Most individuals wouldn’t be stunned in the event that they discovered that Google’s $35 Chromecast dongle is the perfect promoting media streaming gadget of all time. It’s true, and for good motive. For a really low sum of money, customers can “cast” their favourite content material from their cellphones, tablets and even internet browsers. There’s one downside with this expertise although: native content material playback is difficult, and discouraged. As a substitute, Google needs customers to purchase into “cloud services”. That is annoying, particularly for Linux customers as we’re the kind of expertise customers most probably to wish to host and play our personal content material. To not fear, although. There’s a technique to play native media recordsdata to the gadget. You may stream movies to the Chromecast on Linux by way of command line. On this article, we’ll go over precisely find out how to do it!
Putting in NodeJS and NPM
Castnow works with the assistance of NodeJS, and it installs with the NPM software. These two important items of tech aren’t on many Linux distributions by default. Because of this, you’ll want to put in it as a way to stream movies to Chromecast on Linux.
Ubuntu
curl -sL | sudo -E bash - sudo apt-get set up -y nodejs
Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S npm
Debian
curl -sL | sudo -E bash - sudo apt-get set up -y nodejs
Fedora
curl --silent --location | bash - sudo dnf set up nodejs npm
OpenSUSE
sudo zypper set up nodejs4
Different
Different Linux distributions not talked about even have NodeJS. To set up it, it’s finest to go to the NodeJS website, and skim via for the instructions particular to your Linux-based working system. Alternatively, search your package deal supervisor and set up NPM/NodeJS.
Castnow
Castnow is on Github, and the supply code is freely out there for compilation and set up by hand. Nevertheless, there’s actually no want to do that, because the developer of this undertaking makes it out there as an NPM package deal. Putting in an NPM software is fairly straightforward.
sudo npm set up castnow -g
When the Castnow software is completed putting in, you can begin casting.
Utilizing Castnow
Should you’ve solely acquired one Chromecast, Castnow will routinely detect it and use it because the default. As most individuals often have one Chromecast, there’s not an actual want to enter element on how to connect with a number of units. That being stated, some folks undoubtedly do have a number of Chrome units. If that’s you, and also you’ve acquired multiple, use this command to specify what one to forged to on the command line: castnow --device "name of Chromecast".
Stream video
Videos could be streamed with Castnow to the Chromecast from any distant or native URL. To do that, first discover out in case your video is utilizing the precise codec, because the streaming software program has an issue with sure video codes. Because of this it’s finest to make use of Mp4 video recordsdata with this software.
Stream distant video with:
castnow
Play native video
Taking part in a neighborhood video is completed finest out of your Linux PC. Attempt to not stream MP4 recordsdata over the community with distant directories, as this received’t work as properly. Playback is finest completed with MP4 recordsdata, as Chromecast helps this format the perfect. Nevertheless, Castnow does assist stay conversion with FFMPEG.
castnow /path/to/video.mp4
Or, convert the video to MP4 because it performs:
castnow /path/to/video.avi --tomp4
Play Music
You may play music with Castnow similar to you’ll a video file. It really works the identical means as video.
castnow /path/to/track.mp3
or Stream the music file with:
castnow
Different Choices
There are a lot of different issues that Castnow can do to work together along with your Chromecast, exterior of simply enjoying a video or track right here and there. All the choices are numerous switches which are out there to make use of. For instance, need subtitles along with your native video? Use the –subtitles swap. Need to loop the present video, or shuffle the queue? Use –loop and –shuffle respectively.
Suffice it to say, there are lots of totally different choices that superior customers can dig into, to get probably the most out of Castnow and their Chromecast. That being stated: if all you need is the power to play native and distant media recordsdata the instructions above arre all that you just want.
You may entry Castnow’s full command checklist by going to a terminal window, and coming into castnow –assist. Alternativly, save all the assist file to a textual content file which you can consult with at any time with:
castnow --help >> ~/castnow-help.txt
It will put castnow-help.txt in /residence/username/.
Conclusion
Within the browser, Google’s Chromecast is a strong software. With it, customers can broadcast something from their favourite internet pages, to music, motion pictures and all the things in between. Sadly, Google is an web firm. Because of this, they’ve acquired little interest in permitting customers to play native content material. This doesn’t matter although, as Linux customers are a artistic bunch.
With the assistance of Castnow, customers can get round Google’s needs of a Cloud and “paid-content” solely media consumption expertise. As a substitute, they’re capable of make good use of the Chromecast, and take it to the potential everyone knows it has hidden away.
