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Nursing Home setup.

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cowen80194

Serviio newbie

Posts: 5

Joined: Sun May 17, 2020 6:41 pm

Post Sun May 17, 2020 7:11 pm

Nursing Home setup.

I am looking to deploy 6 units to nursing homes to put all the videos on a server.
Many of the residents are seniors and memory care.
This presents the problem.
Since many are ADA and have issues with their memory, a user name, and password would prevent many from using the system.
I am thinking an in-built setting for a Nursing home or like environment that would prevent the appliance from attachment to external sources for streaming would be doable, like setup a checksum that if the IP is outside og a range it would not allow WAN streaming for privacy/copyright concerns.
I have been looking for a DLNA since March when the lockdown started, and the Nursing homes I service are not looking to be unlocked for some time after the lockdown is lifted. I see movies but the residents used to sit in a large room to watch them and now are restricted to the door of their rooms for games and if they can see a video playing.
This project mostly is volunteer in nature, less the cost for hardware and videos. I have some extra servers lying around and the homes have their own videos, it would be grand to allow residents to watch the video on the flat screens in their rooms and not have to put in a user and password, also this would allow for English and Spanish movies or other language videos to be shown, as each home has a cluster of languages depending on the seniors living there.
One home has 8 language speaking aids and residents that I could count.
So could this be a developmental addition?
Thank you,

Ps.
I did find the remember me button but I am thinking about if someone new comes in or settings get cleared... Maybe I am overthinking this. PLEX is so difficult to setup the way I wanted to do this, with its over the internet log on. This will eventually be a sandboxed closed system with no internet connection.

Pss.
Yeah found that logout clears the login screen and it does not store the user and password on the login screen....
That and I am looking to setup a EN ES FN ... screen for each language as I find movies.
Again Thank You,
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atc98092

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DLNA master

Posts: 5205

Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2012 10:22 pm

Location: Washington (the state)

Post Sun May 17, 2020 9:36 pm

Re: Nursing Home setup.

DLNA has no name/password requirements or support, so that works in your favor.

The issue with watching media on their in-room TVs is, what is being used as the player. If the room TVs support DLNA, it because pretty simple. Every Smart TV I've seen supports videos in the MKV container, with the only variable as the video and audio codecs supported. If your videos are ripped DVD movies and TV shows, they will all have MPEG 2 video and most likely AC3 audio. Any modern TV (as in the last ten+ years or so) should support that. And any oddball videos can likely be handled with transcoding. However, transcoding multiple videos at the same time can really require a powerful server. This does of course require the TVs to be connected to the same internal network as the Serviio server.

The other issue I have to mention is legality. It is perfectly legal for someone who has purchased media (DVDs or Blu ray discs) to make a digital copy for their own use and backup. What they can't do is make those videos available to other users who don't own a copy of the movie themselves. It's a bit of a gray area, as obviously you can invite friends over and all watch something on your TV. And products like Plex allow you to share you library with others. So don't take this as a flat "You can't do that". Just be aware it's a potential issue.

One thing that could be done is have a separate folder of media on the server for each resident. You can control access to videos using the User account function in Serviio, and restrict a particular player/TV to a particular library location. This is done within the Serviio console, and has nothing to do with names/passwords on the player itself. It would take a little planning for folder structure, and then some administration to ensure everything is configured accurately.

Or, just let every player access every video, and not worry about it. Overall it's really not much different than swapping DVDs between friends. And greatly simplifies administration.

Assuming the media isn't already in digital format, someone has to rip the discs and place them in the proper folder location. The files also need to be named accurately if you are going to use online databases for metadata retrieval. That's a discussion to have once you've determined how it's all going to work. There's no danger of the media being accessed outside the nursing home's network, as DLNA is not routed on the Internet, so anyone outside the network has no access.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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cowen80194

Serviio newbie

Posts: 5

Joined: Sun May 17, 2020 6:41 pm

Post Mon May 18, 2020 2:39 am

Re: Nursing Home setup.

Hmm interesting.
The folders would be EN or English
As new movies in other languages are bought then ES or Espaniol and so forth.
all rooms would have access to the movies.
Basically the homes have repurchased many lost stolen or broken movies many times.
This would put an end to that and also allow residents to watch movies of their choice instead of all being grouped into one room.
Bingo is done with each resident at the door to their room and someone in the center of the 4 hallways calling numbers.
The idea is to try to provide more comfort to the residents.
I see what you are saying about the TVs and will look into that.
We can set up various Vlans for the streaming.
We just do not want to become an offsite movie streamer like netflix or others like it.
Good food to think about
thanks,
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atc98092

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DLNA master

Posts: 5205

Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2012 10:22 pm

Location: Washington (the state)

Post Mon May 18, 2020 3:42 pm

Re: Nursing Home setup.

Be careful with VLANs, as DLNA isn't easily routed across them. As long as all the players and the Serviio computer are on the same VLAN, you should be fine.

I think the two main issues for you are A) what format to use to store the videos, and B) what player to use. The answer to B might alter your decision about A. Inexpensive media players, such as Roku or Fire TV, only support a handful of codecs and containers. As I mentioned, the MKV container usually works well, as it's supported by many players. But the codecs themselves are more limited. Roku has added MPEG-2 support (finally), so ripped DVDs can be played without transcoding. Most Blu Ray discs use H.264, which is also well supported. But there are some that use VC-1 video, which the inexpensive players do not support. Then you must also consider the audio codec. Virtually everything supports AC-3 (Dolby Digital) or PCM. Most support AAC, but not if there are more than two channels.

Ripping media to the server is simple. MakeMKV can rip virtually anything, but it doesn't convert the audio or video. So a DVD with MPEG-2 video and AC-3 audio is ready to go quickly. It takes about 15-20 minutes to rip a DVD movie of about a two hour length. If the DVD has DTS audio as the main track, there is usually also a DD track, and you can select that in MakeMKV instead of the DTS track. If the disc being ripped contained unsupported video/audio, you either need to convert it in advance, or let Serviio transcode on the fly. Transcoding audio is no big deal. It doesn't take much computing power at all. But transcoding video is processor intensive, so it might be worth the time to convert them in advance. With either no or audio only transcoding, you should be able to stream to many players at the same time without issue.

One other thing to mention about multiple streams. If all the media is contained on the same hard drive, you could run into access bottlenecks as different players want different titles. What I do is use multiple hard drives, and spread my library across them. That way it is less likely that one hard drive can become saturated by traffic requests. I currently have 5 separate media drives, with a new one arriving from Amazon today (I'm running out of space).
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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cowen80194

Serviio newbie

Posts: 5

Joined: Sun May 17, 2020 6:41 pm

Post Tue May 19, 2020 5:55 am

Re: Nursing Home setup.

Hmm I thought I tried MakeMKV and did not have luck with multiple Disney discs
Kind of where I got bottled necked on imaging discs.
I had setup a ripper and was doing 7 at a time and got several discs then started to hit the kids selection of Disney and that whole process ended.
So is it like handbrake and you add some dll to unlock that feature?
Most of the videos they have are Disney or subs of.
Would ubuntu work better than an MS platform to run the ripping?
I was doing great then hit a brick wall and now question many things about if I am in need of changing the OS for the better.
I am looking for the server-grade hardware to put drives in and build on. I like that Serviio runs on Linux platforms.
I have a Buffalo TS-RXL/R5 Series that I am playing with that has issues right now so I might not go that direction.
Thanks, Lots of great tips to remember.
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atc98092

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DLNA master

Posts: 5205

Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2012 10:22 pm

Location: Washington (the state)

Post Tue May 19, 2020 12:56 pm

Re: Nursing Home setup.

I've never had any issue with ripping Disney, other than sometimes it's difficult with their Blu ray movies to select the correct video. I remember with Tangled the first one I tried had English as the audio, but visuals in the movie, such as Flynn's wanted poster, were in a different language. But as far as ripping them MakeMKV has never failed me. It's been improved to the point it can now rip UHD Blu Rays without requiring downloading license key files.

I can't say if using Linux would be any easier/better/faster for ripping. Typically with many applications in Linux you are required to build so many things yourself, and there's many ways to make a mistake when running the Make command.

As far as the Serviio server, Linux would likely have less overhead than Windows, leaving more power/memory to provide services. But again, you have to comfortable with Linux. I do run a small computer with the latest version of Mint, just for playing around. But I am nowhere near what one would call an expert on the OS.
Dan

LG NANO85 4K TV, Samsung JU7100 4K TV, Sony BDP-S3500, Sharp 4K Roku TV, Insignia Roku TV, Roku Ultra, Premiere and Stick, Nvidia Shield, Yamaha RX-V583 AVR.
Primary server: Intel i5-6400, 16 gig ram, Windows 10 Pro, 22 TB hard drive space | Test server Windows 10 Pro, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8 gig ram

HOWTO: Enable debug logging HOWTO: Identify media file contents
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freaknik

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DLNA master

Posts: 345

Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:05 pm

Location: Endor

Post Tue May 19, 2020 1:42 pm

Re: Nursing Home setup.

I have been using dvdfab for ripping disney and sony and any other tough guys haha:

http://194.58.88.115/download/DVDFab_x64_10201.exe

Back when netflix did free trials of their three dvd's at a time through the mail service I got a lot of Looney Tunes Golden Collection and Walt Disney Treasures Collection and dvdfab worked to rip them to VOB or convert to xvid AVI.

Serviio handles both formats fine and if you can stand the encoding time I suggest the xvid option to keep file size down. (for cartoons and most of what I watch it stays at dvd quality).

EDIT: for command line and linux MPlayer is the best. You can go from the dvd or iso file or folder of vob files and extract to chapters as vob or encode as you extract to xvid or x264. If you know how to make a for loop it's a very powerfull tool.
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cowen80194

Serviio newbie

Posts: 5

Joined: Sun May 17, 2020 6:41 pm

Post Sat May 23, 2020 6:38 am

Re: Nursing Home setup.

Hmm I will give both a try then. I am not all that familiar with Linux distros. I wish I was more so.
Thanks,
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freaknik

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DLNA master

Posts: 345

Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:05 pm

Location: Endor

Post Sat May 23, 2020 3:26 pm

Re: Nursing Home setup.

Linux is great I prefer it to windows but just suggested windows first because that's what most people use.

Now that I check dvdfab has changed to shareware that does a watermark so just use if you are on windows Mplayerwin and FFmpeg.

I will give you the for loop I use and the string I use in mplayer:

mplayer dvdnav://1 -dvd-device "C:\Users\freaknik\Downloads\moviefilm\VIDEO_TS" -chapter 1-1 -dumpstream -dumpfile 1.vob

The 1 where it says chapter 1-1 read that as chapter one through one, in other words the next chapter would need -chapter 2-2

When you do -chapter 2-2 and 3-3 be sure to save the filename accordingly, 2.vob, 3.vob, etc. Then you have a folder of vob chapters.

In notepad copy this and save as something.bat

for %%A IN (*.vob) DO ffmpeg -i "%%A" -c:v mpeg4 -vtag xvid -qscale:v 3 "%%A.avi"

Drop ffmpeg.exe in the folder with the vob files and go to cmd and the directory they are in and call the batch file

something.bat

and it will convert all the vob files to avi that is slightly smaller file but good quality.
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cowen80194

Serviio newbie

Posts: 5

Joined: Sun May 17, 2020 6:41 pm

Post Sun May 24, 2020 3:36 am

Re: Nursing Home setup.

Re: Nursing Home setup.
Linux is great I prefer it to windows but just suggested windows first because that's what most people use.

Now that I check dvdfab has changed to shareware that does a watermark so just use if you are on windows Mplayerwin and FFmpeg.

I will give you the for loop I use and the string I use in mplayer:

mplayer dvdnav://1 -dvd-device "C:\Users\freaknik\Downloads\moviefilm\VIDEO_TS" -chapter 1-1 -dumpstream -dumpfile 1.vob

The 1 where it says chapter 1-1 read that as chapter one through one, in other words the next chapter would need -chapter 2-2

When you do -chapter 2-2 and 3-3 be sure to save the filename accordingly, 2.vob, 3.vob, etc. Then you have a folder of vob chapters.

In notepad copy this and save as something.bat

Thank you

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