
Chromecast URL Player - lgp171188
http://vignesh.foamsnet.com/2014/03/chromecast-url-player.html
======
CSDude
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](https://github.com/mustafaakin/cast-localvideo) So anything that
ffmpeg can convert can be played on Chromecast, not only .mp4 and .webm video.

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mkagenius
Transcoding is tough for processors in case of high definition video, does
your app really do it in realtime?

~~~
smtddr
Since ffmpeg is running your computer. "realtime" = As fast as your comp can
handle. I'm sure my 10+ year old Dell celeron would be horrible but a modern
Intel i7 will probably be pretty good.

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caio1982
I was going to say that I'd love to use all these neat Chromecast tricks but I
can't because of its (native) poor support for external subtitles but then I
got really afraid of saying so as disagreements about popular techs in HN
usually result in downvoting. Offtopic: is it just me who feel like that and
often avoid commenting?

~~~
vigneshv_psg
> I'd love to use all these neat Chromecast tricks but I can't because of its
> (native) poor support for external subtitles

author here. yes, i have been working on adding subtitle support to this web
app as well (you paste two urls, one for the video and one for the srt file).
chromecast supports WebVTT [1] and it's pretty straightforward to convert srt
to WebVTT. Although, it requires using a custom receiver app. stay tuned.

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/media](https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/media)

~~~
caio1982
Dude, that's great, you'd be fixing a real issue that Chromecast has (in my
opinion). I'll check it regularly to see how it goes, thanks for the effort
:-)

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parterburn
This already exists at [https://dabble.me/cast](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/](http://mashable.com/2014/02/05/vidcast-chromecast-app/)

~~~
joshmlewis
That's an interesting URL...I remember using that last year.

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crazygringo
Awesome! I literally had put on my calendar, after the SDK came out, that if
after two months nobody had made a dead-simple player like this, I'd do it
myself. Glad I didn't have to. ;)

Suggestion for a next step: wrap it inside an OSX .app or Windows .exe that
also launches a local webserver on some random port, so you can stream local
media to your Chromecast as well. (I mean, for us developers it's easy enough
to set up an instance of Apache, but this would let my grandma use it too.)

Edit: question: does anyone know if it's technically possible to cast a
_video_ to Chromecast, but leave the _audio_ playing on my local computer?
(Necessarily involving some kind of audio delay.)

~~~
vigneshv_psg
author here. thanks that it's helpful.

> does anyone know if it's technically possible to cast a video to Chromecast,
> but leave the audio playing on my local computer? (Necessarily involving
> some kind of audio delay.)

yes, it's technically definitely possible. one way is to use ffmpeg to remux
the video alone and pass it on to the chromecast while playing the audio along
locally. you can use the chromecast api to fetch the playback location of the
video and use it to sync the audio locally.

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delive
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.

~~~
vigneshv_psg
No, chromecast cannot play flash videos. But you can extract the URL of the
videos from common swf based players like JWPlayer using a tool like youtube-
dl [1] and then use that URL to playback the content in chromecast. This will
probably make a good chrome extension.

[1] [https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/)

~~~
rochak100
thanks, please can someone give more basic instructions on how to do this. I
for e.g. love a cricket streaming site (flash based www.crictime.com). How do
I extract the video url to play on chromecast?

thanks much.

~~~
vigneshv_psg
the particular example that you want seems to use eplayer. it seems like it's
a livestream and uses some proprietary protocol and is not as simple as
fetching data from a URL and playing it back. So it's unlikely that you'll be
able to watch this particular site for chromecast unless they (either crictime
or eplayer) decide to publish an app that implements their proprietary
protocol for chromecast.

~~~
rochak100
thx for your quick reply. obviously a disappointment!. Please can you also
tell how could i use the youtube-Dl link you gave away to extract url from
flash based sites? Also is there a way to play live videos from youtube in
chromecast. Currently, live streams in youtube appear to be unsupported?

thanks again!

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blinkingled
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.

~~~
parterburn
You might check out VidCast at [http://dabble.me](http://dabble.me) \- it has
a bookmarklet compatible with Twit.tv making your experience with finding a
video on Twit.tv & casting it to your TV a bit more streamlined.

~~~
blinkingled
Thanks, got that bookmarked. It works except for the live stream, which I
found casts well from the Twit Cast Android app. So between these two,
Chromecasting is working out well for me.

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

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StavrosK
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!

~~~
mikos
There are several Android apps which will stream MP4s to the Chromecast from a
upnp/dlna server. I use BubbleUPnP but Avia is another one.

~~~
supercanuck
How is performance?

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mikos
I've been using BubbleUPnP for a few weeks now and Avia for a month or two
before that. No issues really. I watched a 720p MP4 movie last night, no
complaints.

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fat0wl
wasn't something like this made in the early days of chromecast & they either
shut it down or it broke due to a firmware update? i think it was to stream
video content from your personal network to chromecast

hm...... i've been assuming that even tho there's an SDK it is still a turf
war. if it's actually open to open source development... woah. many
possibilities...

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samworm
Since they opened the SDK you've been able to do most (all?) the stuff people
were initially excited about. The problem is that all the excitement has long
since died away so very few people are developing versatile Chromecast apps...
and the ones that are out there are mostly buggy and poor designs.

AllCast [1] is probably the most well known despite being crippled (limited to
1 min playback I think?) unless you pay.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koushikdut...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koushikdutta.cast)

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

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vigneshv_psg
not sure what you mean by this. but streaming a 1080p url (e.g. by using this
web app) via http works fine on a chromecast without choppiness and lag.

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

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StavrosK
Doing that requires transcoding and generally has very bad performance for me,
this doesn't look like it does that (but I haven't tried it yet).

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dhruvtv
Does Chromecast support mkv? If not, why?

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vigneshv_psg
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.

