Acelink stream on other device (apple TV) not working

[vhclafar]

Acelink is working fine on my mac and i can watch fine using IINA.

However when i try to play a network stream through VLC on my Apple Tv or iPad it does not start and displays an error, even though it sees streams name.

In VLC i'm entering http://(macbooknetworkip):6888/acelink.m3u8

any idea what am I doing wrong?

[blaise-io]

My guess is that the codec of the video stream is not supported by Apple TV / iPad.

You can try to visit http://(macbooknetworkip):6878/webui/player/(acestreamhash). If you cannot access this page at all, you have a network or firewall issue. If it doesn't play, likely the codec is not supported, which you can check by enabling developer tools, and opening the Console in developer tools in your browser.

In VLC on your MacBook, you can see which codec is used. VLC can transcode on the fly, but I have never tried: https://docs.videolan.me/vlc-user/3.0/en/advanced/transcode/transcode_and_stream.html

[vhclafar]

for additional info i just tried a different link for my apple tv so rather that link ending acelink.m3u8 i entered http://(macbooknetworkip):6878/ace/getstream?id=acestreamid_entered_here and now it works on apple tv using vlc

[blaise-io]

For future reference, how did you run the Ace Stream server? Through Docker CLI, or by starting Ace Link?

Because the Docker CLI instructions in the README don't map port 6888, that's an Ace Link addition because some players require the m3u8 to be served over HTTP.

[vhclafar]

by running acelink, it automatically starts Docker and then opens IINA, which i then closed (IINA) and entered link on the apple TV.

[blaise-io]

Ace Link shuts down the stream when you close IINA. You could try stopping or pausing IINA instead, but if https://github.com/blaise-io/acelink/issues/64#issuecomment-1518558031 works for you as well that's likely better because there will be one player consuming the stream.

[blaise-io]

Thanks for reporting and debugging!

[TP18]

So it is possible to stream from laptop to Apple TV? Could you add it to read me? 👍Thanks!Sent from my iPhoneOn 22 Apr 2023, at 10:43, Blaise Kal @.***> wrote: Thanks for reporting and debugging!

—Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: @.***>

[vhclafar]

my solution works, however it is a bit of a pain to use, as anytime you change a stream you need to change a link on apple tv, so the acelink.m3u8 option is better, but I am not sure why it does not work for me

[blaise-io]

If you keep IINA app open, by pausing or stopping the stream, then you can always use the same m3u8 link (http://networkip:6888/acelink.m3u8) on your Apple TV.

Closing the video player is detected by Ace Link, which will then stop the Acestream server, that's why you need to keep the player open.

[vhclafar]

i tried that just now and it does not work, my vlc just says " please wait acelink.m3u8" but nothing happens, if i exit and choose it from history it will not even stay on please wait screen for longer than half a second

[blaise-io]

Did you launch the stream first in Ace Link? You need to do that to start the engine and populate+access acelink.m3u8.

If you quit Ace Link or the player application, the engine stops and acelink.m3u8 cannot be loaded.

The stream in acelink.m3u8 is the same one as your earlier comment: http://networkip:6878/ace/getstream?id=acestreamid

[vhclafar]

my process is like this: i click on a acestream link, it automatically asks if i want to launch it using acelink, i click yes. once IINA launches and plays the stream i pause it and enter (http://networkip:6888/acelink.m3u8) in the vlc app on the apple tv

edit: and then nothing happens on the vlc side other than please wait screen

[morelazers]

In case anyone else comes across this, I made a couple of scripts for making the stream available from my mac to my xbox (via kodi). This probably works for AppleTV etc as well.

# server.sh
/Applications/Docker.app/Contents/MacOS/Docker\ Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/Docker\ Desktop

# Function to check if Docker is running
check_docker() {
    docker info >/dev/null 2>&1
}

# Wait for Docker to start
until check_docker; do
    echo "Waiting for Docker to start..."
    sleep 2
done

echo "Docker is running!"

docker run \
  --env=PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin \
  -p 6878:6878 \
  --restart=no \
  --runtime=runc \
  -d \
  blaiseio/acelink:1.5.0

And

# stream.sh

# Check if the user provided a filename
if [ "$#" -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <path-to-stream-id>"
    exit 1
fi

# Get the filename from the first command-line argument
filename="$1"

# Run VLC with the provided filename
/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -vvv "$filename" --sout '#standard{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,dst=0.0.0.0:9999}'

I save stream ids in files, so I use them like this (where channel-one is a file containing nothing but an ace id):

> ./ace.sh
> ./stream.sh channel-one

Then on kodi I load the stream at mmsh://macbook.ip:9999 and it works like a charm. I'm sure there's probably a way to connect to the ace engine directly from kodi but I found the VLC restream way to be a lot simpler. Notably it didn't work on my Xbox's version of VLC.

It doesn't delete the container from docker after you're done though, I wasn't sure how to do that.