Stream to Chromecast with resolved, vlc and bash | Hacker News Reader

Stream to Chromecast with resolved, vlc and bash

linderud.dev

82 pointsFoxboron35 comments

For people who like to watch with subtitles, VLC currently doesn't support streaming to chromecast with SRT subtitles.. there are several issues for it and I believe support is slated for the next major version of VLC, but not sure when that will be.

The typical "workaround" is to reencode the video file to include the subtitles directly, but that sounded like too much work, so I hacked together a static page using https://videojs.com/ to embed a player and load the video and subtitles in a browser window.

Here it is in gist form if anyone has a similar issue: https://gist.github.com/HartS/9bb2721fa73b6798efcdbf5c463e87...

This was hacked together as quickly as possible for my own needs, so definitely not intended to be an example of clean code. You need to run the python server separately to serve the SRT because video-js can't load it from a file URL IIRC

I suggest you to host it somewhere? I assume github pages is not suitable because of CORS.

I don't think it will work hosted with local video files.

It works locally reading the video file from the file:// url (though strangely needs http for the subtitle track)

Yep I've been bitten by this. Very frustrating. I went back to a usb stick containing the video and subtitle file stuck in the back of the projector.

There has been patches floating around to support this for quite a while. One example here: https://github.com/sandsmark/vlc-chromecast-subtitles

Chromecast are such annoyingly neutered devices.

I bought one originaly assuming I could stream local videos to it or like read them from a network drive, but Google force SaaS cloud everything on the user.

There is not even a proper way to remote control it.

Just BS workarounds on what should have been core functionality.

I suspect google also neutered the hdmi capability of Pixel phones to push people into Chromecast as well.

Ye the engineering culture at Google is really user hostile. I would go as far as calling it toxic.

At one high end hotel I wanted to simply connect the room's TV to my laptop over HDMI. Unfortunately no HDMI socket, confirmed at the reception and with their technician... "just share the screen over chromecast, it's so cool you only have to install an app". Is Google lobbying even at the hotels?! Sounds innocent but the decision "our hotel will have chromecast instead of HDMI" looks like... there were some incentives.

How much profit for Google is it per TV? I have a hard time believing it is worth the hazzle for the hotel to make a deal, but surely as some bribe to the procurement officer at the hotel (think McDonalds' ice cream machine deal) or the TV supplier might have some spyware deal with Google?

I thought this about them when they first released, and was disappointed that it wasn't more of a local streaming device.

Check out the open casting protocol FCast by FUTO. See https://gitlab.com/futo-org/fcast or https://fcast.org/

It is a very simple protocol with several different clients (including terminal clients) and receivers based on Electron and Android.

Also available on Firestick TV, Playstore, Android TV.

Future support for AppleTV, WebOS, TizenOS is coming.

Problem is that this needs clients to catch on. The likes of Netflix and YouTube need to add support. But I highly doubt YouTube will care.

Regardless, I'm glad this exists. Hopefully in the future it becomes more prevalent.

Do I need to open the app for my Firestick to receive or can it run in background?

This looks interesting

Chromecast should be more open and hackable -- there are a number of small projects we could do to get interesting use out of these devices

also I wish Picture-in-Picture (PIP) or overlaying text/video stream with alpha transparency/blending over another video stream is more widely supported in consumer devices

I may want to utilize my big screen displays for work but put a small view of scoreboard / live sports from another device somewhere

There are already a number of Android TV based boxes/sticks out there that are quite hackable. The only thing Chromecast adds is integration with the phone apps.

Chromecast is very hackable, it's literally just running a browser. Most anything that you can put on a webpage you can display on a Chromecast. There are plenty of PIP integrations in the wild.

From a client perspective it's not trivial to say "display another video on top of this one in a region" and I am not sure how you could achieve that while making it "simpler" than it is today.

So if I'd like a custom dashboard I can? How do I start?

Dashboard in what sense? Is this what you had in mind or no?

https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#per...

Exactly! Let's say Heimdall for example. It's a simple website. Can I "cast" that to the chromecast?

http://stestagg.github.io/dashcast/ allows you to display arbitrary URLs on your device. From my experience doing so is built on a pile of hacks (it’s not actually casting an arbitrary URL, it’s casting the registered-with-google dashcast App ID, and then the dashcast app loads an arbirary URL inside it), but the end result mostly works

So, there goes my next evening! :D Thank you!

TIL VLC supports chromecast from the GUI!

Yeah! No subtitle support though, unfortunately.

If you can convince VLC to render the subtitles into a new video stream then it'll work. You're effectively creating a new video though. By default VLC just renders subtitles in the player, you need to encode/transcode them into the output stream.

I’ve “burned” them in with handbrake before. Took a while but it works.

I burn subtitles in routinely with ffmpeg. Not a light operation, but it is highly effective at making sure they work at watch time

I already commented on this, but I didn't like the "solution" of re-encoding the video with the subtitles baked in, so check out https://gist.github.com/HartS/9bb2721fa73b6798efcdbf5c463e87... if you want a way to play (and cast) local videos with subtitle support.

I threw this together as quickly as possible, so it won't be as feature-rich as VLC, but I believe it will still work for many use cases. If you need additional controls, I think video-js (the OSS video player library this uses) supports them, but you'll have to look into their API. You may also be able to get speed controls working with https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/video-speed-control... , which is honestly one of the biggest QoL improvements I've had from a chrome extension

It works really well too, it was the only reason I bought a chromecast because I wasn't going to be streaming from my (android) phone.

As the other comment notes though there's no subtitle support, which is a little frustrating, but I guess that depends on the kinda media you watch, and the language(s) involved.

Is Chromecast usable without a google account and without internet connection at all?

Last year I was looking for a cast stick but couldn't find a one without internet connection requirement.

You can point it to a local webserver URL with your media, I think. I also think the VLC-native streaming works with only LAN access, no credentials.

Iirc you need an account and internet in order To activate it.

But then it works on local LAN without internet

I have no idea whether it’s possible to use it without activation

Are you referring to the new Chromecast with Google TV? Because I've set up Chromecast without internet access or a Google account before. I wonder if this changed somewhere along the way.

I was talking about an older chromecast, 3rd gen, and what I did with it. I’m sure it works without internet, I’m sure I activated it with internet (the chromecast now appears in my home on my google account), I’m not sure whether activation is absolutely required.

We suspect that some TVs and OSs capture screenshots then profile and monetize us, and that's annoying. Why would one intentionally stream at all times the screen content through the servers of an ad company?! "convenience"?!

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