[Tutorial] Macast as headless DLNA renderer

[bogie]

Preface:

I was looking for a project like macast for quite some time, my priorities were not having to run a window manager on my headless living room server and being able to remotely cast video files on my TV.

My setup is a arch-linux server with a TV via HDMI and 5.1 analog sound system via pulseaudio, I use Jellyfin to cast my videos.

Prerequisites:

• A user called 'macast', which will be used to run Macast
• A Xserver (I use xorg-server and xorg-apps packages)
• Systemd

Configuration:

We will need to create and edit a few files by hand(I might create a AUR repository later):

/etc/systemd/system/macast.service

[Unit]
Description=Macast-gui (X11)
After=remote-fs.target systemd-user-sessions.service network-online.target nss-lookup.target sound.target bluetooth.target polkit.service upower.service mysqld.service lircd.service
Wants=network-online.target polkit.service upower.service
Conflicts=getty@tty1.service

[Service]
User=macast
Group=macast
PAMName=login
TTYPath=/dev/tty1
ExecStart=/usr/bin/xinit /usr/bin/macast-gui
ExecStop=/usr/bin/killall --user macast --exact --wait macast-gui.bin
Restart=on-abort
StandardInput=tty
StandardOutput=journal

[Install]
Alias=display-manager.service

Note the User=macast and Group=macast as well as the ExecStop --user macast switch, if you want to use a different user, make your changes here

run
systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl start macast && systemctl stop macast

This will create the macast_setting.json in /home/macast/.config/Macast/

Next edit that file and make sure the following settings are set as follows:
/home/macast/.config/Macast/macast_setting.json

"PlayerPosition": 4,
"PlayerSize":4,

This will run mpv/macast in the center as fullscreen, you can find compatible settings here:

Macast/macast_renderer/mpv.py

Lines 482 to 506 in 937891b

	class SettingProperty(Enum):
	PlayerHW = 100
	PlayerHW_Disable = 0
	PlayerHW_Enable = 1
	PlayerHW_Force = 2
	PlayerSize = 200
	PlayerSize_Small = 0
	PlayerSize_Normal = 1
	PlayerSize_Large = 2
	PlayerSize_Auto = 3
	PlayerSize_FullScreen = 4
	PlayerPosition = 300
	PlayerPosition_LeftTop = 0
	PlayerPosition_LeftBottom = 1
	PlayerPosition_RightTop = 2
	PlayerPosition_RightBottom = 3
	PlayerPosition_Center = 4
	PlayerOntop = 400
	PlayerOntop_False = 0
	PlayerOntop_True = 1
	PlayerDefaultVolume = 500

Usage:

Now run macast:
systemctl start macast
and optionally run macast on boot:
systemctl enable macast

[bogie]

I did not find out what the difference between macast-cli and macast-gui is, also as a caveat you will not be able to access the context menu of the macast tray icon and as such edit settings on the tv itself.

Maybe we can get a way to access the settings via a browser, as the underlying code is already using web pages for configuration. However when trying to access the settings via the browser(http://ip:49571/dlna/setting.html) I got some vue errors.

Uncaught ReferenceError: VueI18n is not defined
at setting.html:380:18

[xfangfang]

Thank you very much for writing such a detailed tutorial for Macast.

macast-gui will try to display an icon in the status bar. It works well on macOS and Windows, but cannot be displayed or clicked on some Linux. (https://github.com/xfangfang/Macast/wiki/Installation#linux)

---

Uncaught ReferenceError: VueI18n is not defined
at setting.html:380:18

I don't know why this problem occurs. It seems that some dependent files were not packaged when installing the Macast (because I haven't maintained the Macast for a while, so I'm not particularly sure what the problem is). I expect to take the time to rewrite the code related to web pages around the beginning of next year.

[bogie]

Apparently the AUR targets the dev branch, which has split up the service and settings server. See

Macast/macast/server.py

Line 220 in 8f9d99d

self.setting_server.bind_addr = ('localhost', Setting.get_setting_port())

instead of listening on 0.0.0.0, the settings server is forced on localhost, this should be at least configurable.

[pyxdtc]

xml/setting.html
add this:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue-i18n@8.9.0/dist/vue-i18n.js"></script>

[2017fighting]

maybe macast-gui.bin does not exist now, what should i change it to ?