Jamcast

Hi,

I am currently trying to get my PopCornHour A-110 networked media tank to work with JamCat, is it possible?

My PCH finds the media server all good and I am able to browse the shared folders but when I am trying to play it it says: "could not play". The result is the same if I try to play a .mp3 file or stream spotify through StereoMix. Have anybody been able to solve this problem?

I am using Win7 but I have tried it with StereoMix enabled (e.g. XP drivers for my soundcard).

Can anyone please help me?

I happened across your thread on this, Mattias:

http://www.networkedmedi...mp;pid=269235#pid269235



If either of you are able to get a network trace of this behavior, I'd be happy to look at it and if it's something that I can fix I'll certainly take care of it ASAP.

Thanks!

Is it possible that it has something to do with the requirement of 48KHz samplerate? And that you cant ca´hange the samplerate on the PCH?

Hi Rikard,

Sounds like you've made some progress.

I've done some research on my own regarding the Popcorn hour devices and it appears that they are very non-compliant in a variety of respects concerning UPnP/DLNA. I see that alot of the PCH users are asking for improvements from NMT to this effect and aren't getting anywhere. I'm glad you guys have found a workaround, though.

In regards to your question about Stereo Mix, this is how it works on XP. But the 1 minute delay -- this seems very excessive, it should only be a few seconds. Does it take a full minute for the device to start playing initially, or are there periods of rebuffering on the device that eventually lead to a 1 minute delay?

Thanks!

Hi Rikard,

On Windows 7, by default Jamcast doesn't use the Stereo Mix (although you can change this behavior). So unless you've forced hardware capture mode via the Options tab in the Jamcast Server Manager, you're using the Windows 7 software capture mode.

In either case, Jamcast starts streaming audio data immediately, so if it's taking 1 minute to start playback either your network performance is that slow, or the PCH is taking a huge buffer. It's also possible that the conversion to MP3 is taking an abnormal amount of time to process the incoming audio data, but that is unlikely.

If you'd like, we can try to figure this out. A good way to investigate this would be to start streaming the Virtual Soundcard and as soon as the PCH starts playing audio, stop the playback. Then, paste your medialog.txt to http://pastebin.org and share it here. That will give us an idea of how much data was received from Windows, how much went thru the transcoder, and then finally how much data was sent across the network.

Thanks!

Regarding the stereo mix: I am not using it anymore and it works perfectly fine without it :-D I am now using my real (win7) drivers for the soundcard and it works perfectly fine.

Hi

I want also to ask how you guys managed to get this working on the PCH. So the stream is working for sure because I can get it either on my iphone or on my internetradio.
Now the thing is I can acces to the Jamcast:

a) By browsing the network with the PCH und choose the stream then "virtual soundcard". I receive the message Cannot play.

b) I saw your post mattsjo about adding a link in a html file. But I have the same issue that the PCH is just opening the file and showing the content in a white page.

Unfortunately your thread on pastebin cannot be found anymore. Thanks for any help.

Edit: I could get to work point a) after changing:
EnableSeekTrickMode True
ForceMP3CaptureStream True
Then restarting the Jamcaststream

But could you again tell me how you made that link, I don't want to browse the network everytime I turn on the popcornhour.


Thanks

Hello,

Great question. There are 2 primary differences between the Virtual Soundcard and other tracks:

1) The default stream format presented to the device is LPCM. The device is also presented with MP3, WAV, and FLAC options, but it's up to the device to pick an appropriate stream. Devices don't always do this.

2) The Virtual Soundcard is advertised as non-seekable. Some devices don't like this.

Neither of these are addressed by UPnP guidelines. Both differences do cause compatibility issues with some devices, so Jamcast offers 2 device profile tweaks to help with this:

1) ForceMP3CaptureStream ensures that the device is only presented with a single MP3 stream.

2) EnableSeekTrickMode makes the Virtual Soundcard appear seekable although it still cannot properly respond to seek requests (it's a "live" stream, we can't serve up audio data which doesn't yet exist). However, this tweak is sometimes good enough.

Try these settings out with your PCH and see where it gets you. They can be used independently or in combination. To edit your PCH device profile, open Jamcast Server Manager and select the Devices tab, then double-click the appropriate item in the list of known devices. Make your edits and Apply, then always restart the device afterwards to clear any cache.

Does any of this help with the PCH?

Thanks!