ccast-player

A Media Player for the Chromecast. Implemented in Python. Runs on Linux and maybe MacOS/Windows (not tested). It allows you to play audio and video files, which are available on your local computer, onto a Google Chromecast. The intended use case is where you have a collection of videos and want to be able to use a web browser on a different computer in your home network to cast them to your TV.

Provides a web server which lists all your movies
Casts a movie file to your Chromecast when you click on a movie title
Restarts a movie where you left off, if you stop watching before the end

Installation

sudo apt install ffmpeg # or install ffmpeg some other way
git clone https://github.com/howff/ccast-player
cd ccast-player
virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
sudo mkdir /var/log/ccastplayer
sudo ./install_service.sh

Configuration

The seek position database is stored in the current directory. The log configuration file is stored in the current directory. When run as a service the ccastplayer.service file will chdir to this installation directory to find the database and will use the full path to the log configuration file. To change this either change the service file and re-install it, or edit the install_service.sh script. The logconf file specifies /var/log/ccastplayer as the log directory on the assumption the service is run by systemd but you can change this.

Usage

Start server

python -m flask run
OR
./app.py
OR
gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:5000 --chdir $(pwd) --log-config ccastplayer.logconf --workers=1 app:app

It will take a few seconds to discover the Chromecasts on your network, sometimes up to a minute.

Point your browser at http://localhost:5000/ and select a movie to watch it, which if you've started watching before will resume from the last location.

Additional options are available:

The list of movies can be sorted:

By name - http://localhost:5000/?sort=name (the default, uses a natural sorting method)
By most recently modified file - http://localhost:5000/?sort=mtime (base on the modification time of the movie file)
By most recently accessed file - http://localhost:5000/?sort=atime (based on the access time of the movie file)
By most recently watched file - http://localhost:5000/?sort=wtime (based on the time when a seek position was recorded in the database)

Full set of options:

usage: app.py [-h] [-v] [-d] [--host HOST] [--port PORT]
   [--chromecast CHROMECAST] [--media MEDIA]
   [--media_dump] [--db_dump] [--db_set DBSET]

  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d, --debug           debug
  --host HOST           network interfaces to listen on (default 0.0.0.0)
  --port PORT           network port to listen on (default 5000)
  --chromecast NAME     name of Chromecast to cast to (default TV)
  --media MEDIA         location of media files (default /mnt/cifs/shared/video/movies)
  --media_dump          display the list of files (as HTML) then exit
  --db_dump             display the database then exit
  --db_set DBSET        set seek position (in seconds) filename=seconds (e.g. file.mp4=60)

You will want to specify at least:

--chromecast with the name of your Chromecast (the friendly name not the model name)
--media with the path to your directory of movie files (it will search all directories inside there too)

API

List all movies

curl http://localhost:5000/
curl http://localhost:5000/?sort=XXX where XXX is name,mtime,atime,wtime

Play a file

curl http://localhost:5000/api/v1/play?file=test1.mp3
curl http://localhost:5000/api/v1/play?file=test1.mp3?resume=0
curl http://localhost:5000/api/v1/play?file=test1.mp3?subtitles=1

You must URL-encode the filename, i.e. no spaces.

The play method will instruct the Chromecast to start playing from a particular URL. That URL will be the stream method which outputs the movie to the Chromecast, and transcodes in the process.

http://localhost:5000/api/v1/stream?file=test1.mp3

Use resume=0 to ignore the seek position in the database and start watching from the beginning.

Use subtitles=1 to display the subtitles from the WEBVTT format file with the movie filename plus .vtt appended (i.e. append .vtt, don't replace .mp4 with .vtt). You can use ffmpeg to convert srt to vtt format. The movie file listing will only show a Subtitles option if this file is available.

Troubleshooting

Make sure the TV is switched on when starting the service or calling the web page otherwise it will hang (even if all you want to do is to download a file)
Check the movie file itself, some are 4k and (currently) won't be downsampled to play on a 1080p chromecast/tv.
Also check the transcoding can run at full speed by looking at the ffmpeg output because if it can't you'll get stuttering.
Try avahi-browse _googlecast._tcp to see if your Chromecast is responding on the network
Use --media_dump to see which files are being found by the search
Use --db_dump to see the content of the database which holds the seek position of each movie watched. The database is in sqlite3 format so you can see/edit it using the sqlite3 program if installed.
Use --db_set to change the seek position of a movie, for example to change it to 10 minutes (600 seconds) for file1.mp4 use --db_set file1.mp4=600
Try downgrading protobuf package to 3.20.x or lower. pip install protobuf==3.20.1 or Set PROTOCOL_BUFFERS_PYTHON_IMPLEMENTATION=python (but this will use pure-Python parsing and will be much slower).
Try downgrading zeroconf package to 0.24.3 or something?

How it works

Listen for Chromecasts
Connect to Chomecast
Tell Chromecast to play from a URL
Listen for requests for that URL
Stream media back to the Chromecast client

howff/ccast-player