Local video module fails on Linux Player

[swilkey]

Hi,

Player version

1.8-R5 code version 50

Issue

I’m new to Xibo and I’ve been doing a lot of playing to ensure I’m setting things correctly. I’ve searched the forum and google for answers but I’m stuck. There are explanations and examples of how to use the local video module with Windows, but for Linux there are no examples.

I can successfully play video on the linux xibo player that is from the library on my xibo server. I can also successfully play local video IF the local video is placed in the folder that has been defined as the local library on the player. However, if I try to put the video in a sub folder of that I am unable to find a way to access it. If I try to put the video in any other folder on the computer I am unable to find a way to access it.

Basically it appears that if I want to include a / in the name of the video it cannot be found. Yet the player is receiving the / correctly. So I’m not sure what is going on.

For testing purposes I’ve made any folder (and any file within that) I’m trying to play from FULL permissions to everyone. I have put copies of the file I want to play at /media/test.mp4, test.mp4 (in local library folder), test/test.mp4 (in subfolder of local library folder). The only one that plays correctly is the one in the local library folder itself.

With the local video path defined as: file://test/test.mp4 (in a vain attempt to access a SUB folder of local library)
[1070] [error]: [GstMediaPlayer] Error from element source: Resource not found. Player exited with code 15

With the local video path defined as: file:///media/test.mp4 (to access a SUB folder of the root folder)
[10534] [error]: [GstMediaPlayer] Error from element source: Could not open file “/media/test.mp4” for reading. Player exited with code 15

With the local video path defined as: media/test.mp4 (in a vain attempt to access a SUB folder of the root folder)
[10413] [error]: [LayoutParser - RegionParser - MediaParser - URI] Layout 29 is invalid or missing. Reason: Parse error: /media/test.mp4

With the local video path defined as: /media/test.mp4 (to access a SUB folder the root folder)
[10287] [error]: [LayoutParser - RegionParser - MediaParser - URI] Layout 28 is invalid or missing. Reason: Parse error: /media/test.mp4

With the local video path defined as: test/test.mp4 (in a vain attempt to access the SUB folder of the local library)
[10172] [error]: [LayoutParser - RegionParser - MediaParser - URI] Layout 27 is invalid or missing. Reason: Parse error: test/test.mp4

With the local video path defined as: /test/test.mp4 (in a vain attempt to access the SUB folder of the local library)
[9904] [error]: [LayoutParser - RegionParser - MediaParser - URI] Layout 26 is invalid or missing. Reason: Parse error: /test/test.mp4

So what is the correct way to point the local video module to a video file that is not in the local library folder? What I really want to be able to do is to access a file on a server that is close to the player computer - I’d like to map this to a folder within the file system of the player computer so that it can access it or alternatively access it by SMB connection to the server. But if I could at least access it somewhere on the local computer for the player then I could use rcopy or something like that to ensure that it is updated regularly from the server - but I need to be able to have this in a separate folder from the local library in order to use any of these work arounds.

Thanks,
Stephen

[swilkey]

If anyone can advise how I can see detailed error logging from the client about the error that is occurring I’ll be able to come up with better information for the developers about why this might be failing. I’ve not been able to find any detailed information about the xibo client - it is really poorly documented.

Thanks

[dan]

Hi, thanks for your detailed message.

I am not sure if the local video module has been implemented yet on the Linux Player, based on your experience i’d guess that perhaps it isn’t. I am happy to run some tests of this to see, and if not add it as a feature issue for a future milestone.

You can enable full logging on the player from the CMS Display Settings Profile - just set the log level to your desired level. The error log you have there though seems pretty clear and I’m not sure if you’ll get anything more detailed.

We’ve got plenty of work to do on the Linux Player to bring it up to par with the other Players. Our work in progress is here: https://github.com/xibosignage/xibo-linux/projects/1

[swilkey]

The only reason we even tried this is because parts of the documentation led us to believe that this was already supported for the linux client. However, I can no longer find those bits of documentation, so maybe they have been corrected.

I haven’t been able to get logging to work yet, but will continue experimenting with it as I am able.

I suspect our solution at this point will be to copy the files into the local library folder manually so that we have control over when the files get copied to the client. Later when you support local video we will modify it to use that instead.

thanks for your response Dan - much appreciated.

[dan]

Its also unclear to me whether it should be supported or not, so I’ve created an issue for it here: https://github.com/xibosignage/xibo-linux/issues/225

Thanks!