Plex client for Zidoo devices - ZidooPlexMod

I'll have a fiddle with it tonight.

I cant see this being too hard to get working.

 

Hmm. the substitute paths are now perfectly correct when comparing to the same file accessed via the built in player, but the player never starts, it jams on the loading circle.

Not quite as easy a fix as I thought, but definitely a step in the right direction, thanks for going to the trouble to make that addition though.

Your app version is still listed as 2.4 according to the system by the way

 

Ah shoot, forgot to update the version number. I'll upload a new apk with the correct version number but the code is the same. When I was testing I had to visit the file through media center and then it would work because the path was mounted. I'm not sure how long that mount sticks around or if it's different depending on how you access it(HT4 vs Media Center). I never ran into any issues with the loading circle, but if the path wasn't mounted then it would just do nothing when you hit the play button.

 

I'll play around with different ways to do it. I guess the /mnt/nfs/ mount point is very temporary. SMB shares have a very different mount path so maybe there's another way to do it.

I did find a system bug while struggling with this though, when it fails to load the file the system seems to keep the media player app running in a broken state, locking the video decoder hardware so nothing will play in third party apps with working HW accelleration like youtube until the box is rebooted or all related processes are killed somehow.

 

I'm having issues with the 'path to replace' and the 'replaced with' portion.
My Plex server setup is on a Docker container in an Ubuntu virtual machine (192.168.1.239) in a Proxmox server.
All of my media files are shared via SMB in a separate TrueNAS virtual machine (192.168.1.175) in the same Proxmox server.
This is what my 'Movies' library sources looks like on my Plex server.


On my Zidoo Z9x, my media files are accessed via the TrueNAS virtual machine SMB share which look like:
smb://192.168.1.175/Shared_Media/Radarr
smb://192.168.1.175/SHARED NRDRIVE/MOVIES
smb://192.168.1.175/Shared_Media/Sonarr
smb://192.168.1.175/SHARED NRDRIVE/TV-SERIES
smb://192.168.1.175/KRISTIAN NDRIVE/K-MOVIES

How do I configure the 'path to replace' and 'replaced with' settings?

 

The plex mappings in the container on the unraid VM are the "path to replace" in this case, since that is the directory structure that plex "sees", and the replaced_with location will be the physical location of the files on truenas as the built in zidoo player sees it.
In your case you should be able to set the config file up something like this:

{
"auto_play": false,
"debug": true,
"exclude_libraries": "",
"libraries": "*",
"path_to_replace": "/k-movies_v1/,/movies_v2/",
"replaced_with": "smb://192.168.1.175/KRISTIAN NDRIVE/K-MOVIES/,smb://192.168.1.175/SHARED NRDRIVE/MOVIES",
"showTitle": true,
"smbUsername": "",
"useZidooPlayer": true
}

Or whatever mapping matches, in this case "k-movies_v1" would be the /k-movies/ directory, so make that match whatever your mapping is. keep adding more mappings with commas as shown in the example to cover all of your library folders..
Use the debug screen to double check and tune the folder names if they don't match.

 

@Faceman2k24 gave a great explanation but I wanted to add that using the "debug" screen can be helpful in figuring out what's going on. So in PlexToZidoo turn on debug then go play content from those different paths within the libraries. The "Video Path" is what Plex sees as the path to the video. You would use this for determining your "path to replace". Your "replaced with" would then be your smb path to the location on your TrueNAS.

 

Hi. The subtitles doesn’t show up, any idea? Rest works great, nice job

 

More than likely that means you don't have your substitution strings setup correctly. If you turn on the debug option in PlexToZidoo and try to play a movie does it give you an error about not finding a substitution? Without the direct path to the media the zidoo player doesn't find the subtitle file, even if they're embedded(that's a bug in my mind but I can't get zidoo to fix it).

 

Yes I I get that error. What should i fill in there? I did it wrong I suppose

 

You need to fill in the correct substitution strings. Look at the posts just above your question and someone was asking the same question. @Faceman2k24 gave a good summary of what to do.

 

Thanks. Figured it out, working now. But I can only choose subtitles from Plex what’s attached to the stream right? Normally with Plex you can download external subs but I don’t see that option.

 

External subs will work as well but they need to be downloaded and put in the same folder as the media so the zidoo player knows where to get them.

 

I thought it worked but the subs are only visible when I choose for burn in. And when I do that plex is going to transcode the video. Any ideas?

 

You're not giving my much to go on. Are you saying the PlexToZidoo debug screen shows that substitution is working correctly but the internal subtitles aren't displaying? Can you post a screen shot of the PlexToZidoo debug page?

 

No he is saying this. I thought it was working.

 

Do I have the fill in the password and stuff from my pc in the substitute? I really don’t know much about that.

 

The error is saying that your path substitution isn't working. You need to define in PlexToZidoo which part of the path to replace with an smb:// path. Depending on how you have your files shared on the network will determine what the right path substitution is. If you setup your network shares as requiring a username and password then you would include those as well. Although I've found it doesn't work very will so I would suggest sharing them with no userid/password if possible.

 

Isn’t it just my ip address what I have to fill in? I googeled a lot also but there is explained how to,share a map but I don’t know which map to share.

 

No, it's not just an IP address. You need to share your media on the network using SMB so that the zidoo has direct access to the media. This is different than Plex normally works because we need to workaround the fact that the zidoo player doesn't read the subtitle streams from the media being directly served via Plex. So basically the PlexToZidoo app takes the media stream that Plex is serving up and does this substitution to figure out what the exact smb location is for the media and then gives that to the zidoo player.