mkvcast

A barebones on the fly video transcoder for Chromecasts.

Installation

Mac OS X

The easiest way to install this is via Homebrew

brew install git
brew install ffmpeg
brew install node
git clone https://github.com/maherbeg/mkvcast.git
cd mkvcast
npm install
npm install -g bower
bower install
./bin/mkvcast <config file>
open 'http://localhost:1338/list'

FreeBsd

You should install everything from a FreeBSD Jail

pkg install ffmpeg
pkg install node
pkg install npm
pkg install git
git clone https://github.com/maherbeg/mkvcast.git
cd mkvcast
npm install
npm install -g bower
bower install
./bin/mkvcast <config file>
open 'http://localhost:1338/list'

Windows

Currently broken, path handling needs to be fixed for this platform. See #18

Download and run an installer from http://nodejs.org/download/ (you will also need git installed from http://git-scm.com/download/win) Then from cmd or powershell:

git clone https://github.com/maherbeg/mkvcast.git
cd mkvcast
npm install
npm install -g bower
bower install
node lib\mkvcast.js C:\full\path\to\config.json

Note: For the moment on Windows, you'll need to escape paths in config.json - e.g. C:\Movies becomes C:\Movies

Configuration

config.json

The following keys need to be saved in a config.json that is passed into the application.

{
    "mediaDirectories" : [
        "/Users/someuser/Downloads/",
        "/Volumes/harddrive/Media/"
    ]
}

channels

A channel is a set of directories to randomly view videos from. Think of it as a shuffled playlist based on your content. You can create channels for genres, directors etc.

Just simply add another configuration option to your config.json file called channels. The key is the channel name with an entry of directories specifying the directories you would like to view.

Note It is not traversing nested directories yet.

{
    "channels" : {
        "new" : {
            "directories" : ["/Users/someuser/Downloads", "/Volumes/harddrive/Media/NotWatched"]
        }
    }
}

Todo

• A responsive sender UI that will show all the files to serve as well as a list of Chromecasts to serve.
• Interface for pausing/playing/setting the volume of the Chromecast
• Better documentation
• Testing
• Playlist functionality
• Channel functionality. Assign a folder list to a channel and serve up random videos from these folders.

Things it can't do

• Fast forward/reverse through a video

Contributing

Pull requests are graciously accepted. Feel free to open up issues as well.

This code is MIT Licensed.