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Knots2

Revision as of 11:42, 5 September 2009

Knots is a feature rich GPLv2 Video Streaming Application for Windows, Mac OS X Leopard, Linux and FreeBSD by Janne Mäkinen. Knots consists of a server, written in Ruby, and client, written in Vala. The server can be configured to stream video files (any format/codec supported by VLC), DVB-broadcasts, custom playlists or any other media to a Knots client on a N8x0 or to any other computer, via the Knots' Web-frontend.

Non-tableteers can access the Knots Web-frontend from any platform / location (including Windows). Firefox & Adobe's Flash Plugin 10 are suggested and work best. Knots will automatically transcode all streams to flv, so they can be watched directly in the browser. It is also possible to view videos without transcoding, using the VLC browser plugin.

Features

• Fully thumb driven intuitive GUI for the Nokia N8x0 tablets
• Stream videos with on-the-fly transcoding to a Knots client or to a remote computer via the web-frontend. Seeking is supported when possible.
• Watch Live TV (DVB) with VLC directly or make Knots act as a VDR Streaming Client.
• Stream VDR Live-TV and recordings, browse the EPG & adjust VDR recording timers from the client
• Playlist support (WorldTV99, etc.)
• Automatic subtitle fetching for movies, provided by http://www.opensubtitles.org
• Automatic thumbnails for local clips using ffmpeg
• Integrated search function
• Additional info for movies, provided by http://themoviedb.org

Installation

To get Knots running, some dependencies have to be met. After that, the server package and the tablet client must be installed. The following steps will guide you in those tasks.

Dependencies

Knots server uses VLC for streaming and FFmpeg for encoding. The following steps explain how to setup those dependencies.

Linux

This instructions are for Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10). Other Debian derivates might use slightly different package names, but the general concept of the install is the same for all distros.

apt-get install ruby1.8 ruby rubygems libsqlite3-ruby libopenssl-ruby vlc ffmpeg

• Add the Medibuntu repository (for ffmpeg), reload your Package information and open a root terminal (sudo -s), and:

apt-get install libavcodec-unstripped-51 libavdevice-unstripped-52 libavformat-unstripped-52 libavutil-unstripped-49 libpostproc-unstripped-51 libswscale-unstripped-0

To get the best result, ubuntu users should compile ffmpeg themselves. Here and here are good guides, you only need to copy-paste few lines.

OS X

Install latest VLC and ffmpegX to /Applications.

Windows

Download and install latest VLC. For easy setup, install it under C:\Program Files, otherwise you will need to edit the path in server settings.

Server

Linux / FreeBSD / OS X

Git users can get the latest client and server with git:

git clone git://github.com/solmis/knots.git

You can also download the server from here.

Then start the server with

cd knots
./knots.rb

OS X users can use the above package, but they can also download an executable app from here. It shows an icon in the dock and then disappears, but it should be running.

Windows

Download the server package from here. Unzip it and make sure the path doesn't have spaces and copy the win32/sqlite3.dll to Windows\System32 with administrator rights. Double click on run.cmd to start the server. Be sure to close the window with ctrl-c, otherwise VLC is left running.

Setup

Just point your browser to http://localhost:1978 and add your media under settings. If you don't see the Update collection button, please make sure that both ffmpeg and VLC paths are correct.

Client

Client is available from extras-repository.

Screenshots

File:Knots2-Vertical1.png File:Knots2-Vertical2.png File:Knots2-horizontal1.png

Questions & Answers

Contact

Please join our IRC channel #knots at Freenode or email janne dot makinen at surffi dot fi