[ClearToLand]

If you have running installations of both Streambaby and Plex, have you ever tried the 'plex.server=' setting in Streambaby.ini and, after viewing the Plex folders and shows all under the Plex folder in Streambaby, were you actually able to view a show?

I bought my first NASes last year (Intel J1800 dual core; 2-bay and 4-bay) and began funneling kmttg (PS) output to Plex (.mpg, .srt, .txt, .edl) with the goal of being able to view the recordings either via Plex or Streambaby. Plex plays them fine; Streambaby displays the Plex metadata instead of the Rovi metadata but complains: "Failed to open stream" when I try to play. Looking at the DEBUG log, it appears that it's not even passing the filename to ffmpeg.

I set up a "dir.x=" UNC to the Plex folder on my NAS and Streambaby plays fine that way. Would someone please try this experiment ('plex.server=' vs 'dir.x=') and post their results?

Thanks so much!

Spoiler

P.S. I never used 'Tags' before when creating a post. I saw them on some other posts recently so I thought that I'd give it a shot. Does it make a difference when SEARCHing?

 

[vanclute]

I didn't know SB could even play files from a Plex server. I have both running on our media server so will try it out and see what happens.

 

[vanclute]

Well that was spectacularly disappointing. Plex doesn't show up in SB in any way that I can see. Is there some trick to it? Do I really just put my plex server IP (which is the same IP as the machine SB is running on in my case) after plex.server= and it's supposed to work?

EDIT: I was missing the port number but even after adding it... nothing in SB related to Plex.

 

[vanclute]

Wouldn't you put the path in that entry?

The path? Path to what? According to the SB wiki all I need to do is add the IP and port for the plex server.

 

[ClearToLand]

Well that was spectacularly disappointing. Plex doesn't show up in SB in any way that I can see. Is there some trick to it? Do I really just put my plex server IP (which is the same IP as the machine SB is running on in my case) after plex.server= and it's supposed to work?

EDIT: I was missing the port number but even after adding it... nothing in SB related to Plex.

Yep, it's that easy.

If you have DEBUG turned on in Streambaby, you'll see it communicating with your Plex Server. Did you restart Streambaby? Restart the HD GUI? Restart your TiVo? If you have kmttg running, try launching Streambaby via the Remote Tab.

As I posted in May, I can plainly see the difference in the metadata. It just won't pass the selected filename to ffmpeg. If you're interested, set up a Streambaby 'dir.x' to point to your Plex directory via UNC and watch how the filename is passed to ffmpeg. Then try to play the same show from the Plex entry. I keep getting "Failed to open stream" and see no attempt to pass the selected filename to ffmpeg.

Thanks for trying! You SHOULD be able to display the Plex metadata though. I never had a problem with that. What version of Streambaby are you running? I'm using v0.53 since my .INI already had MP4 disabled.

 

[ClearToLand]

The path? Path to what? According to the SB wiki all I need to do is add the IP and port for the plex server.

#plex.server=IP:Port (default:none)
plex.server=192.168.0.123:32400

At the bottom of your list of all your Streambaby 'dir.x=' entries is "Plex".

 

[vanclute]

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean... the only active lines in my entire streambaby-user.ini file are:

ip=10.144.48.8
preview.big=true
mp4module.disable=true
plex.server=10.144.48.8:32400

There is no reference to Plex whatsoever in streambaby.ini.

I'm using PyTivoX with a manually updated SB from a while ago... last year some time as I recall. Don't know what the version would've been and it doesn't seem to be listed anywhere that I can see in the editable files. I didn't try rebooting the TiVo... I suppose I could do that, though normally I never have to reboot it for a SB config change, just have to restart SB itself (or PyTivoX in my case)

I rebooted the TiVo as well just now, but no change. Plex doesn't show up anywhere in my list of folders in SB. I don't have Debug enabled and don't use kmttg. I also don't know what UNC is.

 

[wkearney99]

UNC are pathnames. \\server\sharename\folders\within\the\sharename. As opposed to mounting \\server\sharename\folders\within\the\sharename as d:\ and using that as the source in SB.

This assumes the running user already has credentials cached for the connection to the server.

(just this in the streambaby.ini)
dir.1=\\Server\movies
dir.1.name=Movies

vs

(this, presumably, in the streambaby.bat script)
net use d:\ \\Server\movies /user:server\yourusername /savecred /persistent:YES

(then this in the streambaby.ini)
dir.1=d:\
dir.1.name=Movies

This also allows access to it when SB runs as a service without getting into drive mounting rigmarole. Provided the user running the service also has access to the share. There's a number of variables involved, so my above notes are not a direct cut-and-paste, just examples. For the first one you could also put a line in the starting script that made the share connections. Just a plain 'net use \\server\share /user:server\username /password:yourpassword' would work, but would leave your password behind in cleartext in the script. Not ideal for decent security.

 

[vanclute]

I'm afraid you've lost me. I never had to do anything fancy with any script editing with SB which is part of what I like so much about it... it just works (with a few small exceptions). The only thing I ever do is enable a few options in the streambaby-user.ini file. I've never had to do anything with any paths or whatever... so I really don't know what that's all about. Maybe it's because I'm on a Mac so something is different? I don't know. I think PyTivoX handles all the directory stuff internally through its GUI.

 

[wkearney99]

If you're hosting your media files on a different machine then you'd need to use some sort of network path to indicate where they're stored. My SB instance runs on a machine that also acts as a home controller and printer spooler. The movies files, however, are all on a network server (Qnap brand NAS). Works great.

 

[reneg]

I tried the plex.server configuration option and got the following error:

Plex: 316 ERROR: getXmlDocument error - Server returned HTTP response code: 401 for URL: http://192.168.1.23:32400/library/sections

I have Plex Home configured on my Plex server. I tried disabling the pin on my account, but still got the error. I wasn't willing to turn off Plex Home.

 

[wkearney99]

This also allows access to it when SB runs as a service without getting into drive mounting rigmarole.

If anyone still wants to run it as a service, the key is creating a local user on the windows machine.

The idea here is that most services normally don't run as a "user". They run as a local service account. This local service account doesn't have network access to other fileshares. (well, technically you can finagle ways to make it work, but there's no need if you set up a user for it).

Then login to that local account on the Windows machine that's going be running Streambaby and use the Credential Manager control panel to store the necessary Windows Credentials and then ALSO setting up the service to 'Run as' that desktop user. That will let the service 'user' have access to the necessary stored username/password info.

You can automatically set the service username from the wrapper.conf setup file. Add these lines, and edit the username and password accordingly. The leading .\ indicates it's a local user.

# User for service
wrapper.ntservice.account=.\youruser
wrapper.ntservice.password=yourpassword

This will automatically set the proper service user each time you use the install batch script. Otherwise you'd have to use the services.msc console and edit the service credentials manually.

Then it's just a matter of setting the appropriate mounts in the same wrapper.conf file:

wrapper.share.1.location=\\192.168.xx.xx\video
wrapper.share.1.target=M:
wrapper.share.1.type=DISK
wrapper.share.1.account=servername\localuser
wrapper.share.1.password=yourpassword
wrapper.share.1.startup.failure=SHUTDOWN
wrapper.share.1.startup.premapped=CONTINUE
wrapper.share.1.startup.max_retries=5
wrapper.share.1.startup.retry_interval=5
wrapper.share.1.shutdown.unmap=TRUE
wrapper.share.1.shutdown.unmap.force=TRUE

I like to use the IP to make the connection to the server, just in case there's any WINS, DNS or other shenanigans going on. Likewise setting up a drive letter. If I'm using UNC paths in the streambaby.ini file this isn't necessary. You could have those mounted within the streambaby service's user with the cmd 'net use m: \\192.168.xx.xx\video /user:servername\localuser /persistent:yes' You can set up more than one wrapper.share.[x] to handle multiple network share mounts.

Then edit the streambaby.ini file to use subdirectories beneath that share:

dir.1=\\192.168.xx.xx\video\Movies
dir.1.name=Movies

dir.2=\\192.168.xx.xx\video\New
dir.2.name=New

dir.3=\\192.168.xx.xx\video\Kids Shows
dir.3.name=Kids Shows

dir.4=\\192.168.xx.xx\video\Kids Movies
dir.4.name=Kids Movies

dir.5=\\192.168.xx.xx\video\Holiday
dir.5.name=Holiday

dir.6=\\192.168.xx.xx\video\TV Shows
dir.6.name=TV Shows

Note: there's two different users involved here. One is the local user that's running the streambaby service. The other is the user on the fileserver that contains the video files. My setup has them on different machines. Streambaby runs in a Windows VM on a linux box, the files are over on a NAS share.