It doesn't take the skills and arsenal of Lora Croft to free your multimedia
files from the confines of your home server. Join Donald Burr as he shows you
how to unleash the power of MediaTomb and stream your music, photos, and movies
to your TV or home theatre system using a set-top box or game console.
2. What is MediaTomb?
“MediaTomb is an open source (GPL) UPnP
MediaServer with a nice web user interface,
it allows you to stream your digital media
through your home network and listen to/
watch it on a variety of UPnP compatible
devices.”
3. What is UPnP?
“Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of
networking protocols for primarily residential
networks without expert administrators that
permits networked devices, such as personal
computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi
access points and mobile devices to seamlessly
discover each other's presence on the network
and establish functional network services for
data sharing, communications, and
entertainment.”
4. In Plain English
MediaTomb is Open Source software that
lets you stream your multimedia files --
photos, music, videos -- to a wide variety of
set-top boxes and portable players over your
home wireless or wired network.
10. Additional Useful
Packages
• ffmpeg
• libffmpegthumbnailer
• mencoder
• mkvtoolnix
• mediainfo
• All available in Medibuntu repository
11. Running MediaTomb
• In most cases, just “mediatomb”
• Might need to specify a network interface
mediatomb -e eth1
• Use -d to daemonize (background) it
• More options (but you probably won’t need
them)
12. Configuring MediaTomb
• Creates a default configuration on first run
• $HOME/.mediatomb
• config.xml - this is the main config file
• mediatomb.db - database (SQlite) that contains your
media library
• In many cases the default configuration will be “good
enough”
• Might need to be tweaked for certain odd devices
• Check MediaTomb website or config file comments
13. Config File Sections
• server - general server configuration
• import - how to aggregate content
• mappings - determine file extension to
media type mapping
• transcoding - if transcoding is desired, this
section controls how it’s done
14. Importing
• By default imports identically to the way files
are laid out on disk
• Optional JavaScript support lets you change this
• MP3s organized by artist/album
• Movies organized by genre
• Photos by the date they were taken
• ...etc...
15. Importing
• music • Music
• Artist
• Artist_-_Album_-_Song1.mp3
• Album
• Artist_-_Album_-_Song2.mp3
• Song1
• more_mp3s
• Song2
• otherArtist_-
• OtherArtist
_otherAlbum_-_Song1.mp3
• OtherAlbum
• otherArtist_-
• Song1
_otherAlbum_-_Song2.mp3
• ...etc...
• Song2
• ...etc...
16. Transcoding
• MediaTomb only streams a file bit-by-bit to your
playback device. It doesn’t care about file
formats, bit rates, codecs, etc.
• If your device can’t play the file you’re sending it
natively, then transcoding is required
• MediaTomb website/wiki is the best resource on
how to set this up
• PS3 is the most common, and has many good pre-
canned setups
21. For More Information
• MediaTomb
http://mediatomb.cc/
• Easy MediaTomb PS3 setup
http://vanalboom.org/node/14
http://vanalboom.org/node/16
• My Notes, Slides, etc.
http://DonaldBurr.com/mediatomb/