Re: Rygel's media presentation influence

["Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)" <zeeshanak gnome org>]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:23 PM, Age Bosma <agebosma gmail com> wrote:
> Hi,

  Hi,

> I'm using Rygel to be able to play video's on my Panasonic TX-P42G30
> TV. In a way it works like a charm: I can play music, video's and
> display pictures without any problems or required trickery.

  Glad to hear. :)

> Does DLNA accommodate in a way to negotiate supported file formats
> between the device and the server, allowing or limiting the server to
> only serve those files supported by the device?

   Yeah but that doesn't mean your TV (or any device on this planet)
uses that capability. The easiest way for client (e.g your TV) to do
this is to ask for the DLNA format for each file and then only display
it if it can handle it. This could be worked-around in Rygel by adding
a custom hack for your TV to filter the files that we know will not by
played.

   However, I would prefer we handle this via transcoding.

> If yes, does Rygel support this and could it be that we are dealing
> with a bug since I get to see unsupported files format on the TV?

  Yeah, the bug would be the our transcoding isn't functional. It has
been totally non-functional for videos in the last release cycle
(0.10) AFAIK and it still doesn't produce high-quality videos. :( You
can certainly help in there but you'll have to work more on gstreamer
plugins instead of rygel.

   Then again, the png -> jpeg transcoding should just work out of the
box so it could be that you are simply missing the required gstreamer
plugins and/or libraries.

> An annoyance is the lack of being able to specify how the media,
> listed on the TV, is sorted. This is a TV issue. It insists on sorting
> e.g. all my video by date instead of name. It makes you wonder who
> came up with that but still...
> Does DLNA accommodate in a way to have any control over the order in
> which media is listed on the device? If my TV does not provide a sort
> customization, I was hoping DLNA might do through Rygel. If DLNA
> allows you to do this, would it be interesting to implement this in
> Rygel?

  Rygel does provide a way for your TV to list items in a particular
order but that doesn't mean it will use it and (more importantly) that
it will use the same in the UI.

> My TV also lists all videos by filename instead of actual video title.
> I'm not using the tracker export (not providing sufficient control
> over what is shared). Does Rygel's MediaExport actually read the video
> titles and supply those to a device? If not, is this a Rygel or a DLNA
> shortcoming?

  This could also be caused by some missing gstreamer elements.

> To finishing up: where can I find the DLNA specs if it is not on the
> dlna.org website?

  They are not freely available I am afraid. As an individual you must
pay 500$ to get access to them. Yeah, I know that sucks big time but
that is not at all in our control.

-- 
Regards,

Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
FSF member#5124