Netzflocken

One of my last computer related activities in 2008 was releasing version 0.6.0 of the Coherence DLNA/UPnP framework.

The plain facts first:

• new MediaServer backends that allow access to
  • movie trailers from the Apple HD trailers site
  • images hosted at a Gallery site - an open source web based photo album organizer
  • Lolcats images from http://icanhascheezburger.com
  • podcasts from the BBC
  • videos from TED
• an extended Flickr MediaServer backend
  • enables user-authenticated access to your Flickr account
  • access to your images and the one of your friends via an UPnP device
  • upload an image directly from an UPnP device to your Flickr account
• transcoding of audio files for DLNA devices like the PS3, and even the XBox 360
• several plugins for the Nautlilus filemanager
  • sharing folders from within Nautilus
  • upload files from Nautilus to UPnP A/V MediaServers
  • play files from Nautilus on an UPnP A/V MediaRenderer
• an experimental plugin for EOG - the Gnome Image Viewer
• greatly improved XBox 360 support, including audio transcoding

Kudos go especially to jmsizun, lightyear and superdump for their work on the new backends and their patient debugging sessions!

There are some remarkable things - beside the technical improvements or the feature additions - that make this release special.

Community created backends - just awesome!
A huge THANK YOU to you guys! And seeing them appear in such a short time of development shows that the backend, the data-provider centric approach of Coherence was the right way to go.

More online and social content providers!
The Flickr MediaServer was only the beginning. With more backends that retrieve their media via some RSS feed or an API provided by an service like You-Tube or GoogleVideo, Coherence will more and more evolve into a media-hub.
A media-gateway that does provide a central place to go for accessing digital media of different origins and types, via an unified and standardized form. And still leaving the choice to you which device or application to use for that.

Applications!
With the new Eye of Gnome plugin one of the last UPnP jigsaw piece for the Gnome desktop has found its place.
After the RhythmBox plugin for audio, the Totem plugin for audio and video, images served via UPnP can now be accessed via the Eye of Gnome image viewer.
And with Nautilus on the other side there is an easy way to instantly share media or interact with other UPnP devices.

The last puzzle piece is enabling Nautilus to browse UPnP A/V MediaServers in its native way. I’m confident that this is a solvable, short-term task.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if other environments would be able to benefit from the work done there too.

And there a more things to come.
In the pipeline for the next releases there are amongst others:

• video transcoding
• an YouTube/GoogleVideo MediaServer
• a ScheduledRecording service for the DVB-Daemon

A Happy and Peaceful New Year!

Yeah, you read right, transcoding - the holy grail when it comes to DLNA and UPnP A/V - is finally within Coherence’s reach.

With current svn trunk we have a simple, yet powerful audio transcoder based on GStreamer, enabling our FSStore MediaServer to serve ogg, mp4 and flac media files to devices not able to playback these formats natively, like the Playstation 3.

The transcoded stream can be paused, but not seeked yet. That needs a bit of more work.

The complementary remuxer/transcoder for video is in the works too, hope we are able to finish that for the upcoming 0.6.0 release.

One of the things I had on my list - unfortunately that list is quite long atm - was bringing Nautilus - Gnomes filemanager - and Coherence together.
Nautilus has the possibility to add something via an extension - luckily these extensions can be in Python too.

So it was pretty straight forward to add to Nautilus:

• sharing one or more folders as a DLNA/UPnP MediaServer, allowing clients like the PS3 or the Nokia N810 to access these files
• accepting files send from an ControlPoint
• uploading files itself to other DLNA/UPnP MediaServers that allow media to be imported
• instruct a MediaRenderer to playback a given file

You can watch the demonstration video here:

the link to Google Video, just in case that embedded player isn’t working

More details, download and install instructions as usual on the Coherence site.

As you might notice, there is one part missing - having Nautilus display and access the content of other MediaServers in the network.
This can’t be done with an extension, here the gvfs backend needs to be modified. But as Coherence exposes the MediaServers via DBus, a small layer mapping Nautilus’ requests to Coherence’ signals and methods shouldn’t be that difficult?

I made a little video to demonstrate the new features of the upcoming next version of the Rhythmbox UPnP plugin.

It shows Rhythmbox:

• acting as an UPnP MediaServer, serving its files to the UPnP player Media Streamer on the Nokia N800
• being itself a client of a Coherence UPnP MediaServer
• and in the end acting as an UPnP MediaRenderer, controlled by the ControlPoint on the N800

Original better-resolution avi here