Tiny DLNA

A tiny DLNA sender & receiver.

Install

$ cargo install -f tiny-dlna

This installs two binaries: tiny-render and tiny-cli.

Usage for Tiny DLNA Render

Just to support subtitles.

$ tiny-render

This will activate a DLNA receiver named "Tiny Render", which can stream videos from apps like 虎牙直播, Bilibili, and other video platforms. Additionally, you can also use tiny-cli play (see below) to play local videos (like in your RaspberryPi) on it.

Options:

--name <NAME>     Specify render name
--port <PORT>     Server port (default: 59876, or 59877 when recording)
--dump-to <FILE>  Save the stream into a file (see below)
--headless        Record with ffmpeg, without a window (see below)
--http-logs       Enable HTTP and SSDP server logs
-v, --verbose     Enable debug logs

Save video streaming into a file (Stream Recording)

$ tiny-render --dump-to ~/Movie/lol-msi-2024.mp4

The recorder shows up as "Tiny Recorder". It records one stream: once the sender stops (or plays something else), the recorder quits and leaves mpv running so the recording can finish.

Headless recording (no display, e.g. a server or RaspberryPi)

When there is no display (DISPLAY/WAYLAND_DISPLAY unset), mpv isn't installed, or --headless is given, the recorder uses ffmpeg instead of mpv. ffmpeg copies the stream into the file without decoding it, so no window is needed and CPU use stays low.

$ tiny-render --name TinyRecorder --dump-to foobar.mp4

ffmpeg keeps recording after the sender stops, so a video still downloading gets finished. The recorder exits when ffmpeg does: when the stream ends, or on Ctrl-C (or SIGTERM), which tells ffmpeg to finish the file first. For a live stream, use Ctrl-C to end the recording. .mp4/.mov files are written in fragments, so they stay playable even if the process gets killed.

Usage for Tiny DLNA Cli

List the names of available DLNA devices:

$ tiny-cli list

List devices with all their attributes (location, control URL, USN, ...) as JSON:

$ tiny-cli list -v

Play a local video file on a DLNA device having "TV" in its name:

$ tiny-cli play ~/Movies/foo/bar.mp4 -q TV

If there is a bar.srt in the same directory, it will be served as long as the DLNA render supports subtitles. Use --title to override the title shown on the device. Press Ctrl-C to stop playing.

An http:// or https:// URL can be played the same way:

$ tiny-cli play 'https://example.com/live.m3u8' -q TV

Stop the streaming on a device:

$ tiny-cli stop -q TV

When a video is playing, you can issue a seek command to adjust its position:

$ tiny-cli seek '00:17:25' -q TV

Requirements for your System

For Render

For running the render, mpv needs to be installed (headless recording needs ffmpeg instead). On Mac, you may do following:

$ ln -sf /Applications/mpv.app/Contents/MacOS/mpv /usr/local/bin/

For Windows, after installed mpv, add mpv.exe's directory into PATH.

Network

Devices find each other with SSDP (UDP multicast on port 1900), so the firewall should allow it. tiny-cli play serves the video from a random TCP port in the 50000–58999 range; tiny-render listens on 59876 (59877 when recording) unless --port is given.

Files

Both tools keep their state in ~/.config/tiny-dlna/:

• tiny-render.json: the render's UUID, so devices recognize it across restarts.
• live-renders.json: renders running on this machine. Several renders can run at once (on different ports), and discovery replies cover all of them.

Dev

$ cargo run --bin tiny-cli -- -h
$ cargo run --bin tiny-render -- -h
$ cargo test