Ubuntu/XP: Streaming Sopcast to your mobile devices

Sopcast is an amazing application which gives you access to a lot of unique and entertaining channel listings. Here I'll show you how we can broadcast your sopcast streams onto your other devices on your home network.

Let us see how it is done..

My setup:

• 1 laptop running ubuntu with 2 network interfaces (or WinXp)


• eth0 - LAN, (public ip -- internet)


• eh1- WLAN (192.168.0.1)


• 1 Nokia N80 cell phone (any device with wifi)
• Ad-hoc wireless dorm network (or any other network)

[Server]

1. Start gsopcast and let it buffer the channel of your choice. The video soon starts playing.

2. Find the port in which sopcast is playing. Copy the last port no. displayed in the sp-pc command
ps -ef | grep sp

anoj 17567 17549 7 04:09 pts/2 00:00:16 sp-sc sop://broker1.sopcast.com:3912/6029 42205 57700



For folks on winXP, right click on the media player window that appears when the streaming starts and look at its properties. It should have a localhost address of the stream. Copy that


3. Open Vlc player, click on open network stream. Specify http address :
http://localhost:[port no]

http://localhost:57700


4. Select on Advanced Option section on stream/save and click on settings.

5. In the settings dialog, check on http and select port 1234.

6. Select the enapsulation method supported by your other devices. I have chosen MPEG TS

7. In the transcoding section, select the video and audio codec that your device supports. I am choosing mp4v Bitrate 1024 kb/s, scale .5 Also select the desired audio codec and click ok.

8. In the open dialog, click ok and let vlc start streaming and broadcasting.


[Client]

1. In your mobile devices, open your media player (eg. Core media player) and play this url
http://[ip-adr of eth1]:1234

http://192.168.0.1:1234


2. Viola!! The device is now streaming a sopcast feed off your server.