Re: How to actually use mp3-transcoding

[Mehmet Giritli <mehmet giritli eu>]

On Sun, 2012-10-28 at 09:48 +0100, Jens Georg wrote:
> On So, 2012-10-28 at 09:19 +0200, Mehmet Giritli wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I'm trying to use winamp on windows with the ml_dlna plugin to play
> > files from a rygel server. The music library is entirely flac and winamp
> > can not stream flacs (it can play local flacs tough). So, I'm tring to
> > transcode flac to mp3. I enabled it in the config file but winamp still
> > trying to get flacs and fail since it cant do that.
> > 
> > So, my question is, how is this supposed to work? I wrote to the author
> > of the plugin and he is suggesting that "rygel has to exchange the
> > FLAC-stream-urls with MP3-transcoding-stream-urls in its DLNA publishing
> > service."
> 
> Sorry, that's just wrong. In DLNA/UPnP-AV, the _controlling_ party (in
> this case ml_dlna) is responsible for choosing the most compatible
> stream and not the server for working around broken implementations.
> It's not our task to present any random renderer with just one
> compatible stream, we would need to implement half a controller for
> that. Instead we offer a list of streams in various formats.
> 
> Saying something like this is rather a sign that the "DLNA" in ml_dlna
> is a false claim.
> 

Hi Jens,

I have been communicating with the author of the plugin and he managed
to get it working with rygel using transcoded streams. But there are
some problems still. First of all, let me quote this from the author who
tested various other programs with rygel:

"I've tried Windows Media Player (DLNA certificated), VLC Player and
foobar2000 to listen FLAC files. All these programs are requesting the
published (flac) files. They also not discovering transcoding streams. I
think they make the same mistake I did before and only look for the
first published stream per file. For other systems it would be helpful
to have a rygel config to control the order of published streams. MP3
should be on first place, because this is the most common codec for all
devices."

Of course, they might all be broken I guess. But most important problem
that remains is about meta data:

"An other point are the published meta data and file names. If you use
ml_dlna you'll see that all mp3-transcoded files are named as MP3.mp3 in
playlist. The transcoded files are not containing any meta data to make
Winamp display the right artist and title so Winamp displays the file
name - in this case the end of the stream url. So, it would be nice to
rename the end part of transcoded streams to the original file name (or
some meta data) followed by the extension (.mp3). Of course I send the
correct artist and title to playlist but Winamp rename the entry with
received meta data or file name if you start to play."

Is it possible at all to pack-in meta data for transcoded files? Or is
this a feature not yet implemented?

Thanks,
Mehmet.