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.

tiny-cli play keeps running while the video plays, and quits by itself when playback ends, when the device stops or goes away, or when another sender takes the device over (see docs/auto-exit.md). Press Ctrl-C to stop playing earlier.

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