see your client's id in bold above. After you know the id, edit your config like this:

categories:
a5f225de12c2f4795cef627ae115afad:
TV:
- vdr1
Recordings:
- /media/recordings/vdr
Video:
- /media/video
default:
Video:
- /media/video

In above example your client would see the TV, Recordings and Video categories and others would only see the Video category.

=== Extras ===
* install Worldtv99
./scripts/install_worldtv99
./knots restart

* Live-TV (DVB) on Linux without VDR
Scan your channels with dvb-scan using the vdr-format and then create an xml-playlist from it.
(dvb-)scan -o vdr /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/your_city > /tmp/channels.conf
./scripts/create_dvb_playlist /tmp/channels.conf
./knots restart

You may need to edit ~/.config/knots/dvb.xml to make it work with your dvb-card.

* Converting non-utf-8 filenames
If you for example have german umlauts that are iso-8859-1 in your filenames, libxml fails to parse them. You can convert them to utf-8 easily (but use at your own risk):
./scripts/fix_filenames

* Sound in Flash-video
Flash-video (flv) requires mp3 -support. Make sure your ffmpeg is compiled with libmp3lame-support.

=== Shell scripts ===

Knots can run shell scripts on server. It's not really streaming related, but you can use it as a simple remote to start programs like X.org if you want to use the remote play feature. Just put your scripts to a directory, add it to some category and make sure the scripts have a .sh extension.

=== External programs ===

You can also define external programs to be run for certain filetypes. You can for example make Knots extract rar files or use Knots as a frontend to PyKaraoke. Adding this to your config would run PyKaraoke when .cdg file is selected:

external:
cdg: python /usr/share/pykaraoke/pycdg.py -w 1920 -h 1080 --hide-mouse @FILE_SPACE_ESCAPED

If you want to terminate the process, just select the file again.

= Knots Client =
=== Install ===

==== Ruby for Maemo OS2008 ====
Add Repository:
Catalogue Name: Ruby1.8 for Maemo
Web address: http://stage.rubyx.co.uk/maemo/
Distribution: diablo
Components: user
Open a terminal, change to root & run:
apt-get install libhildon1-ruby1.8 libgconf2-ruby1.8 libconic-ruby1.8 ruby1.8 libosso-ruby1.8 libruby1.8
maemo-mini-curl http://stage.rubyx.co.uk/projects/ruby-maemo/packages/maemo4/armel/libxml2-ruby1.8_0.9.7-0maemo1_armel.deb
dpkg -i libxml2-ruby1.8_0.9.7-0maemo1_armel.deb

==== Knots Client ====
Open a terminal, change to root and run:
maemo-mini-curl http://nakkiboso.com/knots/dl.php?file=client
dpkg -i knots_*.deb
rm knots_*.deb

=== Client Settings ===
'''Menu Functions:''' [[Image:Knots-browseing.png|250px|right]]
* Server Scan: Automatically search and connect to a Knots server in the local LAN
* Manual Connection: Specify the IP and port of a Knots server manually
* Offline Mode: Disconnect from a Knots server, and display local media files
* Preferences: See below
* Refresh: Reload current directory or refresh list of local files
* Go to Root: Return to your categories menu
* Switch Transcoding Profile: Use the next predefined transcoding profile
* Switch Theme: Switch theme (no restart required)
* Remote Playback: Play a media file directly on the server
* Check for Updates: Searches for an update from the server and transfers and installs it if found

'''Client Preferences:'''
* Language: Set application language (no restart required)
* Language for Subtitles: Set Language for DVD subtitles. Also searches for subtitles from subtitlesource.org with this language
* Cache: Buffer in KB. 128 is a good starting point for a stable wlan
* Local Directories: Knots scans these directories for media in offline mode
* Join split Videos: Automatically join split videos (e.g. 001.vdr & 002.vdr)
* Show Screenshots: Generate random screenshots of your videos. Requires ffmpeg on server.

=== Usage ===

[[Image:Knots-startscreen.png|250px|right]]The Knots Client is designed to be totally thumb controlled, and is also including gesture-support. Most of it's functions are very intuitive to use and self - explaining. The Start Screen gives an Overview of you defined Categories and has an entry to show unfinished Videos as well as the 10 latest additions to the Server.

If you want to watch a video on the way, you can right-click on any video file in your Archive and Knots will put the file on a ''Transcoding List''. If you change to this transcoding list (with a click on the left Cursor key) and hit the ''start'' button knots will automatically encode the video in the currently selected profile and transfer the file to your tablet. The save-location can be customized in the Client Preferences Window.

If you configured Knots to connect to a VDR, you can browse the Channellist (you also get the EPG), Stream Live-TV, watch your Recordings and add, activate, deactivate or delete Timers for VDR. This makes knots the most feature complete "streaming client" for VDR.

You can also use Knots as a simple music player too. Just add the file extensions of your music files to the extensions list. Knots wasn't designed for this, but music works like videos, but only with audio.

'''ToDo''': much more usage tips :)

=== Offline Mode ===

[[Image:Knots-playlist.png|250px|right]]In Offline Mode, the Knots Client is a thumb friendly mplayer frontend (with gestures support to change the volume, seek,ect ). Once switched to Offline Mode, the Knots - Client will automatically scan your tablet for media files, and display them in the GUI. You can add them to a playlist, or start playing them directly, with a long (2 sec) push on the play button while the desired Clip is selected. A short push will start to play the first entry in the Playlist .

The inbulit Playlist support in Offline Mode can also be used to load a VDR - streamdev channels.m3u Channel list to watch Live TV via VDR & mencoder ([http://www.vdr-wiki.de/wiki/index.php/Externremux.sh Externremux.sh needed]) if no Knots Server is available.

You can sort Playlist entries with the up / down buttons. A long push (2 seconds) puts the selected entry to the beginning / end of the Playlist, and a long push on the play button will start the selected entry directly.

=== VDR Streaming Client ===

Knots can be configured to act as a VDR Streaming Client. VDR is an excellent & widespread DVB PVR Software in the Linux world. If you have a VDR with streamdev-plugin running on the same PC as the knots server (or somewhere in your home LAN ) answer the VDR relevant questions in the setup Script. To configure multiple VDR's open the server's config.yaml and add a ''vdr2'' stanza to the vdr category:

Example configuration for Knots Server connecting to multiple VDR's (VDR 1.6 runs with german charset iso-8859-1)
vdr:
vdr1:
timer_interval_before: 0
address: 192.168.1.100
streamdev_port: 3000
svdrp_port: 2001
disable_epg: false
timer_interval_after: 0
charset: iso-8859-1
force_charset_conversion: false
disable_streamdev: false
vdr2:
timer_interval_before: 0
address: 192.168.1.101
streamdev_port: 3000
svdrp_port: 2001
disable_epg: false
timer_interval_after: 0
charset: iso-8859-1
force_charset_conversion: false
disable_streamdev: false

* timer interval_before: start timer x min earlier
* timer interval_after: stop timer x min later
* address: IP address of the VDR Server
* streamdev_port: Port used by Streamdev Plugin, as configured in the VDR OSD setup. (Default is 3000)
* svdrp_port: SVDRP is a simple transfer/ communications protocol used by vdr. (Default is 2001)
* charset: set your VDR charset (only VDR development version 1.7 supports UTF-8)
* force_charset_conversion: it seems VDR may still be using iso-8859-1 characters when using utf-8 (a bug?). Use this, if you get xml-parsing errors with utf-8.
* disable_epg: disable the Electronic Program Guide
* disable_streamdev: disable the Live-TV streaming part

The Knots Client enables you to browse the channels of your VDR, start live streaming, browse the EPG and set Recording Timers for VDR. Timer Management (enable, disable or delete Timers) and streaming of VDR Recordings to your Tablet make Knots a must-have for VDR users.

You can also record Live-TV in a 700/N8x0 native resolution, and have it transferred to the tablet automatically with knots. When browsing VDR channels, press the right cursor to add the selected channel to the transcoding list. Switch to the list with the left Cursor and push the play (start) button. You have to manually press the remove (minus) button to stop the recording, as the stream length is unknown. Knots will then transfer the encoded file to tablet.

The VDR Live-TV features (stream Channels & Recordings, browse EPG) can also be used from the Web Frontend. Knots will automatically use the Flash profile to transcode VDR streams to watch them inside the browser (Adobe Flash Plugin and VLC compiled with libmp3lame support needed). If you don't want / have the proprietary flash plugin, choose another transcoding profile from the dropdown box and knots will print out a URL that can be opened with e.g. mplayer on the client computer.

=== Movie Information ===
[[Image:Knots-movieinfo.png|250px|right]]The Knots Client fetches additional Information for a selected Video from the open movie Archive http://themoviedb.org. The Service includes a movie poster, a short Plot Summary and a brief List of Actors, as well as user ratings. TheMovieDB is also used by other media Centers like XBMC, and has a continuously growing database. If your video is not available already, contribute by adding info about it to their [http://themoviedb.org/movie wiki].

To query TheMovieDB for a title, press the Information button. Knots will display the 'closest' result, similar to googles 'i'm feeling lucky'. You can also browse multiple results if the first was a false hit. To create a custom search query, press the Information button for 2 seconds, and enter your query. Knots tries to clean up the filename as much as possible, but it's impossible to do it perfectly. If the name of the video has several widely used words in it, themoviedb will return results for all movies that have those words in their names. In such case you can press the esc/back hardware key to cancel the list fetching and only display the results fetched before the cancellation.

= Web Frontend =

[[Image:Knots-webfrontend.jpg|250px|right]] Point your desktop's browser to the Knots server address, followed by it's port: http://<yourip>:4212

Check the the logfile (/home/yourusername/.config/knots/knots.log) or start the server with '''./knots stick''' if you don't know them. It will print out the address & port on the first line.

Knots will automatically use the bundled Flash-profile, if it's accessed via the Web-Frontend. You need a decent Browser, like Firefox and adobe's flash plugin installed, to use flash streaming. You might want to reduce the dimensions for the flash profile if you intend to stream video to remote computers accessing the web - frontend. The flash profile in the [http://wiki.maemo.org/Knots#Example_Configuration Example Configuration] causes a upstream of 60 k/s.

You can also select a different transcoding-profile in the Web-Frontend. Knots will print out a link to a Playlist that can be opened with your favorite video player on the remote Computer (e.g. mplayer with the "High" Profile).

Encoding Profiles & the Language of the Web - Interface can be changed on the fly.

=== Authentication ===
If you plan to access the Web-Frontend from remote locations, it might be wise to secure your installation by enabling '''Remote-Authentication''' for Knots.

Edit the main server configuration file ~/.config/knots/config.yaml and set '''auth_remote: true''' in the '''server''' section.

* To Add / Remove a user:
./scripts/auth add username password
./scripts/auth delete username

* Add a client to / Remove client from whitelist
./scripts/auth add client_id
./scripts/auth delete client_id

''NOTE: You can find the clients id's in the logfile (~/.config/knots/knots.log)''

=== Firewall / Router Configuration ===
If you want to enable remote access to your knots Server, open & forward the ports 4212 - 4250 from your Router to the IP of the Knots Server. You can adjust the default port range for vlc in the server configuration file ~/.config/knots/config.yaml.

If you use a software firewall on your server (like ufw or iptables) you might also need to open the port-range from 4212 to 4250 for Knots. See [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFirewall UbuntuFirewall] for more information how to configure the default firewall shipped with ubuntu (ufw).

= Update Knots =

'''Server:'''

Open a terminal and change to the ''kserver'' direcory. Change the /opt/kserver path accordingly, if you installed the Knots-Server somewhere else.

cd /opt/kserver
./knots stop
./scripts/update
./knots start

'''Client:'''

Connect to your Knots-Server and select 'Check for updates' from the menu. Knots will transfer the updated Package to your tablet automatically and start the Application Manager to install it.

= Links =

* Knots Homepage: http://nakkiboso.com/knots/
* Ruby for Maemo: http://blog.rubyx.co.uk/
* Mplayer for Maemo: http://mplayer.garage.maemo.org/
* VLC Media Player: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
* Video Disk Recorder (VDR): http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr/
* VDR streamdev-plugin: http://streamdev.vdr-developer.org/

[[Category:Users]]
[[Category:Media]]

Knots

2009-01-07T09:32:43Z

83.175.82.70: /* Install */

= About Knots =
[[Image:Knots.png|52px|left]]
Knots is a feature rich GPLv2 Video Streaming Application for Linux, FreeBSD and OS X by Janne Mäkinen. It's written in ruby and uses vlc 0.9.6+ to do the transcoding. Knots can be configured to stream Video Files (any format/codec supported by vlc), DVB-Broadcasts, Custom Playlists or any other media to a Knots-Client on a N700/N8x0 or to any other computer, via the Knots Web-Frontend.

= Features =
* Auto Transcode & Stream Videos to a Knots - Client or to the web-frontend.
* watch Live TV (DVB) with vlc or VDR (incl. EPG & Timer Management)
* Playlist Support (worldTV99, ect.)
* Automatic Subtitle fetching for Movies
* Automatic Thumbnail Generation
* integrated Search Function

= Knots Server =
=== Install ===
Knots Server can be installed on any *nix based OS like Gnu/Linux, BSD & OSX.

==== Ubuntu ====
* Enable the Multiverse & Universe software sources, and open a root terminal (sudo -s), to install the Ruby Dependencies

''NOTE: This are my currently installed ruby1.8 packages, please remove unneeded packages if they are not required for knots''

apt-get install libactiveldap-ruby1.8 libactivesupport-ruby1.8 libalgorithm-diff-ruby1.8 libao-ruby1.8 libart2-ruby1.8 libatk1-ruby1.8 libbreakpoint-ruby1.8 libbsearch-ruby1.8 libbuilder-ruby1.8 libbz2-ruby1.8 libcairo-ruby1.8 libcgikit-ruby1.8 libcmd-ruby1.8 libcmdparse2-ruby1.8 libdaemons-ruby1.8 libdbm-ruby1.8 libgconf2-ruby1.8 libgdbm-ruby1.8 libgdk-pixbuf2-ruby1.8 libgettext-ruby1.8 libglade2-ruby1.8 libglib2-ruby1.8 libgnome2-ruby1.8 libgnomecanvas2-ruby1.8 libgtk2-ruby1.8 libldap-ruby1.8 liblog4r-ruby1.8 libmmap-ruby1.8 libmocha-ruby1.8 libncurses-ruby1.8 libopenssl-ruby1.8 libpango1-ruby1.8 libreadline-ruby1.8 libredcloth-ruby1.8 libruby1.8 libruby1.8-extras libsqlite3-ruby1.8 libtcltk-ruby1.8 libuconv-ruby1.8 libxml-parser-ruby1.8

* get vlc and a 'unrestricted' ffmpeg build
apt-get install vlc-nox vlc-data libvlccore0 libvlc2 ffmpeg

If you have X on your Knots-Server you can also install the packages "vlc" and "vlc-plugin-pulse" to get a GUI and PulseAudio Output (default ubunu Sound Server) for the vlc Player.

now install these unrestricted ffmpeg libaries (they will remove the restricted builds, if installed)
apt-get install libavcodec-unstripped-51 libavdevice-unstripped-52 libavformat-unstripped-52 libavutil-unstripped-49 libpostproc-unstripped-51 libswscale-unstripped-0

* download and install Knots - Server

Still in the root terminal change to the directory where you want to keep the Server Files (in this example I use /opt/kserver , change the path accordingly) and download & extract Knots - Server :
cd ~/work
wget http://nakkiboso.com/knots/dl.php?file=server
tar xvzf knots_server.tar.gz

That's it! knots is installed under /opt/kserver. Go to First Run now to configure it.

==== Mac OSX ====

'''ToDo''' see http://nakkiboso.com/knots/doc.php

=== First run ===
'''ToDo'''
=== config.yaml ===
Example Configuration:
---
cache:
- Video
- Recordings
vlc:
startup_wait: 5
tmpdir: /var/tmp
remote_play_options:
freetype-effect: 2
vout: xvideo
freetype-fontsize: 12
volume: 100
fullscreen: ""
path: /usr/bin/vlc
resume_rollback: 5
port_range: 4214-4244
vdr:
vdr1:
timer_interval_before: 0
address: 192.168.1.100
streamdev_port: 3000
svdrp_port: 2001
disable_epg: false
timer_interval_after: 0
charset: iso-8859-1
force_charset_conversion: false
disable_streamdev: false
server:
log_level: 2
name: panta-rhei
remote_auth: false
port: 4212
os: linux
ip: 192.168.1.100
bind: eth0
vdr_charset: iso-8859-1
service_discovery: 4212
force_update: false
auth_timeout: 60
local_auth: false
log_append: false
media:
extensions: avi,mpg,mpeg,wmv,vdr,img,iso,mkv,vob,flv,mov,nuv,sh
ffmpeg_path: /usr/bin/ffmpeg
subtitles: sub,srt
avfs_extensions: tgz,gz,bz2,zip,rar,arj,uha,lha
transcoding:
N800:
audio_format: mpga
resolution: 400x240
audio_channels: 2
audio_bitrate: 128
video_bitrate: 900
video_format: xvid
High:
audio_format: mp3
resolution: 608x256
audio_channels: 2
audio_bitrate: 128
video_bitrate: 900
video_format: xvid
Flash:
stream_extension: flv
audio_format: mp3
resolution: 400x300
audio_rate: 44100
audio_channels: 2
audio_bitrate: 128
video_bitrate: 1000
mux: ffmpeg{mux=flv}
video_format: FLV1
categories:
TV:
- vdr1
Recordings:
- /media/recordings/vdr
Video:
- /media/video

'''ToDo''' explain transcoding settings & other config options (Cache, ect)

=== Extras ===
* install wordtv99
./scripts/install_worldtv99
./knots restart

* Live-TV (DVB) on Linux without VDR
Scan your channels with dvb-scan using the vdr-format and then create an xml-playlist from it.
(dvb-)scan -o vdr /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/your_city > /tmp/channels.conf ./scripts/create_dvb_playlist /tmp/channels.conf
./knots restart

You may need to edit ~/.config/knots/dvb.xml to make it work with your dvb-card.

* Converting non-utf-8 filenames
If you for example have german umlauts that are iso-8859-1 in your filenames, libxml fails to parse them. You can convert them to utf-8 easily (but use at your own risk):
./scripts/fix_filenames

* Sound in Flash-video
Flash-video (flv) requires mp3 -support. Make sure your ffmpeg is compiled with libmp3lame-support.

=== Update Knots ===
Server:
./knots stop
./scripts/update
./knots start

Client:
Connect to server and select 'Check for updates' from the menu

= Knots Client =
=== Install ===

==== Ruby for Maemo ====
Add Repository:
Catalogue Name: Ruby1.8 for Maemo
Web address: http://stage.rubyx.co.uk/maemo/
Distribution: diablo
Components: user
Open a terminal & change to root:
apt-get install libhildon1-ruby1.8 libgconf2-ruby1.8 libconic-ruby1.8 ruby1.8 libosso-ruby1.8
wget http://stage.rubyx.co.uk/projects/ruby-maemo/packages/maemo4/armel/libxml2-ruby1.8_0.9.7-0maemo1_armel.deb
dpkg -i libxml2-ruby1.8_0.9.7-0maemo1_armel.deb

==== Knots Client ====
Open a terminal & change to root:
wget http://nakkiboso.com/knots/dl.php?file=client
dpkg -i knots_*.deb

=== Client Settings ===
'''Menu Functions:'''
* Server Scan: Automatically search and connect to a knots Server in the local LAN
* Manual Connection: Specify the IP & Port of a Knots Server manually
* Offline Mode: Disconnect from a Knots Server, and Display local Media Files
* Preferences: see below
* Refresh: Reload current Directory or Refresh list of local files
* Go to Root: Retun to the Start - Folder
* Switch Transcoding Profile: Use the next predefined Transcoding profile
* Switch Theme: Switch Knots theme (no restart required)
* Remote Playback: Play a media File directly on the Server
* Check for Updates: Searches for available updates & installs if found.

'''Client Preferences:'''
* Language: Set Application Language
* Language for Subtitles: Set Language for Subtitles
* Cache: Buffer in KB. 128 is a good starting point for a stable wlan
* Local Directories: Knots scans these directories for Media when switched to Offline Mode.
* Join split Videos: Automatically join split videos (e.g. 001.vdr & 002.vdr)
* Show Screenshots: generate random Screenshots of Videos

=== Usage ===

The Knots Client is designed to be totally thumb controlled, and is including also gesture-support. Most of it's functions are very intuitive to use and self - explaining. The Start Screen gives an Overview of you defined Categories and has an entry to show unfinished Videos as well as the 10 latest additions to the Server.

If you want to watch a video on the way, you can left-click on any video file in your Archive and Knots will put the file on a "Transcoding List". If you change to this transcoding list and hit the start button knots will encode the video in the pre-defined profile and transfer the file to your tablet.

If you configured Knots to connect to a VDR, you can browse the Channellist (you also get the EPG), Stream Live-TV or manage Recording Timers for VDR.

'''ToDo''' much more usage tips :)

=== Offline Mode ===

In Offline Mode, the Knots Client is a thumb friendly mplayer frontend (with gestures support to change the volume, seek,ect ), that will automatically scan your tablet for media files, and display them in the GUI. You can add them to a playlist, or start playing them directly

Playlist support in offline mode can be used to load a VDR - streamdev channels.m3u Channel list to watch Live TV via VDR if no Knots Server is available.

You can sort playlist entries with the up / down buttons. A long click (2 seconds) pushes the selected entry to the beginning / end of the playlist. A long Click on the play button will start the selected entry directly.

= Web Frontend =

Point your desktop's browser to the Knots server address, followed by it's port. If you don't know what it is, check the the logfile or start the server with
./knots stick

It will print out the address on the first line. If you use the bundled Flash-profile, it will try to open the video in the browser. If you select a different transcoding-profile, it prints out a link to a playlist. You can then open this playlist with your favorite video player.

=== Authentication ===
To secure your installation, enable Remote-Authentication for Knots:

Edit ~/.config/knots/config.yaml and set 'auth_remote: true'

* To Add / Remove a user:
./scripts/auth add username password
./scripts/auth delete username

* Add a client to / Remove client from whitelist
./scripts/auth add client_id
./scripts/auth delete client_id

You can find your clients id from the logfile (~/.config/knots/knots.log)

=== Router Configuration ===
If you want Remote Access to your knots Server, you need to open & forward the ports 4212 - 4250 from your Router to the IP of your Knots Server.

= Bugs & Requests =

'''ToDo'''