Chromecast URL Player • Hacker News Board

Re: Chromecast URL Player

#31

Post by blinkingled » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 8:07 PM UTC

Neat! I was looking for something like this. I had to use tab casting for some videos like Twit Live which is prone to struggling on low power CPUs and goes down if the laptop sleeps. This allows me to directly send the HLS stream URLs to the Chromecast with no CPU usage on the local machine.

Edit: The sleep part is still a problem. But at least it doesn't eat laptop CPU I guess.

Re: Chromecast URL Player

#32

Post by vigneshv_psg » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 8:09 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #3

This is exactly what I needed, thanks! Does it stream the video directly, or is there transcoding? I might even be able to stream videos from my home server (which has an HTTP interface) directly!

author here. there is no transcoding. i wrote this to scratch the same itch. i have a media server which has a http interface too. plex somehow thinks it needs to transcode some videos despite chromecast being perfectly capable of playing them back as it is. i play such videos using this app.

Re: Chromecast URL Player

#33

Post by vigneshv_psg » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 8:10 PM UTC

aashishkoirala wrote: post #4

How is this different from opening the URL in Chrome and casting from it?

Casting a chrome tab typically means re-encoding your screen frame buffer, sending it to chromecast and decoding it there. Whereas this app merely pulls the video off the URL and decodes it in the chromecast. Your system has no load and it can even be turned off when the video is still playing back (although you'll have no way to control it).

Re: Chromecast URL Player

#34

Post by CSDude » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 8:36 PM UTC

vigneshv_psg wrote: post #30

CSDude wrote: post #10

Sorry for the plug, but if anyone is interested, I made a local video player on Chromecast, which transcodes the videos on the fly. https://github.com/mustafaakin/cast-localvideo So anything that ffmpeg can convert can be played on Chromecast, not only .mp4 and .webm video.

that's neat. i haven't looked at the code, what's your target video codec for transcoding? is it VP8?

VP8 encoder in ffmpeg is slow, for now I use h264

Re: Chromecast URL Player

#35

Post by parterburn » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 8:44 PM UTC

This already exists at https://dabble.me/cast. It was something I threw together just hours after the SDK was released. Mashable picked it up, too: http://mashable.com/2014/02/05/vidcast-chromecast-app/

Re: Chromecast URL Player

#36

Post by matbee » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 9:25 PM UTC

supercanuck wrote: post #26

OT: How do hackers on here stream 1080P mp4's to a Chomecast without choppiness and lag?

Videostream, www.streamchromecast.com

Re: Chromecast URL Player

#37

Post by matbee » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 9:26 PM UTC

Has nobody heard of Videostream?! It plays it with perfect quality without transcoding right as a Chrome App. http://www.streamchromecast.com

Re: Chromecast URL Player

#38

Post by delive » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 9:55 PM UTC

Question - is it possible to have Chromecast play urls directly to flash files? For example youtube gives out embedded links such as "www.youtube.com/embed/26UvdxUII-0". I realize that isn't a .swf file url, but it works in my browser. Since youtube already has an app that plays to chromecast.. I'm more thinking of random flash players on websites.

Re: Chromecast URL Player

#39

Post by dhruvtv » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 10:38 PM UTC

Does Chromecast support mkv? If not, why?

Re: Chromecast URL Player

#40

Post by vigneshv_psg » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 10:44 PM UTC

dhruvtv wrote: post #39

Does Chromecast support mkv? If not, why?

yes, it does support the mkv container. WebM and MKV files are usually parsed with the same parser. So pretty much any player that can play WebM can play MKV given the encapsulated codec is supported.

disclosure: i work on the Chrome team but have nothing to do with chromecast.