Is it possible to use a web browser to view video content which resides as files on a media drive attached to the RPi running OSMC?
I would like to be able to let the kids watch some stored videos via tablets in their room.
I don’t think this is possivle as of yet.
But you can install kodi or a dlna player on the tablets to let them watch the library of your osmc.
You need to share it via upnp of course.
I tried by installing the VLC app, but it just interfaces to OSMC via the samba shared disk.
When I try to play videos on my phone there are lots of buffering stops and the start of playing is delayed too. It feels like it needs to download a lot of video data before it can start showing anything.
I had hoped that there would be a stream that started immediately after selecting the video file and then played the video. Note that both units are on the same LAN so there should be no real lags.
Is your pi connected via wifi or cable?
Streaming from wifi to wifi can introduce lag.
Especially with samba.
All files that Kodi can access can be pulled via Kodi’s VFS layer (search on Kodi Wiki).
The Pi is connected via WiFi.
My phone and tablets are both on WiFi too.
But my laptop is hardwired Ethernet to the router…
I am using VLC to play content on the laptop via a samba share on OSMC and it also shows the same lagging and disruptions of video as the other methods do.
Question:
Is OSMC/Kodi able to stream video content without the overhead of reading the file over a network share?
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The only way I am aware to do this with Kodi is by using Chorus.
I didn’t expand on this, but if you enable the web server in Kodi, all files Kodi can access, even those through add-ons, can be accessed via the web server.
Well I used the web interface and reconfigured it to use a different skin (AWXI) than the default.
I also changed the samba domain from workgroup to the one we use here.
I can reach the web interface from my laptop but the only source of “Files” that is available is the NAS located back home (not accessible from this location).
The strange thing is that the locally attached 1TB usb drive named “MEDIADRIVE” on which most of the material resides is not even listed as a file source.
So basically the web interface seems able to go to the VIDEO_NAS source, which is not available on this network, but not to “MEDIADRIVE” which is a physical drive attached to the RPi itself!
Really strange. One would have thought that the most accessible file source would be the local drive…
This OSMC unit has been moved along to the vacation home over the summer and provided with a WiFi dongle for network access over here (Ethernet back home). The VIDEO_NAS resides on the home network (Ethernet) which is not available here.
Any solution for reaching the mediadrive disk content via the web interface?
@Bosse_B What Sam is saying is that you can see and direct Kodi to play these files, but ONLY on the display attached to the Kodi device. This doesn’t help you get to viewing the files on other devices.
I’m not sure why you are mucking around with AWXI when it also, will not give you the behavior you are seeking. Chorus is the only web interface on Kodi that will possibly provide this function. Though this may only provide access to files added to library. Otherwise, you might try enabling UPnP server in kodi and then installing a UPnP client on your other devices.
You can actually get Kodi to stream the file to say, a phone:
http://<your ip>:<configured port>/vfs/<url encoded vfs path>
Well, yes… But I’m sure he’s looking for more of a gui type solution here…
What I am trying to do is use a tablet (iPad or Android) to view the media on the hard drive connected to the OSMC Pi2. So if Kodi can be set up to stream the videos on demand to a device of that kind connected to the same network I am good.
However using a simple share method does not work probably because the device will access the files via the samba share in order to play them and now we have latency and other issues making the videos unviewable.
It is really like a play service on various TV websites I want to have locally.
And by the way I did not understand what the means…
Could not find an example showing an actual working command to enter into the web browser.
What other methods besides samba? It really appears that your issue is your network. Countless OSMC users utilize their Pi’s running OSMC as a file server to provide media to other devices. Secondly, Kodi was never designed, nor has ever been touted to be a “streaming server” as you seem to believe.
Well, I did not say it was such a server, I just asked if there was some by me unknown functionality that could do this.
The Kodi wiki explains how to use VFS
Well for Android Yatse will allow you to do exactly that.