DLNA Profiles

Can you please retrieve a list of supported DLNA profiles for the Air DLNA server you now support with the latest firmware update.

 

I have 21,000 music files I would like to liberate to the car, via this drive and an iPhone rendering device (to play the files into the stereo system). This will be ground breaking if it works correctly and you will sell 1000's of these things as a result. Loads of people are currently stuck with the 160g limit of the iPod classic as the only other practical option at the moment. Car PC's are a no no.

 

So please can we have a decent list of exactly what you do - and do not support from an audio perspective.

 

Thanks.

Gentle - nudge.

 

Is this being looked into - or being ignored - guys. . . ?

What do you mean by "DLNA profiles"? I've never heard or seen this term.

does it relate to this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance#External_links

Hi Guys, thanks for the response. I've tried not to write a reply any longer than I felt was necessary to help you in providing the data I need. It is still quite long though. Thanks in advance.

 

Yes - its quite a big topic (outside the scope of this forum really) - but it is a technology that the Voyager Air supports with the latest firmware update.

 

The short version is that the Air Drive is a ‘DLNA server’ - the servers responsibility in the context of a DLNA 'party' is to interpret the format of the files it is storing, so that it can advertise these files to callers who are interested. (However not all files will be advertised to all callers. More below.) These formats are called DLNA profiles. They have a specific syntax. AVC_TS_HD_NTSC for example is Blueray disc. (I am more interested in the Audio in this case but the principal applies equally.)

 

When a DLNA renderer (TV or audio player) device wants to access content the server is storing, one of the session setup exchanges, is for the renderer to tell the server what formats of data it can handle.... make sense? e.g. I am a video player and I can handle H264 and MPEG2 video streams and AAC and MP3 audio streams in an MPEGTS or MP4 container. Or I am music player and I can play x and y file formats. (That is a hugely abridged explanation). The official term is a "UPnP GetProtocolInfo" call. The Server will then send back a list that contains only the formats the renderer can handle natively AND formats that it can “munge on the fly” into something the renderer can handle. This is called remuxing and transcoding.

 

Since the Air drive is very low power which is goodness, (I am pretty confident) its not going to be transcoding as this is typically a VERY CPU intensive operation. No matter, this puts the onus on the users to place content onto the drive that the server side DLNA code on the Air drive can: 1. Interpret and 2. Can stream to clients that support that format natively. (i.e. not feel the need to transcode it). This is nothing to do with data storage as you are now seeing.

 

This requires us (the customers) having access to the specs and formats of the DLNA server so that we can accommodate it’s limitations in how we utilize it and get the maximum possible quality for the least possible power consumption and space. This was what I was asking for in my first post. This is still the purpose of this question and this message to Corsair on this product.

 

More information

 

In my case audio is all in FLAC or AIFF and I like to listen to music in the car as there is no one to annoy with volume, like there is at home. So the ability to stream quality audio to my iPhone which is wired to my car audio system is very attractive. The iPhone supports AIFF natively but needs a wireless network to stream which the Air drive provides of course. AIFF files are generally around 700mb per CD of data (300k per s) so the size of this drive is a 3X improvement over my current setup of 160g iPods. Added to which there are (well reported and documented) issues with the iPod leaking hard disk noise into the audio channels when powered by 12v. The solution above would totally overcome that issue, as well.

 

More about DLNA.

 

Transcoding is like this:

 

Imagine you have a can of food - it contains a mixture of beans and sausage.

That's loosely the way video is stored. There is a container format (the can) and then audio and video inside the container. (sausage and beans). When a transcoding operation happens one or more of the streams is converted “on the fly” and the result repackaged in the container and sent to the renderer. The renderer has no clue that the file was not stored in a format it could not handle on the server.

 

Remuxing is like this:

 

Imagine you have a can of food - it contains again a mixture of beans and sausage.

Only this time you can only deal with paper bags as a container. So the server takes the beans and sausage and puts it into a paper bag for you.

Remuxing is basically a container re-wrap.

 

Audio alone is generally simpler but think of MP3 where the stream can be different bitrates. Same principal there "can" is MP3 and stream is audio of a given bitrate.

 

You can see that with every device having specific combinations of what it does and does not handle and what format those formats need to arrive in – the job of the server becomes exponentially huge!

This is the reason that DLNA have "profiles" to identify combinations of data and formats they are stored in.

 

Most manufacturers have their devices DLNA certified. http://www.upnp-database.info/listDevices.jsp?filterType=servers One of the benefits of doing that to the consumer is that we can look at that database and questions like mine are no longer necessary.

For anyone else reading this - my question was answered by

 

http://www.pocket-lint.com/review/121835-corsair-voyager-air-review

 

+ there is an iOS app that corsair write to avoid all the complications of DLNA.

It effectively allows the phone or Ipad to browse content on the drive and play it (decoding on the phone obviously).

Update - I bought my drive this afternoon.

 

It does not support AIF :(( - $$ down the toilet for me.

So specifically here's the problem and the solution, yes there is a solution.

 

The Linux DLNA server - does not present anything other that m4a or mp3 extension named files either through the corsair app or even over DLNA!!

 

This was the whole frisking point of my original question to find out that information. Which Corsair people (you really should be more clued up on this) you did not answer. Not thrilled.

 

However I took my content and just did a straight rename of the file extension to mp3 or m4a and by doing that it now shows up on the drives Linux DLNA server.

 

Also I can play it directly in the Corair app. Obviously the iPhone is doing all the decoding so this was the expected result. So for me I am pretty much sorted since I don't tend to use playlists very much but tend to play albums. In future I can just write scripts to shuffle the files into the required order as needed to overcome this issue - maybe they will re-write the DLNA server and make it a proper one.

Why are you so hung up on DLNA? DLNA is slow and terrible anyway IMO.

 

For AIFF playback on an iPod or iPad, you can connect via SAMBA compatible apps like FileBrowser. Some 3rd party media players, like the one you found, will connect via SAMBA also.

 

If you have to use DLNA for some reason, you should browse your content in folder mode instead of library mode.

@Yinmeout

The DLNA service (at least in FW1.2.7) is provided by ReadyMedia (formerly known as MiniDLNA ) version 1.0.25, and it has a really simple config:

friendly_name=(your air's name)

media_dir=(drive specific)

port=8200

album_art_names=Cover.jpg/cover.jpg/AlbumArtSmall.jpg/albumartsmall.jpg/AlbumArt.jpg/albumart.jpg/Album.jpg/album.jpg/Folder.jpg/folder.jpg/Thumb.jpg/thumb.jpg

inotify=yes

notify_interval=895

model_number=CRSRVA

db_dir=(drive specific)

#autoscan=false

 

If ReadyMedia supports AIF files in newer release then you can hope that it will get its way into the VA firmware.

 

EDIT:

Transcoding and any kind of media processing on the VA sems to me a bit too much, with about 299 BOGOMIPS on a single ARMv6 CPU.

You have to keep in mind, if you do not want to transcode on your phone, you will definitely not want to transcode on the fly on the VA.

 

 

@Yellowbeard

What is the current version of ReadyMedia in the 2.0.17 firmware of VA?

 

@Yellowbeard

What is the current version of ReadyMedia in the 2.0.17 firmware of VA?

 

No clue but Bill Rathbone can answer that.

No clue but Bill Rathbone can answer that.

 

Will he drop by later, or shall i try to contact him somehow?

He'll check in, he's been closely monitoring this forum since the V2 came out.

We are running v1.0.25.

 

In this version DLNA only supports MP3 audio in library view. It will support all other formats (including AIFF) in folder view.