Repos / hi.imnhan.com / 363ef86227
commit 363ef862277ea33d882852edf9944bcb8aeb19a4
Author: Bùi Thành Nhân <hi@imnhan.com>
Date: Sun Apr 26 12:12:35 2020 +0700
add video player post
diff --git a/content/posts/towards-an-acceptable-video-playing-experience.md b/content/posts/towards-an-acceptable-video-playing-experience.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..780d20d
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+++ b/content/posts/towards-an-acceptable-video-playing-experience.md
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+Title: Towards an acceptable video playing experience
+Date: 2020-04-26 10:06
+Category: side projects
+
+I watch movies and TV shows.
+Naturally, I have some strong preferences on how to view them:
+
+**English subtitles**. Most things I watch are in English.
+Although I'm perfectly comfortable with face-to-face English conversations, I
+just can't keep up with English dialogue in movies.
+I also don't want to put up with badly translated subs, so English subtitles
+they must be. This rules out most Vietnamese "netflixes".
+
+**1080p**, unless it's ancient or super rare stuff.
+
+**Streamable from tablets**. I shouldn't need to turn on my PC just to catch up
+on the latest Better Call Saul episode.
+
+In 2020, there sure are a variety of options available, all of which fall short
+in some ways:
+
+- Shady ad-infested Vietnamese movie streaming sites (phimmoi etc): Obnoxious
+ pop-up tabs aside, they always [abuse Google Drive][1] (or even Facebook?)
+ storage behind the scene. Problem is Google Drive encoding is lossy as hell,
+ so even at 1080p they look noticeably worse than the original. Also they
+ almost always come with hardcoded Vietnamese subs.
+
+- Netflix clones by big ISPs: Pathetic catalogues. Vietnamese subs.
+
+- Netflix itself: Actually quite good thanks to usable Android app, but besides
+ the increasingly shitty catalogue, it's [impossible to get 1080p from
+ Linux][2]. Also I hate that I can't manually set the video quality: even if
+ my current connection gets slow I'd rather pause and wait for buffering
+ instead of putting up with a pixelated 480p mess. I still have my Netflix
+ subscription today, but only grudgingly.
+
+- "dude, like, just torrent it". Solid advice since torrents usually come with
+ embedded English sub, but it requires actually downloading the thing first,
+ and can't easily switch devices without moving the file along.
+
+- Setting up a torrent + plex server? That would require (1) ample disk space,
+ (2) generous network bandwidth, (3) actual horsepower for transcoding and (4)
+ fast enough network access from home or wherever I watch movies from.
+
+ - A local NAS-style server satisfies (1), (3) & (4) but struggles with (2),
+ and I don't want it to hog my home internet pipes.
+
+ - Finding a VPS service with (1) & (2) is doable, but (3) gets expensive
+ fast and usually they're in the US or EU which can never have (4). I'm
+ actually running a seedbox on Ramnode but can't run plex on it because of
+ lack of (3) and (4). If I'm willing to pay more I can get a Hetzner
+ dedicated server which can probably do (3) but (4) gets even worse.
+
+
+## Remote seedbox + Google Drive
+
+I settled on Netflix and torrented stuff that's not available there.
+For the seedbox, I installed Transmission-web on a Ramnode VPS that has 320GB
+of HDD at $50/year. The network bandwidth is meh but it gets the job done.
+
+Since Transmission supports hooks via external scripts, I set it up so that
+downloaded torrents get uploaded to my Google Drive using `rclone`.
+
+Now whenever I find something interesting that's not on Netflix, I look for a
+working torrent file and tell my seedbox to get it. Thanks to the web interface
+I can do it from both my PC and tablet. I don't have to keep my devices running
+so it doesn't matter if the torrent is not well-seeded and takes a long time.
+
+Once the file lands on Google Drive, I can either:
+
+- watch it directly from GDrive's web/Android app if I don't care about
+ subtitles or original quality, or
+
+- download the file first and watch properly
+
+The latter is not ideal.
+
+
+## Enter gflick
+
+Turns out advanced video players like `mpv` and `vlc` can directly stream HTTP
+videos with full support for seeking and audio / text(a.k.a subtitles) tracks.
+See, well-formed video container formats will have metadata at the beginning of
+the file telling where each track lies within the file. The player can download
+just the metadata first, then the subtitle track, then the actual video track
+starting from a specific position. This is only possible if the http server
+supports partial content download [via the `Range` header][3].
+
+Google Drive does have a "direct link" API in the form of
+`https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/<fileId>?alt=media`, which luckily
+supports partial download. The bad news is downloading private files requires
+authentication via a bearer token. The only HTTP authentication scheme that
+these players support, as far as I know, is [Basic auth][4].
+
+So I wrote [gflick][5], which is practically an HTTP proxy that does Google
+authentication behind the scene, exposing a plain HTTP streaming endpoint so
+`mpv` and the like can use without modification.
+
+Here's what it looks like in action:
+
+<video controls>
+ <source src="https://junk.imnhan.com/gflick.mp4" type="video/mp4">
+</video>
+
+It can run just fine as a local server, but cumbersome and not practical on
+tablets, so I put it on a publicly accessible server, protected by nginx which
+does TLS and Basic Auth. As mentioned earlier, good video players can do basic
+auth out of the box. Gflick also exposes a simple web interface to browse my
+Google Drives, so now I can browse my drive on any pc/tablet, and watch things
+with full seek, subtitle/audio track support, right?
+
+Not quite. While desktop versions of these players work fine, their Android
+versions won't play it. Now I regret selling my Surface Go! :(
+
+And... that's where I'm stuck at the moment. Not sure if I should buy one of
+those Chinese Surface knock-offs or what.
+
+
+## Other failed attempts
+
+- [mpv-gdrive][6]: Using mpv's lua scripting API to automatically set the
+ correct bearer auth headers. Worked fine on desktop, failed miserably on
+ android.
+- [drivein][7]: Uses `rclone mount`. Worked fine on desktop, android wouldn't
+ allow mounting without root.
+
+Also both of those required setting up each client device. Not ideal.
+
+[1]: https://kipalog.com/posts/Cac-web-phim-da-giam-99-99--chi-phi-bang-google-drive-nhu-the-nao
+[2]: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742
+[3]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Range
+[4]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Authentication#Basic_authentication_scheme
+[5]: https://github.com/nhanb/gflick
+[6]: https://github.com/nhanb/mpv-gdrive
+[7]: https://github.com/nhanb/drivein
diff --git a/motherfucking-pelican-theme b/motherfucking-pelican-theme
index 6dc40a3..ddf30d5 160000
--- a/motherfucking-pelican-theme
+++ b/motherfucking-pelican-theme
@@ -1 +1 @@
-Subproject commit 6dc40a3a37ec69e02535e1024aa2424ee357193f
+Subproject commit ddf30d526f639bedeee809873e90577e5eeb054b
diff --git a/pelicanconf.py b/pelicanconf.py
index b83e853..3e41312 100644
--- a/pelicanconf.py
+++ b/pelicanconf.py
@@ -69,7 +69,7 @@
FEED_DOMAIN = SITEURL
FEED_ALL_ATOM = "feeds/all.atom.xml"
FEED_ATOM = "feeds/atom.xml"
-CATEGORY_FEED_ATOM = "feeds/%s.atom.xml"
+CATEGORY_FEED_ATOM = "feeds/{slug}.atom.xml"
# ========= Theme-specific settings follow =============