UxPlay/README.html

<h1
id="uxplay-1.65-airplay-mirror-and-airplay-audio-server-for-linux-macos-and-unix-now-also-runs-on-windows.">UxPlay
1.65: AirPlay-Mirror and AirPlay-Audio server for Linux, macOS, and Unix
(now also runs on Windows).</h1>
<h3
id="now-developed-at-the-github-site-httpsgithub.comfdh2uxplay-where-all-user-issues-should-be-posted.">Now
developed at the GitHub site <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay">https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay</a>
(where all user issues should be posted).</h3>
<h2 id="highlights">Highlights:</h2>
<ul>
<li>GPLv3, open source.</li>
<li>Originally supported only AirPlay Mirror protocol, now has added
support for AirPlay Audio-only (Apple Lossless ALAC) streaming from
current iOS/iPadOS clients. <strong>There is no support for Airplay2
video-streaming protocol, and none is planned.</strong></li>
<li>macOS computers (2011 or later, both Intel and “Apple Silicon” M1/M2
systems) can act either as AirPlay clients, or as the server running
UxPlay. Using AirPlay, UxPlay can emulate a second display for macOS
clients.</li>
<li>Support for older iOS clients (such as 32-bit iPad 2nd gen., iPod
Touch 5th gen. and iPhone 4S, when upgraded to iOS 9.3.5, or later
64-bit devices), plus a Windows AirPlay-client emulator, AirMyPC.</li>
<li>Uses GStreamer plugins for audio and video rendering (with options
to select different hardware-appropriate output “videosinks” and
“audiosinks”, and a fully-user-configurable video streaming
pipeline).</li>
<li>Support for server behind a firewall.</li>
<li>Raspberry Pi support <strong>both with and without hardware video
decoding</strong> by the Broadcom GPU. <em>Tested on Raspberry Pi 4
Model B and Pi 3 model B+.</em></li>
<li>Support for running on Microsoft Windows (builds with the MinGW-64
compiler in the unix-like MSYS2 environment).</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="packaging-status-linux-and-bsd-distributions">Packaging status
(Linux and *BSD distributions)</h2>
<p><a href="https://repology.org/project/uxplay/versions"><img
src="https://repology.org/badge/vertical-allrepos/uxplay.svg"
alt="Current Packaging status" /></a>.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Install uxplay on Debian-based Linux systems with
“<code>sudo apt install uxplay</code>”; on FreeBSD with
“<code>sudo pkg install uxplay</code>”. Also available on Arch-based
systems through AUR.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>NEW</strong>: while no RPM-based distributions have yet
packaged UxPlay, a RPM “specfile” <strong>uxplay.spec</strong> is now
provided with recent <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/releases">releases</a> (see their
“Assets”), and can also be found in the UxPlay source top directory. To
build a RPM package, install rpmdevtools, create a rpmbuild tree with
“<code>rpmdev-setuptree</code>”, and copy uxplay.spec into
<code>~/rpmbuild/SPECS</code>. In that directory, run
“<code>rpmdev-spectool -g uxplay.spec</code>” to download the
corresponding source file <code>uxplay-*.tar.gz</code>, which should
then be moved into <code>~/rpmbuild/SOURCES</code>; then run
“<code>rpmbuild -ba uxplay.spec</code>” (you will need to install any
required dependencies this reports). This should create an installable
uxplay RPM package in a subdirectory of <code>~/rpmbuild/RPMS</code>.
(<strong>uxplay.spec</strong> is tested on Fedora 38, Rocky Linux 9.2,
OpenSUSE Leap 15.5, and Mageia 9; it can be easily modified to include
dependency lists for other RPM-based distributions.)</p></li>
<li><p>On Linux and *BSD the mDNS/DNS-SD (Bonjour/ZeroConf) local
network services needed by UxPlay are usually provided by Avahi:
<strong>if there is a firewall on the server that will host UxPlay, make
sure the default network port for mDNS queries (UDP 5353) is
open</strong>. (Uxplay can work without this port by using only the
host’s loopback interface, but its visibility to clients will be
degraded.) See the <a href="#troubleshooting">Troubleshooting</a>
section below for more details. (With a firewall, you also need to open
ports for UxPlay, and use the <code>-p &lt;n&gt;</code> option; see
<code>man uxplay</code> or <code>uxplay -h</code>.)</p></li>
<li><p>Even if you install your distribution’s pre-compiled uxplay
binary package, you may need to read the instructions below for <a
href="#running-uxplay">running UxPlay</a> to see which of your
distribution’s <strong>GStreamer plugin packages</strong> you should
also install.</p></li>
<li><p>For hardware-accelerated video decoding on Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu
&lt; 23.04 needs GStreamer to be <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/wiki/Gstreamer-Video4Linux2-plugin-patches">patched</a>
(recommended but optional for Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye), no longer
needed for Manjaro &gt;= 23.02). <em>(Only these three distributions
supply a kernel module maintained by Raspberry Pi outside the mainline
Linux kernel that accesses the firmware decoder in the Broadcom
GPU)</em>.</p></li>
<li><p>To (easily) compile the latest UxPlay from source, see the
section <a href="#getting-uxplay">Getting UxPlay</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 id="detailed-description-of-uxplay">Detailed description of
UxPlay</h1>
<p>This project is a GPLv3 open source unix AirPlay2 Mirror server for
Linux, macOS, and *BSD. It was initially developed by <a
href="http://github.com/antimof/Uxplay">antimof</a> using code from
OpenMAX-based <a href="https://github.com/FD-/RPiPlay">RPiPlay</a>,
which in turn derives from <a
href="https://github.com/KqsMea8/AirplayServer">AirplayServer</a>, <a
href="https://github.com/juhovh/shairplay">shairplay</a>, and <a
href="https://github.com/EstebanKubata/playfair">playfair</a>. (The
antimof site is no longer involved in development, but periodically
posts updates pulled from the new main <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay">UxPlay site</a>).</p>
<p>UxPlay is tested on a number of systems, including (among others)
Debian (10 “Buster”, 11 “Bullseye”, 12 “Bookworm”), Ubuntu (20.04 LTS,
22.04 LTS, 23.04; also Ubuntu derivatives Linux Mint 20.3, Pop!_OS 22.04
(NVIDIA edition)), Red Hat and clones (Fedora 38, Rocky Linux 9.2),
Mageia 9, openSUSE 15.5, Arch Linux 23.05, macOS 13.3 (Intel and M2),
FreeBSD 13.2, Windows 10 and 11 (64 bit).</p>
<p>On Raspberry Pi 4 model B, it is tested on Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye)
(32- and 64-bit), Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and 23.04, Manjaro RPi4 23.02, and
(without hardware video decoding) on openSUSE 15.5. Also tested on
Raspberry Pi 3 model B+.</p>
<p>Its main use is to act like an AppleTV for screen-mirroring (with
audio) of iOS/iPadOS/macOS clients (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Mac
computers) on the server display of a host running Linux, macOS, or
other unix (and now also Microsoft Windows). UxPlay supports Apple’s
AirPlay2 protocol using “Legacy Protocol”, but some features are
missing. (Details of what is publicly known about Apple’s AirPlay 2
protocol can be found <a
href="https://openairplay.github.io/airplay-spec/">here</a>, <a
href="https://github.com/SteeBono/airplayreceiver/wiki/AirPlay2-Protocol">here</a>
and <a href="https://emanuelecozzi.net/docs/airplay2">here</a>; see also
<a href="https://pyatv.dev/documentation/protocols">pyatv</a> which
could be a resource for adding modern protocols.) While there is no
guarantee that future iOS releases will keep supporting “Legacy
Protocol”, the recent iOS 16 release continues support.</p>
<p>The UxPlay server and its client must be on the same local area
network, on which a <strong>Bonjour/Zeroconf mDNS/DNS-SD server</strong>
is also running (only DNS-SD “Service Discovery” service is strictly
necessary, it is not necessary that the local network also be of the
“.local” mDNS-based type). On Linux and BSD Unix servers, this is
usually provided by <a href="https://www.avahi.org">Avahi</a>, through
the avahi-daemon service, and is included in most Linux distributions
(this service can also be provided by macOS, iOS or Windows
servers).</p>
<p>Connections to the UxPlay server by iOS/MacOS clients can be
initiated both in <strong>AirPlay Mirror</strong> mode (which streams
lossily-compressed AAC audio while mirroring the client screen, or in
the alternative <strong>AirPlay Audio</strong> mode which streams Apple
Lossless (ALAC) audio without screen mirroring. In
<strong>Audio</strong> mode, metadata is displayed in the uxplay
terminal; if UxPlay option <code>-ca &lt;name&gt;</code> is used, the
accompanying cover art is also output to a periodically-updated file
<code>&lt;name&gt;</code>, and can be viewed with a (reloading) graphics
viewer of your choice. <em>Switching between</em>
<strong>Mirror</strong> <em>and</em> <strong>Audio</strong> <em>modes
during an active connection is possible: in</em> <strong>Mirror</strong>
<em>mode, stop mirroring (or close the mirror window) and start an</em>
<strong>Audio</strong> <em>mode connection, switch back by initiating
a</em> <strong>Mirror</strong> <em>mode connection; cover-art display
stops/restarts as you leave/re-enter</em> <strong>Audio</strong>
<em>mode.</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>Note that Apple video-DRM (as found in “Apple TV app”
content on the client) cannot be decrypted by UxPlay, and the Apple TV
app cannot be watched using UxPlay’s AirPlay Mirror mode (only the
unprotected audio will be streamed, in AAC format), but both video and
audio content from DRM-free apps like “YouTube app” will be streamed by
UxPlay in Mirror mode.</strong></p></li>
<li><p><strong>As UxPlay does not support non-Mirror AirPlay2 video
streaming (where the client controls a web server on the AirPlay server
that directly receives content to avoid it being decoded and re-encoded
by the client), using the icon for AirPlay video in apps such as the
YouTube app will only send audio (in lossless ALAC format) without the
accompanying video.</strong></p></li>
</ul>
<h3
id="possibility-for-using-hardware-accelerated-h264-video-decoding-if-available.">Possibility
for using hardware-accelerated h264 video-decoding, if available.</h3>
<p>UxPlay uses <a href="https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org">GStreamer</a>
“plugins” for rendering audio and video. This means that video and audio
are supported “out of the box”, using a choice of plugins. AirPlay
streams video in h264 format: gstreamer decoding is plugin agnostic, and
uses accelerated GPU hardware h264 decoders if available; if not,
software decoding is used.</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>VAAPI for Intel and AMD integrated graphics, NVIDIA with
“Nouveau” open-source driver</strong></p>
<p>With an Intel or AMD GPU, hardware decoding with the open-source
VAAPI gstreamer plugin is preferable. The open-source “Nouveau” drivers
for NVIDIA graphics are also in principle supported: see <a
href="https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/VideoAcceleration.html">here</a>,
but this requires VAAPI to be supplemented with firmware extracted from
the proprietary NVIDIA drivers.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>NVIDIA with proprietary drivers</strong></p>
<p>The <code>nvh264dec</code> plugin (included in
gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad since GStreamer-1.18.0) can be used for
accelerated video decoding on the NVIDIA GPU after NVIDIA’s CUDA driver
<code>libcuda.so</code> is installed. For GStreamer-1.16.3 or earlier,
the plugin is called <code>nvdec</code>, and must be <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/wiki/NVIDIA-nvdec-and-nvenc-plugins">built
by the user</a>.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Video4Linux2 support for the Raspberry Pi Broadcom 2835
GPU</strong></p>
<p>Raspberry Pi (RPi) computers (tested on Pi 4 Model B) can now run
UxPlay using software video decoding, but hardware-accelerated decoding
by firmware in the Pi’s GPU is prefered. UxPlay accesses this using the
GStreamer-1.22 Video4Linux2 (v4l2) plugin; the plugin from older
GStreamer needs a patch to backport fixes from v1.22 (already applied in
Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye), and available for 1.18.4 and later in the <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/wiki/Gstreamer-Video4Linux2-plugin-patches">UxPlay
Wiki</a>). Also requires the out-of-mainline Linux kernel module
bcm2835-codec maintained by Raspberry Pi, so far only included in
Raspberry Pi OS, and two other distributions (Ubuntu, Manjaro) available
with Raspberry Pi Imager.</p></li>
</ul>
<h3 id="note-to-packagers">Note to packagers:</h3>
<p>UxPlay’s GPLv3 license does not have an added “GPL exception”
explicitly allowing it to be distributed in compiled form when linked to
OpenSSL versions <strong>prior to v. 3.0.0</strong> (older versions of
OpenSSL have a license clause incompatible with the GPL unless OpenSSL
can be regarded as a “System Library”, which it is in *BSD). Many Linux
distributions treat OpenSSL as a “System Library”, but some
(e.g. Debian) do not: in this case, the issue is solved by linking with
OpenSSL-3.0.0 or later.</p>
<h1 id="getting-uxplay">Getting UxPlay</h1>
<p>Either download and unzip <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/archive/refs/heads/master.zip">UxPlay-master.zip</a>,
or (if git is installed): “git clone https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay”.
You can also download a recent or earlier version listed in <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/releases">Releases</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li>A recent UxPlay can also be found on the original <a
href="https://github.com/antimof/UxPlay">antimof site</a>; that original
project is inactive, but is usually kept current or almost-current with
the <a href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay">active UxPlay github
site</a> (thank you antimof!).</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="building-uxplay-on-linux-or-bsd">Building UxPlay on Linux (or
*BSD):</h2>
<h3 id="debian-based-systems">Debian-based systems:</h3>
<p>(Adapt these instructions for non-Debian-based Linuxes or *BSD; for
macOS, see specific instruction below). See <a
href="#troubleshooting">Troubleshooting</a> below for help with any
difficulties.</p>
<p>You need a C/C++ compiler (e.g. g++) with the standard development
libraries installed. Debian-based systems provide a package
“build-essential” for use in compiling software. You also need
pkg-config: if it is not found by “<code>which pkg-config</code>”,
install pkg-config or its work-alike replacement pkgconf. Also make sure
that cmake&gt;=3.4.1 is installed:
“<code>sudo apt-get install cmake</code>” (add
<code>build-essential</code> and <code>pkg-config</code> (or
<code>pkgconf</code>) to this if needed).</p>
<p>Make sure that your distribution provides OpenSSL 1.1.1 or later, and
libplist 2.0 or later. (This means Debian 10 “Buster” based systems
(e.g, Ubuntu 18.04) or newer; on Debian 10 systems “libplist” is an
older version, you need “libplist3”.) If it does not, you may need to
build and install these from source (see instructions at the end of this
README). If you have a non-standard OpenSSL installation, you may need
to set the environment variable OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR (<em>e.g.</em> ,
“<code>export OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=/usr/local/lib64</code>” if that is where
it is installed).</p>
<ul>
<li>Most users will use the GStreamer supplied by their distribution,
but a few (in particular users of Raspberry Pi OS Lite Legacy (Buster)
on a Raspberry Pi model 4B who wish to stay on that unsupported Legacy
OS for compatibility with other apps) should instead build a newer
Gstreamer from source following <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/wiki/Building-latest-GStreamer-from-source-on-distributions-with-older-GStreamer-(e.g.-Raspberry-Pi-OS-).">these
instructions</a> . <strong>Do this <em>before</em> building
UxPlay</strong>.</li>
</ul>
<p>In a terminal window, change directories to the source directory of
the downloaded source code (“UxPlay-*”, “*” = “master” or the release
tag for zipfile downloads, “UxPlay” for “git clone” downloads), then
follow the instructions below:</p>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> By default UxPlay will be built with
optimization for the computer it is built on; when this is not the case,
as when you are packaging for a distribution, use the cmake option
<code>-DNO_MARCH_NATIVE=ON</code>.</p>
<p>If you use X11 Windows on Linux or *BSD, and wish to toggle in/out of
fullscreen mode with a keypress (F11 or Alt_L+Enter) UxPlay needs to be
built with a dependence on X11. Starting with UxPlay-1.59, this will be
done by default <strong>IF</strong> the X11 development libraries are
installed and detected. Install these with
“<code>sudo apt-get install libx11-dev</code>”. If GStreamer &lt; 1.20
is detected, a fix needed by screen-sharing apps (<em>e.g.</em>, Zoom)
will also be made.</p>
<ul>
<li>If X11 development libraries are present, but you wish to build
UxPlay <em>without</em> any X11 dependence, use the cmake option
<code>-DNO_X11_DEPS=ON</code>.</li>
</ul>
<ol type="1">
<li><code>sudo apt-get install libssl-dev libplist-dev</code>“.
(<em>unless you need to build OpenSSL and libplist from
source</em>).</li>
<li><code>sudo apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev</code></li>
<li><code>sudo apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev</code>.
(*<em>Skip if you built Gstreamer from source</em>)</li>
<li><code>cmake .</code> (<em>For a cleaner build, which is useful if
you modify the source, replace this by</em>
“<code>mkdir build; cd build; cmake ..</code>”: <em>you can then delete
the contents of the <code>build</code> directory if needed, without
affecting the source.</em>) Also add any cmake “<code>-D</code>” options
here as needed (e.g, <code>-DNO_X11_DEPS=ON</code> or
<code>-DNO_MARCH_NATIVE=ON</code>).</li>
<li><code>make</code></li>
<li><code>sudo make install</code> (you can afterwards uninstall with
<code>sudo make uninstall</code> in the same directory in which this was
run).</li>
</ol>
<p>This installs the executable file “<code>uxplay</code>” to
<code>/usr/local/bin</code>, (and installs a manpage to somewhere
standard like <code>/usr/local/share/man/man1</code> and README files to
somewhere like <code>/usr/local/share/doc/uxplay</code>). (If “man
uxplay” fails, check if $MANPATH is set: if so, the path to the manpage
(usually /usr/local/share/man/) needs to be added to $MANPATH .) The
uxplay executable can also be found in the build directory after the
build process, if you wish to test before installing (in which case the
GStreamer plugins must first be installed).</p>
<h3 id="building-on-non-debian-linux-and-bsd">Building on non-Debian
Linux and *BSD</h3>
<p><strong>For those with RPM-based distributions, a RPM spec file
uxplay.spec is also available for building a rpm package with
rpmbuild</strong> (tested on Fedora 38, Rocky Linux 9.2 (RHEL clone),
OpenSUSE 15.5, and Mageia 9; see “Packaging Status” section)</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>Red Hat, or clones like CentOS (now continued as Rocky
Linux or Alma Linux):</strong> (sudo dnf install, or sudo yum install)
openssl-devel libplist-devel avahi-compat-libdns_sd-devel
gstreamer1-devel gstreamer1-plugins-base-devel (+libX11-devel for
fullscreen X11) <em>(some of these may be in the “CodeReady” add-on
repository, called “PowerTools” by clones)</em></p></li>
<li><p><strong>Mageia:</strong> Same as Red Hat, except “gstreamer1-”
becomes “gstreamer1.0-”.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>openSUSE:</strong> (sudo zypper install)
libopenssl-3-devel (formerly libopenssl-devel) libplist-2_0-devel
(formerly libplist-devel) avahi-compat-mDNSResponder-devel
gstreamer-devel gstreamer-plugins-base-devel (+ libX11-devel for
fullscreen X11).</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Arch Linux</strong> (<em>Also available as a package in
AUR</em>): (sudo pacman -Syu) openssl libplist avahi
gst-plugins-base.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>FreeBSD:</strong> (sudo pkg install) libplist gstreamer1.
Either avahi-libdns or mDNSResponder must also be installed to provide
the dns_sd library. OpenSSL is already installed as a System
Library.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="running-uxplay">Running UxPlay</h2>
<h3
id="installing-plugins-debian-based-linux-systems-skip-if-you-built-a-complete-gstreamer-from-source">Installing
plugins (Debian-based Linux systems) (<em>skip if you built a complete
GStreamer from source</em>)</h3>
<p>Next install the GStreamer plugins that are needed with
<code>sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-&lt;plugin&gt;</code>. Values of
<code>&lt;plugin&gt;</code> required are:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>“<strong>plugins-base</strong>”</li>
<li>“<strong>libav</strong>” (for sound),</li>
<li>“<strong>plugins-good</strong>” (for v4l2 hardware h264
decoding)</li>
<li>“<strong>plugins-bad</strong>” (for h264 decoding).</li>
</ol>
<p>Plugins that may also be needed include “<strong>gl</strong>” for
OpenGL support (which may be useful, and should be used with h264
decoding by the NVIDIA GPU), and “<strong>x</strong>” for X11 support,
although these may already be installed; “<strong>vaapi</strong>” is
needed for hardware-accelerated h264 video decoding by Intel or AMD
graphics (but not for use with NVIDIA using proprietary drivers). If
sound is not working,
“<strong>alsa</strong>”“,”<strong>pulseaudio</strong>”, or
“<strong>pipewire</strong>” plugins may need to be installed, depending
on how your audio is set up.</p>
<ul>
<li>Also install “<strong>gstreamer1.0-tools</strong>” to get the
utility gst-inspect-1.0 for examining the GStreamer installation.</li>
</ul>
<h3
id="installing-plugins-non-debian-based-linux-or-bsd-skip-if-you-built-a-complete-gstreamer-from-source">Installing
plugins (Non-Debian-based Linux or *BSD) (<em>skip if you built a
complete GStreamer from source</em>)</h3>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>Red Hat, or clones like CentOS (now continued as Rocky
Linux or Alma Linux):</strong> (sudo dnf install, or sudo yum install)
gstreamer1-libav gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free (+ gstreamer1-vaapi for
Intel/AMD graphics). <em>You may need to get some of them (in particular
gstreamer1-libav) from <a href="https://rpmfusion.org">rpmfusion.org</a>
(which provides packages including plugins that RedHat does not ship for
license reasons). [In recent <strong>Fedora</strong>, the libav plugin
package is renamed to “gstreamer1-plugin-libav”, which now needs the RPM
Fusion package ffmpeg-libs for the patent-encumbered code which RedHat
does not provide: check with “<code>rpm -qi ffmpeg-libs</code>” that it
lists “Packager” as RPM Fusion; if this is not installed, uxplay will
fail to start, with error: <strong>no element “avdec_aac”</strong>
]</em>.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Mageia:</strong> (sudo dnf install, or sudo yum install)
gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad (+ gstreamer1.0-vaapi for
Intel/AMD graphics). <em>Install ffmpeg from the “tainted” repository
(so gstreamer-1.0-libav can provide the required plugin avdec_aac),
which also provides a more complete
gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad.</em></p></li>
<li><p><strong>openSUSE:</strong> (sudo zypper install)
gstreamer-plugins-libav gstreamer-plugins-bad (+ gstreamer-plugins-vaapi
for Intel/AMD graphics). <em>In some cases, you may need to use
gstreamer or libav* packages for openSUSE from <a
href="https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/packman/suse/">Packman</a>
“Essentials” (which provides packages including plugins that OpenSUSE
does not ship for license reasons; recommendation: after adding the
Packman repository, use the option in YaST Software management to switch
all system packages for multimedia to Packman).</em></p></li>
<li><p><strong>Arch Linux</strong> (sudo pacman -Syu) gst-plugins-good
gst-plugins-bad gst-libav (+ gstreamer-vaapi for Intel/AMD
graphics).</p></li>
<li><p><strong>FreeBSD:</strong> (sudo pkg install) gstreamer1-libav,
gstreamer1-plugins, gstreamer1-plugins-* (* = core, good, bad, x, gtk,
gl, vulkan, pulse, v4l2, …), (+ gstreamer1-vaapi for Intel/AMD
graphics).</p></li>
</ul>
<h3 id="starting-and-running-uxplay">Starting and running UxPlay</h3>
<p>Since UxPlay-1.64, UxPlay can be started with options read from a
configuration file, which will be the first found of (1) a file with a
path given by environment variable <code>$UXPLAYRC</code>, (2)
<code>~/.uxplayrc</code> in the user’s home directory (“~”), (3)
<code>~/.config/uxplayrc</code>. The format is one option per line,
omitting the initial <code>"-"</code> of the command-line option. Lines
in the configuration file beginning with <code>"#"</code> are treated as
comments and ignored.</p>
<p><strong>Run uxplay in a terminal window</strong>. On some systems,
you can toggle into and out of fullscreen mode with F11 or (held-down
left Alt)+Enter keys. Use Ctrl-C (or close the window) to terminate it
when done. If the UxPlay server is not seen by the iOS client’s
drop-down “Screen Mirroring” panel, check that your DNS-SD server
(usually avahi-daemon) is running: do this in a terminal window with
<code>systemctl status avahi-daemon</code>. If this shows the
avahi-daemon is not running, control it with
<code>sudo systemctl [start,stop,enable,disable] avahi-daemon</code> (on
non-systemd systems, such as *BSD, use
<code>sudo service avahi-daemon [status, start, stop, restart, ...]</code>).
If UxPlay is seen, but the client fails to connect when it is selected,
there may be a firewall on the server that prevents UxPlay from
receiving client connection requests unless some network ports are
opened: <strong>if a firewall is active, also open UDP port 5353 (for
mDNS queries) needed by Avahi</strong>. See <a
href="#troubleshooting">Troubleshooting</a> below for help with this or
other problems.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>By default, UxPlay is locked to its current client until that
client drops the connection; since UxPlay-1.58, the option
<code>-nohold</code> modifies this behavior so that when a new client
requests a connection, it removes the current client and takes
over.</p></li>
<li><p>In Mirror mode, GStreamer has a choice of <strong>two</strong>
methods to play video with its accompanying audio: prior to UxPlay-1.64,
the video and audio streams were both played as soon as possible after
they arrived (the GStreamer “<em>sync=false</em>” method), with a
GStreamer internal clock used to try to keep them synchronized.
<strong>Starting with UxPlay-1.64, the other method (GStreamer’s
“<em>sync=true</em>” mode), which uses timestamps in the audio and video
streams sent by the client, is the new default</strong>. On
low-decoding-power UxPlay hosts (such as Raspberry Pi 3 models) this
will drop video frames that cannot be decoded in time to play with the
audio, making the video jerky, but still synchronized.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The older method which does not drop late video frames worked well on
more powerful systems, and is still available with the UxPlay option
“<code>-vsync no</code>”; this method is adapted to “live streaming”,
and may be better when using UxPlay as a second monitor for a Mac
computer, for example, while the new default timestamp-based method is
best for watching a video, to keep lip movements and voices
synchronized. (Without use of timestamps, video will eventually lag
behind audio if it cannot be decoded fast enough: hardware-accelerated
video-decoding helped to prevent this previously when timestamps were
not being used.)</p>
<ul>
<li>In Audio-only mode the GStreamer “sync=false” mode (not using
timestamps) is still the default, but if you want to keep the audio
playing on the server synchronized with the video showing on the client,
use the <code>-async</code> timestamp-based option. (An example might be
if you want to follow the Apple Music lyrics on the client while
listening to superior sound on the UxPlay server). This delays the video
on the client to match audio on the server, so leads to a slight delay
before a pause or track-change initiated on the client takes effect on
the audio played by the server.</li>
</ul>
<p>The -vsync and -async options also allow an optional positive (or
negative) audio-delay adjustment in <em>milliseconds</em> for
fine-tuning : <code>-vsync 20.5</code> delays audio relative to video by
0.0205 secs; a negative value advances it.)</p>
<ul>
<li><p>you may find video is improved by the setting -fps 60 that allows
some video to be played at 60 frames per second. (You can see what
framerate is actually streaming by using -vs fpsdisplaysink, and/or
-FPSdata.) When using this, you should use the default timestamp-based
synchronization option <code>-vsync</code>.</p></li>
<li><p>Since UxPlay-1.54, you can display the accompanying “Cover Art”
from sources like Apple Music in Audio-Only (ALAC) mode: run
“<code>uxplay -ca &lt;name&gt; &amp;</code>” in the background, then run
a image viewer with an autoreload feature: an example is “feh”: run
“<code>feh -R 1 &lt;name&gt;</code>” in the foreground; terminate feh
and then Uxplay with “<code>ctrl-C fg ctrl-C</code>”.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>By default, GStreamer uses an algorithm to search for the best
“videosink” (GStreamer’s term for a graphics driver to display images)
to use. You can overide this with the uxplay option
<code>-vs &lt;videosink&gt;</code>. Which videosinks are available
depends on your operating system and graphics hardware: use
“<code>gst-inspect-1.0 | grep sink | grep -e video -e Video -e image</code>”
to see what is available. Some possibilites on Linux/*BSD are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>glimagesink</strong> (OpenGL),
<strong>waylandsink</strong></p></li>
<li><p><strong>xvimagesink</strong>, <strong>ximagesink</strong>
(X11)</p></li>
<li><p><strong>kmssink</strong>, <strong>fbdevsink</strong> (console
graphics without X11)</p></li>
<li><p><strong>vaapisink</strong> (for Intel/AMD hardware-accelerated
graphics); for NVIDIA hardware graphics (with CUDA) use
<strong>glimagesink</strong> combined with “<code>-vd nvh264dec</code>”
(or “nvh264sldec”, a new variant which will become “nvh264dec” in
GStreamer-1.24).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>GStreamer also searches for the best “audiosink”; override its choice
with <code>-as &lt;audiosink&gt;</code>. Choices on Linux include
pulsesink, alsasink, pipewiresink, oss4sink; see what is available with
<code>gst-inspect-1.0 | grep sink | grep -e audio -e Audio</code>.</p>
<p><strong>One common problem involves GStreamer attempting to use
incorrectly-configured or absent accelerated hardware h264 video
decoding (e.g., VAAPI). Try “<code>uxplay -avdec</code>” to force
software video decoding; if this works you can then try to fix
accelerated hardware video decoding if you need it, or just uninstall
the GStreamer vaapi plugin.</strong></p>
<p>See <a href="#usage">Usage</a> for more run-time options.</p>
<h3
id="special-instructions-for-raspberry-pi-tested-on-r-pi-4-model-b-8gb-and-r-pi-3-model-b"><strong>Special
instructions for Raspberry Pi (tested on R Pi 4 model B 8GB and R Pi 3
model B+)</strong>:</h3>
<ul>
<li><p>If you use the software-only (h264) video-decoding UxPlay option
<code>-avdec</code>, it now works better than earlier, with the new
default timestamp-based synchronization to keep audio and video
synchronized.</p></li>
<li><p>For best performance, the Raspberry Pi needs the GStreamer
Video4linux2 plugin to use its Broadcom GPU hardware for decoding h264
video. This needs the bcm2835_codec kernel module which is maintained
outside the mainline Linux kernel by Raspberry Pi in the the <a
href="https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux">Raspberry Pi kernel
tree</a>, and the only distributions for R Pi that are known to supply
it include Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu, and Manjaro (all available from
Raspberry Pi with their Raspberry Pi Imager). Other distributions
generally do not provide it: <strong>without this kernel module, UxPlay
cannot use the decoding firmware in the GPU.</strong></p></li>
<li><p>On a Raspberry Pi model 4B running the unsupported “Legacy” R Pi
OS (Buster), note that this comes with a very old GStreamer-1.14.4
<strong>that cannot be patched to access the Broadcom GPU</strong>. If
you need to stay on the unsupported “Legacy” OS (“Lite” version), but
want to use UxPlay with hardware video decoding, you need to first build
a complete newer GStreamer from source using <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/wiki/Building-latest-GStreamer-from-source-on-distributions-with-older-GStreamer-(e.g.-Raspberry-Pi-OS-).">these
instructions</a> before building UxPlay. Note that a model 3B+ Pi
running the Legacy OS can access the GPU with GStreamer-1.14’s omx
plugin (use option “<code>-vd omxh264dec</code>”), but this plugin is
broken on model 4B’s firmware, and omx support was removed in R Pi OS
(Bullseye).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>For use of the GPU, use raspi-config “Performance Options” (on
Raspberry Pi OS, use a similar tool on other distributions) to allocate
sufficient memory for the GPU (on R. Pi 3 model B+, the maximum (256MB)
is suggested). Even with GPU video decoding, some frames may be dropped
by the lower-power 3 B+ to keep audio and video synchronized using
timestamps.</p>
<ul>
<li>The plugin in the latest GStreamer-1.22 release works well, but
older releases of GStreamer will not work unless patched with backports
from GStreamer-1.22. Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye) now has a working
backport. For a fuller backport, or for other distributions, patches for
the GStreamer Video4Linux2 plugin are <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/wiki/Gstreamer-Video4Linux2-plugin-patches">available
with instructions in the UxPlay Wiki</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>The basic uxplay options for R Pi are
<code>uxplay [-vs &lt;videosink&gt;]</code>. The choice
<code>&lt;videosink&gt;</code> = <code>glimagesink</code> is sometimes
useful. On a system without X11 (like R Pi OS Lite) with framebuffer
video, use <code>&lt;videosink&gt;</code> = <code>kmssink</code>. With
the Wayland video compositor, use <code>&lt;videosink&gt;</code> =
<code>waylandsink</code>. When using the Video4Linux2 plugin to access
hardware video decoding, an option <code>-v4l2</code> may be useful: for
convenience, this also comes combined with various videosink options as
<code>-rpi</code>, <code>-rpigl</code> <code>-rpifb</code>,
<code>-rpiwl</code>, respectively provided for X11, X11 with OpenGL,
framebuffer, and Wayland systems. <strong>You may find that just
“<code>uxplay</code>”, (<em>without</em> <code>-v4l2</code> or
<code>-rpi*</code> options, which lets GStreamer try to find the best
video solution by itself) provides the best results</strong> (the
<code>-rpi*</code> options may be removed in a future release of
UxPlay.)</p>
<ul>
<li><p>If you are using Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye) with Video4Linux2
from unpatched GStreamer-1.18.4, you need the <code>-bt709</code> option
with UxPlay-1.56 or later. Also don’t use options <code>-v4l2</code> and
<code>-rpi*</code> with it, as they cause a crash if the client screen
is rotated. (These issues do not occur when the latest GStreamer-1.18.4
patch from the UxPlay Wiki has been applied.)</p></li>
<li><p>Tip: to start UxPlay on a remote host (such as a Raspberry Pi)
using ssh:</p></li>
</ul>
<pre><code>   ssh user@remote_host
   export DISPLAY=:0
   nohup uxplay [options] &gt; FILE &amp;</code></pre>
<p>Sound and video will play on the remote host; “nohup” will keep
uxplay running if the ssh session is closed. Terminal output is saved to
FILE (which can be /dev/null to discard it)</p>
<h2
id="building-uxplay-on-macos-intel-x86_64-and-apple-silicon-m1m2-macs">Building
UxPlay on macOS: <strong>(Intel X86_64 and “Apple Silicon” M1/M2
Macs)</strong></h2>
<p><em>Note: A native AirPlay Server feature is included in macOS 12
Monterey, but is restricted to recent hardware. UxPlay can run on older
macOS systems that will not be able to run Monterey, or can run Monterey
but not AirPlay.</em></p>
<p>These instructions for macOS assume that the Xcode command-line
developer tools are installed (if Xcode is installed, open the Terminal,
type “sudo xcode-select –install” and accept the conditions).</p>
<p>It is also assumed that CMake &gt;= 3.13 is installed: this can be
done with package managers <a
href="http://www.macports.org">MacPorts</a>
(<code>sudo port install cmake</code>), <a
href="http://brew.sh">Homebrew</a> (<code>brew install cmake</code>), or
by a download from <a
href="https://cmake.org/download/">https://cmake.org/download/</a>. Also
install <code>git</code> if you will use it to fetch UxPlay.</p>
<p>Next install libplist and openssl-3.x. Note that static versions of
these libraries will be used in the macOS builds, so they can be
uninstalled after building uxplay, if you wish.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>If you use Homebrew:
<code>brew install libplist openssl@3</code></p></li>
<li><p>if you use MacPorts:
<code>sudo port install libplist-devel openssl3</code></p></li>
</ul>
<p>Otherwise, build libplist and openssl from source: see instructions
near the end of this README; requires development tools (autoconf,
automake, libtool, <em>etc.</em>) to be installed.</p>
<p>Next get the latest macOS release of GStreamer-1.0.</p>
<p><strong>Using “Official” GStreamer (Recommended for both MacPorts and
Homebrew users)</strong>: install the GStreamer release for macOS from
<a
href="https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/download/">https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/download/</a>.
(This release contains its own pkg-config, so you don’t have to install
one.) Install both the gstreamer-1.0 and gstreamer-1.0-devel packages.
After downloading, Shift-Click on them to install (they install to
/Library/FrameWorks/GStreamer.framework). Homebrew or MacPorts users
should <strong>not</strong> install (or should uninstall) the GStreamer
supplied by their package manager, if they use the “official”
release.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>ADDED 2023-01-25: in the latest release (now 1.22.2)
something in the GStreamer macOS binaries appears to not be working
(UxPlay starts receiving the AirPlay stream, but the video window does
not open)</strong>. If you have this problem, use the GStreamer-1.20.6
binary packages until a fix is found. <em>You could instead compile the
“official” GStreamer-1.22.x release from source: GStreamer-1.22.0 has
been successfully built this way on a system using MacPorts: see</em> <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/wiki/Building-GStreamer-from-Source-on-macOS-with-MacPorts">the
UxPlay Wiki</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Using Homebrew’s GStreamer</strong>: pkg-config is needed:
(“brew install pkg-config gstreamer”). This causes a large number of
extra packages to be installed by Homebrew as dependencies. The <a
href="https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/gstreamer#default">Homebrew
gstreamer installation</a> has recently been reworked into a single
“formula” named <code>gstreamer</code>, which now works without needing
GST_PLUGIN_PATH to be set in the enviroment. Homebrew installs gstreamer
to <code>(HOMEBREW)/lib/gstreamer-1.0</code> where
<code>(HOMEBREW)/*</code> is <code>/opt/homebrew/*</code> on Apple
Silicon Macs, and <code>/usr/local/*</code> on Intel Macs; do not put
any extra non-Homebrew plugins (that you build yourself) there, and
instead set GST_PLUGIN_PATH to point to their location (Homebrew does
not supply a complete GStreamer, but seems to have everything needed for
UxPlay).</p>
<p>Finally, build and install uxplay: open a terminal and change into
the UxPlay source directory (“UxPlay-master” for zipfile downloads,
“UxPlay” for “git clone” downloads) and build/install with “cmake . ;
make ; sudo make install” (same as for Linux).</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Running UxPlay while checking for GStreamer warnings (do this
with “export GST_DEBUG=2” before runnng UxPlay) reveals that with the
default (since UxPlay 1.64) use of timestamps for video synchonization,
many video frames are being dropped (only on macOS), perhaps due to
another error (about videometa) that shows up in the GStreamer warnings.
<strong>Recommendation: use the new UxPlay “no timestamp” option
“<code>-vsync no</code>”</strong> (you can add a line “vsync no” in the
uxplayrc configuration file).</p></li>
<li><p>On macOS with this installation of GStreamer, the only videosinks
available seem to be glimagesink (default choice made by autovideosink)
and osxvideosink. The window title does not show the Airplay server
name, but the window is visible to screen-sharing apps (e.g., Zoom). The
only available audiosink seems to be osxaudiosink.</p></li>
<li><p>The option -nc is always used, whether or not it is selected.
This is a workaround for a problem with GStreamer videosinks on macOS:
if the GStreamer pipeline is destroyed while the mirror window is still
open, a segfault occurs.</p></li>
<li><p>In the case of glimagesink, the resolution settings “-s wxh” do
not affect the (small) initial OpenGL mirror window size, but the window
can be expanded using the mouse or trackpad. In contrast, a window
created with “-vs osxvideosink” is initially big, but has the wrong
aspect ratio (stretched image); in this case the aspect ratio changes
when the window width is changed by dragging its side; the option “-vs
osxvideosink force-aspect-ratio=true” can be used to make the window
have the correct aspect ratio when it first opens.</p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong><em>Using GStreamer installed from MacPorts (not
recommended):</em></strong></p>
<p>To install: “sudo port install pkgconf”; “sudo port install
gstreamer1-gst-plugins-base gstreamer1-gst-plugins-good
gstreamer1-gst-plugins-bad gstreamer1-gst-libav”. <strong>The MacPorts
GStreamer is old (v1.16.2) and built to use X11</strong>: use the
special CMake option <code>-DUSE_X11=ON</code> when building UxPlay.
Then uxplay must be run from an XQuartz terminal, and needs option “-vs
ximagesink”. On a unibody (non-retina) MacBook Pro, the default
resolution wxh = 1920x1080 was too large, but using option “-s 800x600”
worked. The MacPorts GStreamer pipeline seems fragile against attempts
to change the X11 window size, or to rotations that switch a connected
client between portrait and landscape mode while uxplay is running.
Using the MacPorts X11 GStreamer seems only possible if the image size
is left unchanged from the initial “-s wxh” setting (also use the
iPad/iPhone setting that locks the screen orientation against switching
between portrait and landscape mode as the device is rotated).</p>
<h2
id="building-uxplay-on-microsoft-windows-using-msys2-with-the-mingw-64-compiler.">Building
UxPlay on Microsoft Windows, using MSYS2 with the MinGW-64
compiler.</h2>
<ul>
<li>tested on Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit.</li>
</ul>
<ol type="1">
<li><p>Download and install <strong>Bonjour SDK for Windows
v3.0</strong> from the official Apple site <a
href="https://developer.apple.com/download/all/?q=Bonjour%20SDK%20for%20Windows">https://developer.apple.com/download</a>.
(Apple makes you register as a developer to access it; if you do not
want to go through the registration process, you can download the SDK
without any registration at <a
href="https://www.softpedia.com/get/Programming/SDK-DDK/Bonjour-SDK.shtml">softpedia.com</a>.)
This should install the Bonjour SDK as
<code>C:\Program Files\Bonjour SDK</code></p></li>
<li><p>(This is for 64-bit Windows; a build for 32-bit Windows should be
possible, but is not tested.) The unix-like MSYS2 build environment will
be used: download and install MSYS2 from the official site <a
href="https://www.msys2.org">https://www.msys2.org/</a>. Accept the
default installation location <code>C:\mysys64</code>.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://packages.msys2.org/package/">MSYS2 packages</a>
are installed with a variant of the “pacman” package manager used by
Arch Linux. Open a “MSYS2 MINGW64” terminal from the MSYS2 tab in the
Windows Start menu, and update the new MSYS2 installation with “pacman
-Syu”. Then install the <strong>MinGW-64</strong> compiler and
<strong>cmake</strong></p>
<pre><code>pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc</code></pre>
<p>The compiler with all required dependencies will be installed in the
msys64 directory, with default path <code>C:/msys64/mingw64</code>. Here
we will simply build UxPlay from the command line in the MSYS2
environment (this uses “<code>ninja</code>” in place of
“<code>make</code>” for the build system).</p></li>
<li><p>Download the latest UxPlay from github <strong>(to use
<code>git</code>, install it with <code>pacman -S git</code>, then
“<code>git clone https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay</code>”)</strong>, then
install UxPlay dependencies (openssl is already installed with
MSYS2):</p>
<p><code>pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-libplist mingw-w64-x86_64-gstreamer mingw-w64-x86_64-gst-plugins-base</code></p>
<p>Note that libplist will be linked statically to the uxplay
executable. If you are trying a different Windows build system, MSVC
versions of GStreamer for Windows are available from the <a
href="https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/download/">official GStreamer
site</a>, but only the MinGW 64-bit build on MSYS2 has been
tested.</p></li>
<li><p>cd to the UxPlay source directory, then
“<code>mkdir build</code>” and “<code>cd build</code>”. The build
process assumes that the Bonjour SDK is installed at
<code>C:\Program Files\Bonjour SDK</code>. If it is somewhere else, set
the enviroment variable BONJOUR_SDK_HOME to point to its location. Then
build UxPlay with</p>
<p><code>cmake ..</code></p>
<p><code>ninja</code></p></li>
<li><p>Assuming no error in either of these, you will have built the
uxplay executable <strong>uxplay.exe</strong> in the current (“build”)
directory. The “sudo make install” and “sudo make uninstall” features
offered in the other builds are not available on Windows; instead, the
MSYS2 environment has <code>/mingw64/...</code> available, and you can
install the uxplay.exe executable in <code>C:/msys64/mingw64/bin</code>
(plus manpage and documentation in
<code>C:/msys64/mingw64/share/...</code>) with</p>
<p><code>cmake --install . --prefix /mingw64</code></p>
<p>To be able to view the manpage, you need to install the manpage
viewer with “<code>pacman -S man</code>”.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>To run <strong>uxplay.exe</strong> you need to install some gstreamer
plugin packages with
<code>pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gst-&lt;plugin&gt;</code>, where the
required ones have <code>&lt;plugin&gt;</code> given by</p>
<ol type="1">
<li><strong>libav</strong></li>
<li><strong>plugins-good</strong></li>
<li><strong>plugins-bad</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>Other possible MSYS2 gstreamer plugin packages you might use are
listed in <a href="https://packages.msys2.org/package/">MSYS2
packages</a>.</p>
<p>You also will need to grant permission to the uxplay executable
uxplay.exe to access data through the Windows firewall. You may
automatically be offered the choice to do this when you first run
uxplay, or you may need to do it using <strong>Windows
Settings-&gt;Update and Security-&gt;Windows Security-&gt;Firewall &amp;
network protection -&gt; allow an app through firewall</strong>. If your
virus protection flags uxplay.exe as “suspicious” (but without a true
malware signature) you may need to give it an exception.</p>
<p>Now test by running “<code>uxplay</code>” (in a MSYS2 terminal
window). If you need to specify the audiosink, there are two main
choices on Windows: the older DirectSound plugin
“<code>-as directsoundsink</code>”, and the more modern Windows Audio
Session API (wasapi) plugin “<code>-as wasapisink</code>”, which
supports <a
href="https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/wasapi/wasapisink.html">additional
options</a> such as</p>
<pre><code>uxplay -as &#39;wasapisink device=\&quot;&lt;guid&gt;\&quot;&#39; </code></pre>
<p>where <code>&lt;guid&gt;</code> specifies an available audio device
by its GUID, which can be found using
“<code>gst-device-monitor-1.0 Audio</code>”: <code>&lt;guid&gt;</code>
has a form like
<code>\{0.0.0.00000000\}.\{98e35b2b-8eba-412e-b840-fd2c2492cf44\}</code>.
If “<code>device</code>” is not specified, the default audio device is
used.</p>
<p>If you wish to specify the videosink using the
<code>-vs &lt;videosink&gt;</code> option, some choices for
<code>&lt;videosink&gt;</code> are <code>d3d11videosink</code>,
<code>d3dvideosink</code>, <code>glimagesink</code>,
<code>gtksink</code>. With Direct3D 11.0 or greater, you can get the
ability to toggle into and out of fullscreen mode using the Alt-Enter
key combination with option
<code>-vs "d3d11videosink fullscreen-toggle-mode=alt-enter"</code>. For
convenience, this option will be added if just
<code>-vs d3d11videosink</code> (by itself) is used. (You may wish to
add “<code>vs d3d11videosink</code>” (no initial “<code>-</code>”) to
the UxPlay startup options file; see “man uxplay” or “uxplay -h”.)</p>
<p>The executable uxplay.exe can also be run without the MSYS2
environment, in the Windows Terminal, with
<code>C:\msys64\mingw64\bin\uxplay</code>.</p>
<h1 id="usage">Usage</h1>
<p>Options:</p>
<p><strong>-n server_name</strong> (Default: UxPlay);
server_name@_hostname_ will be the name that appears offering AirPlay
services to your iPad, iPhone etc, where <em>hostname</em> is the name
of the server running uxplay. This will also now be the name shown above
the mirror display (X11) window.</p>
<p><strong>-nh</strong> Do not append “<span class="citation"
data-cites="_hostname_">@_hostname_</span>” at the end of the AirPlay
server name.</p>
<p><strong>-vsync [x]</strong> (In Mirror mode:) this option
(<strong>now the default</strong>) uses timestamps to synchronize audio
with video on the server, with an optional audio delay in (decimal)
milliseconds (<em>x</em> = “20.5” means 0.0205 seconds delay: positive
or negative delays less than a second are allowed.) It is needed on
low-power systems such as Raspberry Pi without hardware video
decoding.</p>
<p><strong>-vsync no</strong> (In Mirror mode:) this switches off
timestamp-based audio-video synchronization, restoring the default
behavior prior to UxPlay-1.64. Standard desktop systems seem to work
well without use of timestamps: this mode is appropriate for “live
streaming” such as using UxPlay as a second monitor for a mac computer,
or monitoring a webcam; with it, no video frames are dropped.</p>
<p><strong>-async [x]</strong> (In Audio-Only (ALAC) mode:) this option
uses timestamps to synchronize audio on the server with video on the
client, with an optional audio delay in (decimal) milliseconds
(<em>x</em> = “20.5” means 0.0205 seconds delay: positive or negative
delays less than a second are allowed.) Because the client adds a video
delay to account for latency, the server in -async mode adds an
equivalent audio delay, which means that audio changes such as a pause
or a track-change will not take effect immediately. <em>This might in
principle be mitigated by using the <code>-al</code> audio latency
setting to change the latency (default 0.25 secs) that the server
reports to the client, but at present changing this does not seem to
have any effect</em>.</p>
<p><strong>-async no</strong>. This is the still the default behavior in
Audio-only mode, but this option may be useful as a command-line option
to switch off a <code>-async</code> option set in a “uxplayrc”
configuration file.</p>
<p><strong>-s wxh</strong> (e.g. -s 1920x1080 , which is the default )
sets the display resolution (width and height, in pixels). (This may be
a request made to the AirPlay client, and perhaps will not be the final
resolution you get.) w and h are whole numbers with four digits or less.
Note that the <strong>height</strong> pixel size is the controlling one
used by the client for determining the streaming format; the width is
dynamically adjusted to the shape of the image (portrait or landscape
format, depending on how an iPad is held, for example).</p>
<p><strong>-s wxh@r</strong> As above, but also informs the AirPlay
client about the screen refresh rate of the display. Default is r=60 (60
Hz); r must be a whole number less than 256.</p>
<p><strong>-o</strong> turns on an “overscanned” option for the display
window. This reduces the image resolution by using some of the pixels
requested by option -s wxh (or their default values 1920x1080) by adding
an empty boundary frame of unused pixels (which would be lost in a
full-screen display that overscans, and is not displayed by gstreamer).
Recommendation: <strong>don’t use this option</strong> unless there is
some special reason to use it.</p>
<p><strong>-fs</strong> uses fullscreen mode, but only works with X11,
Wayland or VAAPI.</p>
<p><strong>-p</strong> allows you to select the network ports used by
UxPlay (these need to be opened if the server is behind a firewall). By
itself, -p sets “legacy” ports TCP 7100, 7000, 7001, UDP 6000, 6001,
7011. -p n (e.g. -p 35000) sets TCP and UDP ports n, n+1, n+2. -p
n1,n2,n3 (comma-separated values) sets each port separately; -p n1,n2
sets ports n1,n2,n2+1. -p tcp n or -p udp n sets just the TCP or UDP
ports. Ports must be in the range [1024-65535].</p>
<p>If the -p option is not used, the ports are chosen dynamically
(randomly), which will not work if a firewall is running.</p>
<p><strong>-avdec</strong> forces use of software h264 decoding using
Gstreamer element avdec_h264 (libav h264 decoder). This option should
prevent autovideosink choosing a hardware-accelerated videosink plugin
such as vaapisink.</p>
<p><strong>-vp <em>parser</em></strong> choses the GStreamer pipeline’s
h264 parser element, default is h264parse. Using quotes “…” allows
options to be added.</p>
<p><strong>-vd <em>decoder</em></strong> chooses the GStreamer
pipeline’s h264 decoder element, instead of the default value
“decodebin” which chooses it for you. Software decoding is done by
avdec_h264; various hardware decoders include: vaapih264dec, nvdec,
nvh264dec, v4l2h264dec (these require that the appropriate hardware is
available). Using quotes “…” allows some parameters to be included with
the decoder name.</p>
<p><strong>-vc <em>converter</em></strong> chooses the GStreamer
pipeline’s videoconverter element, instead of the default value
“videoconvert”. When using Video4Linux2 hardware-decoding by a
GPU,<code>-vc  v4l2convert</code> will also use the GPU for video
conversion. Using quotes “…” allows some parameters to be included with
the converter name.</p>
<p><strong>-vs <em>videosink</em></strong> chooses the GStreamer
videosink, instead of the default value “autovideosink” which chooses it
for you. Some videosink choices are: ximagesink, xvimagesink, vaapisink
(for intel graphics), gtksink, glimagesink, waylandsink, osximagesink
(for macOS), kmssink (for systems without X11, like Raspberry Pi OS
lite) or fpsdisplaysink (which shows the streaming framerate in fps).
Using quotes “…” allows some parameters to be included with the
videosink name. For example, <strong>fullscreen</strong> mode is
supported by the vaapisink plugin, and is obtained using
<code>-vs "vaapisink fullscreen=true"</code>; this also works with
<code>waylandsink</code>. The syntax of such options is specific to a
given plugin, and some choices of videosink might not work on your
system.</p>
<p><strong>-vs 0</strong> suppresses display of streamed video, but
plays streamed audio. (The client’s screen is still mirrored at a
reduced rate of 1 frame per second, but is not rendered or displayed.)
This feature (which streams audio in AAC audio format) is now probably
unneeded, as UxPlay can now stream superior-quality Apple Lossless audio
without video in Airplay non-mirror mode.</p>
<p><strong>-v4l2</strong> Video settings for hardware h264 video
decoding in the GPU by Video4Linux2. Equivalent to
<code>-vd v4l2h264dec -vc v4l2convert</code>.</p>
<p><strong>-bt709</strong> A workaround for the failure of the older
Video4Linux2 plugin to recognize Apple’s use of an uncommon (but
permitted) “full-range color” variant of the bt709 color standard for
digital TV. This is no longer needed by GStreamer-1.20.4 and backports
from it.</p>
<p><strong>-rpi</strong> Equivalent to “-v4l2”. Use for “Desktop”
Raspberry Pi systems with X11.</p>
<p><strong>-rpigl</strong> Equivalent to “-rpi -vs glimagesink”.
Sometimes better for “Desktop” Raspberry Pi systems with X11.</p>
<p><strong>-rpifb</strong> Equivalent to “-rpi -vs kmssink” (use for
Raspberry Pi systems using the framebuffer, like RPi OS Bullseye
Lite).</p>
<p><strong>-rpiwl</strong> Equivalent to “-rpi -vs waylandsink”, for
Raspberry Pi “Desktop” systems using the Wayland video compositor (use
for Ubuntu 21.10 for Raspberry Pi 4B).</p>
<p><strong>-as <em>audiosink</em></strong> chooses the GStreamer
audiosink, instead of letting autoaudiosink pick it for you. Some
audiosink choices are: pulsesink, alsasink, pipewiresink, osssink,
oss4sink, jackaudiosink, osxaudiosink (for macOS), wasapisink,
directsoundsink (for Windows). Using quotes “…” might allow some
parameters to be included with the audiosink name. (Some choices of
audiosink might not work on your system.)</p>
<p><strong>-as 0</strong> (or just <strong>-a</strong>) suppresses
playing of streamed audio, but displays streamed video.</p>
<p><strong>-al <em>x</em></strong> specifies an audio latency <em>x</em>
in (decimal) seconds in Audio-only (ALAC), that is reported to the
client. Values in the range [0.0, 10.0] seconds are allowed, and will be
converted to a whole number of microseconds. Default is 0.25 sec (250000
usec). (This replaces the <code>-ao</code> option introduced in v1.62,
as a workaround for a problem that is now fixed).</p>
<p><strong>-ca <em>filename</em></strong> provides a file (where
<em>filename</em> can include a full path) used for output of “cover
art” (from Apple Music, <em>etc.</em>,) in audio-only ALAC mode. This
file is overwritten with the latest cover art as it arrives. Cover art
(jpeg format) is discarded if this option is not used. Use with a image
viewer that reloads the image if it changes, or regularly (<em>e.g.</em>
once per second.). To achieve this, run
“<code>uxplay -ca [path/to/]filename &amp;</code>” in the background,
then run the the image viewer in the foreground. Example, using
<code>feh</code> as the viewer: run
“<code>feh -R 1 [path/to/]filename</code>” (in the same terminal window
in which uxplay was put into the background). To quit, use
<code>ctrl-C fg ctrl-C</code> to terminate the image viewer, bring
<code>uxplay</code> into the foreground, and terminate it too.</p>
<p><strong>-reset n</strong> sets a limit of <em>n</em> consecutive
timeout failures of the client to respond to ntp requests from the
server (these are sent every 3 seconds to check if the client is still
present, and synchronize with it). After <em>n</em> failures, the client
will be presumed to be offline, and the connection will be reset to
allow a new connection. The default value of <em>n</em> is 5; the value
<em>n</em> = 0 means “no limit” on timeouts.</p>
<p><strong>-nc</strong> maintains previous UxPlay &lt; 1.45 behavior
that does <strong>not close</strong> the video window when the the
client sends the “Stop Mirroring” signal. <em>This option is currently
used by default in macOS, as the window created in macOS by GStreamer
does not terminate correctly (it causes a segfault) if it is still open
when the GStreamer pipeline is closed.</em></p>
<p><strong>-nohold</strong> Drops the current connection when a new
client attempts to connect. Without this option, the current client
maintains exclusive ownership of UxPlay until it disconnects.</p>
<p><strong>-FPSdata</strong> Turns on monitoring of regular reports
about video streaming performance that are sent by the client. These
will be displayed in the terminal window if this option is used. The
data is updated by the client at 1 second intervals.</p>
<p><strong>-fps n</strong> sets a maximum frame rate (in frames per
second) for the AirPlay client to stream video; n must be a whole number
less than 256. (The client may choose to serve video at any frame rate
lower than this; default is 30 fps.) A setting of 60 fps may give you
improved video but is not recommended on Raspberry Pi. A setting below
30 fps might be useful to reduce latency if you are running more than
one instance of uxplay at the same time. <em>This setting is only an
advisory to the client device, so setting a high value will not force a
high framerate.</em> (You can test using “-vs fpsdisplaysink” to see
what framerate is being received, or use the option -FPSdata which
displays video-stream performance data continuously sent by the client
during video-streaming.)</p>
<p><strong>-f {H|V|I}</strong> implements “videoflip” image transforms:
H = horizontal flip (right-left flip, or mirror image); V = vertical
flip ; I = 180 degree rotation or inversion (which is the combination of
H with V).</p>
<p><strong>-r {R|L}</strong> 90 degree Right (clockwise) or Left
(counter-clockwise) rotations; these image transforms are carried out
after any <strong>-f</strong> transforms.</p>
<p><strong>-m</strong> generates a random MAC address to use instead of
the true hardware MAC number of the computer’s network card. (Different
server_name, MAC addresses, and network ports are needed for each
running uxplay if you attempt to run two instances of uxplay on the same
computer.) If UxPlay fails to find the true MAC address of a network
card, (more specifically, the MAC address used by the first active
network interface detected) a random MAC address will be used even if
option <strong>-m</strong> was not specified. (Note that a random MAC
address will be different each time UxPlay is started).</p>
<p><strong>-t <em>timeout</em></strong> [This option was removed in
UxPlay v.1.61.]</p>
<p><strong>-vdmp</strong> Dumps h264 video to file videodump.h264. -vdmp
n dumps not more than n NAL units to videodump.x.h264; x= 1,2,…
increases each time a SPS/PPS NAL unit arrives. To change the name
<em>videodump</em>, use -vdmp [n] <em>filename</em>.</p>
<p><strong>-admp</strong> Dumps audio to file audiodump.x.aac (AAC-ELD
format audio), audiodump.x.alac (ALAC format audio) or audiodump.x.aud
(other-format audio), where x = 1,2,3… increases each time the audio
format changes. -admp <em>n</em> restricts the number of packets dumped
to a file to <em>n</em> or less. To change the name <em>audiodump</em>,
use -admp [n] <em>filename</em>. <em>Note that (unlike dumped video) the
dumped audio is currently only useful for debugging, as it is not
containerized to make it playable with standard audio players.</em></p>
<p><strong>-d</strong> Enable debug output. Note: this does not show
GStreamer error or debug messages. To see GStreamer error and warning
messages, set the environment variable GST_DEBUG with “export
GST_DEBUG=2” before running uxplay. To see GStreamer information
messages, set GST_DEBUG=4; for DEBUG messages, GST_DEBUG=5; increase
this to see even more of the GStreamer inner workings.</p>
<h1 id="troubleshooting">Troubleshooting</h1>
<p>Note: <code>uxplay</code> is run from a terminal command line, and
informational messages are written to the terminal.</p>
<h3 id="problems-in-compiling-uxplay.">0. Problems in compiling
UxPlay.</h3>
<p>One user (on Ubuntu) found compilation failed with messages about
linking to “usr/local/lib/libcrypto.a” and “zlib”. This was because (in
addition to the standard ubuntu installation of libssl-dev), the user
was unaware that a second installation with libcrypto in /usr/local was
present. Solution: when more than one installation of OpenSSL is
present, set the environment variable OPEN_SSL_ROOT_DIR to point to the
correct one; on 64-bit Ubuntu, this is done by running
<code>export OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=/usr/lib/X86_64-linux-gnu/</code> before
running cmake.</p>
<h3 id="avahidns_sd-bonjourzeroconf-issues">1. <strong>Avahi/DNS_SD
Bonjour/Zeroconf issues</strong></h3>
<p>The DNS_SD Service-Discovery (“Bonjour” or “Zeroconf”) service is
required for UxPlay to work. On Linux, it will be usually provided by
Avahi, and to troubleshoot this, you should use the tool
<code>avahi-browse</code>. (You may need to install a separate package
with a name like <code>avahi-utils</code> to get this.)</p>
<p>On Linux, make sure Avahi is installed, and start the avahi-daemon
service on the system running uxplay (your distribution will document
how to do this, for example:
<code>sudo systemctl &lt;cmd&gt; avahi-daemon</code> or
<code>sudo service avahi-daemon &lt;cmd&gt;</code>, with
<code>&lt;cmd&gt;</code> one of enable, disable, start, stop, status.
You might need to edit the avahi-daemon.conf file (it is typically in
/etc/avahi/, find it with
“<code>sudo find /etc -name avahi-daemon.conf</code>”): make sure that
“disable-publishing” is <strong>not</strong> a selected option). Some
systems may instead use the mdnsd daemon as an alternative to provide
DNS-SD service. (FreeBSD offers both alternatives, but only Avahi was
tested; see <a
href="https://gist.github.com/reidransom/6033227">here</a>.)</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>uxplay starts, but either stalls or stops after “Initialized
server socket(s)” appears (<em>without the server name showing on the
client</em>)</strong>.</li>
</ul>
<p>If UxPlay stops with the “No DNS-SD Server found” message, this means
that your network <strong>does not have a running Bonjour/zeroconf
DNS-SD server.</strong> Before v1.60, UxPlay used to stall silently if
DNS-SD service registration failed, but now stops with an error message
returned by the DNSServiceRegister function: kDNSServiceErr_Unknown if
no DNS-SD server was found: other mDNS error codes are in the range FFFE
FF00 (-65792) to FFFE FFFF (-65537), and are listed in the dnssd.h file.
An older version of this (the one used by avahi) is found <a
href="https://github.com/lathiat/avahi/blob/master/avahi-compat-libdns_sd/dns_sd.h">here</a>.
A few additional error codes are defined in a later version from <a
href="https://opensource.apple.com/source/mDNSResponder/mDNSResponder-544/mDNSShared/dns_sd.h.auto.html">Apple</a>.</p>
<p>If UxPlay stalls <em>without an error message</em> and <em>without
the server name showing on the client</em>, this is either
pre-UxPlay-1.60 behavior when no DNS-SD server was found, or a network
problem.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Avahi works at first, but new clients do not see UxPlay, or
clients that initially saw it stop doing so after they
disconnect</strong>.</li>
</ul>
<p>This is usually because Avahi is only using the “loopback” network
interface, and is not receiving mDNS queries from new clients that were
not listening when UxPlay started.</p>
<p>To check this, after starting uxplay, use the utility
<code>avahi-browse -a -t</code> <strong>in a different terminal
window</strong> on the server to verify that the UxPlay AirTunes and
AirPlay services are correctly registered (only the AirTunes service is
used in the “Legacy” AirPlay Mirror mode used by UxPlay, but the AirPlay
service is used for the initial contact).</p>
<p>The results returned by avahi-browse should show entries for uxplay
like</p>
<pre><code>+   eno1 IPv6 UxPlay                                        AirPlay Remote Video local
+   eno1 IPv4 UxPlay                                        AirPlay Remote Video local
+     lo IPv4 UxPlay                                        AirPlay Remote Video local
+   eno1 IPv6 863EA27598FE@UxPlay                           AirTunes Remote Audio local
+   eno1 IPv4 863EA27598FE@UxPlay                           AirTunes Remote Audio local
+     lo IPv4 863EA27598FE@UxPlay                           AirTunes Remote Audio local
</code></pre>
<p>If only the loopback (“lo”) entries are shown, a firewall on the
UxPlay host is probably blocking full DNS-SD service, and you need to
open the default UDP port 5353 for mDNS requests, as loopback-based
DNS-SD service is unreliable.</p>
<p>If the UxPlay services are listed by avahi-browse as above, but are
not seen by the client, the problem is likely to be a problem with the
local network.</p>
<h3
id="uxplay-starts-but-stalls-after-initialized-server-sockets-appears-with-the-server-name-showing-on-the-client-but-the-client-fails-to-connect-when-the-uxplay-server-is-selected.">2.
uxplay starts, but stalls after “Initialized server socket(s)” appears,
<em>with the server name showing on the client</em> (but the client
fails to connect when the UxPlay server is selected).</h3>
<p>This shows that a <em>DNS-SD</em> service is working, clients hear
UxPlay is available, but the UxPlay server is not receiving the response
from the client. This is usually because a firewall on the server is
blocking the connection request from the client. (One user who insisted
that the firewall had been turned off turned out to have had
<em>two</em> active firewalls (<em>firewalld</em> and <em>ufw</em>)
<em>both</em> running on the server!) If possible, either turn off the
firewall to see if that is the problem, or get three consecutive network
ports, starting at port n, all three in the range 1024-65535, opened for
both tcp and udp, and use “uxplay -p n” (or open UDP 7011,6001,6000 TCP
7100,7000,7001 and use “uxplay -p”).</p>
<p>If you are <em>really</em> sure there is no firewall, you may need to
investigate your network transmissions with a tool like netstat, but
almost always this is a firewall issue.</p>
<h3 id="problems-after-the-client-server-connection-has-been-made">3.
Problems <em>after</em> the client-server connection has been made:</h3>
<p>If you do <em>not</em> see the message
<code>raop_rtp_mirror starting mirroring</code>, something went wrong
before the client-server negotiations were finished. For such problems,
use “uxplay -d” (debug log option) to see what is happening: it will
show how far the connection process gets before the failure occurs. You
can compare your debug output to that from a successful start of UxPlay
in the <a href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/wiki">UxPlay
Wiki</a>.</p>
<p><strong>If UxPlay reports that mirroring started, but you get no
video or audio, the problem is probably from a GStreamer plugin that
doesn’t work on your system</strong> (by default, GStreamer uses the
“autovideosink” and “autoaudiosink” algorithms to guess what are the
“best” plugins to use on your system). A different reason for no audio
occurred when a user with a firewall only opened two udp network ports:
<strong>three</strong> are required (the third one receives the audio
data).</p>
<p><strong>Raspberry Pi</strong> devices work best with hardware GPU
h264 video decoding if the Video4Linux2 plugin in GStreamer v1.20.x or
earlier has been patched (see the UxPlay <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/wiki/Gstreamer-Video4Linux2-plugin-patches">Wiki</a>
for patches). This is fixed in GStreamer-1.22, and by backport patches
from this in distributions such as Raspberry Pi OS (Bullseye):
<strong>use option <code>-bt709</code> with the GStreamer-1.18.4 from
Raspberry Pi OS</strong>. This also needs the bcm2835-codec kernel
module that is not in the standard Linux kernel (it is available in
Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu and Manjaro).</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>If this kernel module is not available in your Raspberry Pi
operating system, or if GStreamer &lt; 1.22 is not patched, use option
<code>-avdec</code> for software h264-decoding.</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Sometimes “autovideosink” may select the OpenGL renderer
“glimagesink” which may not work correctly on your system. Try the
options “-vs ximagesink” or “-vs xvimagesink” to see if using one of
these fixes the problem.</p>
<p>Other reported problems are connected to the GStreamer VAAPI plugin
(for hardware-accelerated Intel graphics, but not NVIDIA graphics). Use
the option “-avdec” to force software h264 video decoding: this should
prevent autovideosink from selecting the vaapisink videosink.
Alternatively, find out if the gstreamer1.0-vaapi plugin is installed,
and if so, uninstall it. (If this does not fix the problem, you can
reinstall it.)</p>
<p>There are some reports of other GStreamer problems with
hardware-accelerated Intel HD graphics. One user (on Debian) solved this
with “sudo apt install intel-media-va-driver-non-free”. This is a driver
for 8’th (or later) generation “*-lake” Intel chips, that seems to be
related to VAAPI accelerated graphics.</p>
<p>If you <em>do</em> have Intel HD graphics, and have installed the
vaapi plugin, but <code>-vs vaapisink</code> does not work, check that
vaapi is not “blacklisted” in your GStreamer installation: run
<code>gst-inspect-1.0 vaapi</code>, if this reports
<code>0 features</code>, you need to
<code>export GST_VAAPI_ALL_DRIVERS=1</code> before running uxplay, or
set this in the default environment.</p>
<p>You can try to fix audio or video problems by using the
“<code>-as &lt;audiosink&gt;</code>” or
“<code>-vs &lt;videosink&gt;</code>” options to choose the GStreamer
audiosink or videosink , rather than letting GStreamer choose one for
you. (See above, in <a href="#starting-and-running-uxplay">Starting and
running UxPlay</a> for choices of <code>&lt;audiosink&gt;</code> or
<code>&lt;videosink&gt;</code>.)</p>
<p>The “OpenGL renderer” window created on Linux by “-vs glimagesink”
sometimes does not close properly when its “close” button is clicked.
(this is a GStreamer issue). You may need to terminate uxplay with
Ctrl-C to close a “zombie” OpenGl window. If similar problems happen
when the client sends the “Stop Mirroring” signal, try the no-close
option “-nc” that leaves the video window open.</p>
<h3 id="gstreamer-issues-missing-plugins-etc.">4. GStreamer issues
(missing plugins, etc.):</h3>
<ul>
<li>clearing the user’s GStreamer cache with
<code>rm -rf ~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0/*</code> may be the solution to
problems where gst-inspect-1.0 does not show a plugin that you believe
is installed. The cache will be regenerated next time GStreamer is
started. <strong>This is the solution to puzzling problems that turn out
to come from corruption of the cache, and should be tried
first.</strong></li>
</ul>
<p>If UxPlay fails to start, with a message that a required GStreamer
plugin (such as “libav”) was not found, first check with the GStreamer
tool gst-inspect-1.0 to see what GStreamer knows is available. (You may
need to install some additional GStreamer “tools” package to get
gst-inspect-1.0). For, <em>e.g.</em> a libav problem, check with
“<code>gst-inspect-1.0 libav</code>”. If it is not shown as available to
GStreamer, but your package manager shows the relevant package as
installed (as one user found), try entirely removing and reinstalling
the package. That user found that a solution to a “<strong>Required
gstreamer plugin ‘libav’ not found</strong>” message that kept recurring
was to clear the user’s gstreamer cache.</p>
<p>If it fails to start with an error like
‘<code>no element "avdec_aac"</code>’ this is because even though
gstreamer-libav is installed. it is incomplete because some plugin
features are missing: “<code>gst-inspect-1.0 | grep avdec_aac</code>”
will show if avdec_aac is available. Unlike other GStreamer plugins, the
libav plugin is a front end to FFmpeg codecs which provide avdec_*. Some
distributions (RedHat, SUSE, etc) provide incomplete versions of FFmpeg
because of patent issues with codecs used by certain plugins. In those
cases there will be some “extra package” provider like <a
href="https://rpmfusion.org">RPM fusion</a> (RedHat), <a
href="http://packman.links2linux.org/">packman</a> (SUSE) where you can
get complete packages (your distribution will usually provide
instructions for this, Mageia puts them in an optional “tainted” repo).
The packages needed may be “ffmpeg*” or “libav*” packages: the GStreamer
libav plugin package does not contain any codecs itself, it just
provides a way for GStreamer to use ffmpeg/libav codec libraries which
must be installed separately. For similar reasons, distributions may
ship incomplete packages of GStreamer “plugins-bad”.</p>
<ul>
<li>starting with release UxPlay-1.65.3, UxPlay will continue to
function, but without audio in mirror mode, if avdec_aac is
missing.</li>
</ul>
<p>To troubleshoot GStreamer execute “export GST_DEBUG=2” to set the
GStreamer debug-level environment-variable in the terminal where you
will run uxplay, so that you see warning and error messages; see <a
href="https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/documentation/tutorials/basic/debugging-tools.html">GStreamer
debugging tools</a> for how to see much more of what is happening inside
GStreamer. Run “gst-inspect-1.0” to see which GStreamer plugins are
installed on your system.</p>
<p>Some extra GStreamer packages for special plugins may need to be
installed (or reinstalled: a user using a Wayland display system as an
alternative to X11 reported that after reinstalling Lubuntu 18.4, UxPlay
would not work until gstreamer1.0-x was installed, presumably for
Wayland’s X11-compatibility mode). Different distributions may break up
GStreamer 1.x into packages in different ways; the packages listed above
in the build instructions should bring in other required GStreamer
packages as dependencies, but will not install all possible plugins.</p>
<p>The GStreamer video pipeline, which is shown in the initial output
from <code>uxplay -d</code>, has the default form</p>
<pre><code>appsrc name=video_source ! queue ! h264parse ! decodebin ! videoconvert ! autovideosink name=video_sink sync=false</code></pre>
<p>The pipeline is fully configurable: default elements “h264parse”,
“decodebin”, “videoconvert”, and “autovideosink” can respectively be
replaced by using uxplay options <code>-vp</code>, <code>-vd</code>,
<code>-vc</code>, and <code>-vs</code>, if there is any need to modify
it (entries can be given in quotes “…” to include options).</p>
<h3 id="mirror-screen-freezes-a-network-problem">5. Mirror screen
freezes (a network problem):</h3>
<p>This can happen if the TCP video stream from the client stops
arriving at the server, probably because of network problems (the UDP
audio stream may continue to arrive). At 3-second intervals, UxPlay
checks that the client is still connected by sending it a request for a
NTP time signal. If a reply is not received from the client within a 0.3
sec time-window, an “ntp timeout” is registered. If a certain number
(currently 5) of consecutive ntp timeouts occur, UxPlay assumes that the
client is “dead”, and resets the connection, becoming available for
connection to a new client, or reconnection to the previous one.
Sometimes the connection may recover before the timeout limit is
reached, and if the default limit is not right for your network, it can
be modified using the option “-reset <em>n</em>”, where <em>n</em> is
the desired timeout-limit value (<em>n</em> = 0 means “no limit”). If
the connection starts to recover after ntp timeouts, a corrupt video
packet from before the timeout may trigger a “connection reset by peer”
error, which also causes UxPlay to reset the connection.</p>
<ul>
<li>When the connection is reset, the “frozen” mirror screen of the
previous connection is left in place, but does <strong>not</strong>
block new connections, and will be taken over by a new client connection
when it is made.</li>
</ul>
<h3
id="protocol-issues-with-decryption-of-the-encrypted-audio-and-video-streams-sent-by-the-client.">6.
Protocol issues (with decryption of the encrypted audio and video
streams sent by the client).</h3>
<p>A protocol failure may trigger an unending stream of error messages,
and means that the audio decryption key (also used in video decryption)
was not correctly extracted from data sent by the client.</p>
<p>The protocol was modifed in UxPlay-1.65 after it was discovered that
the client-server “pairing” step could be avoided (leading to a much
quicker connection setup, without a 5 second delay) by disabling
“Supports Legacy Pairing” (bit 27) in the “features” code UxPlay
advertises on DNS-SD Service Discovery. Most clients will then not
attempt the setup of a “shared secret key” when pairing, which is used
by AppleTV for simultaneous handling of multiple clients (UxPlay only
supports one client at a time). <strong>This change is now well-tested,
but in case it causes any protocol failures, UxPlay can be reverted to
the previous behavior by uncommenting the previous “FEATURES_1” setting
(and commenting out the new one) in lib/dnssdint.h, and then rebuilding
UxPlay.</strong></p>
<p>Protocol failure should not happen for iOS 9.3 or later clients.
However, if a client uses the same older version of the protocol that is
used by the Windows-based AirPlay client emulator <em>AirMyPC</em>, the
protocol can be switched to the older version by the setting
<code>OLD_PROTOCOL_CLIENT_USER_AGENT_LIST</code> in
<code>UxPlay/lib/global.h</code>. UxPlay reports the client’s “User
Agent” string when it connects. If some other client also fails to
decrypt all audio and video, try adding its “User Agent” string in place
of “xxx” in the entry “AirMyPC/2.0;xxx” in global.h and rebuild
uxplay.</p>
<p>Note that for DNS-SD Service Discovery, Uxplay declares itself to be
an AppleTV3,2 (a 32 bit device) with a sourceVersion 220.68; this can
also be changed in global.h. UxPlay also works if it declares itself as
an AppleTV6,2 with sourceVersion 380.20.1 (an AppleTV 4K 1st gen,
introduced 2017, running tvOS 12.2.1), so it does not seem to matter
what UxPlay claims to be.</p>
<h1 id="changelog">Changelog</h1>
<p>1.65.3 2023-07-23 Add RPM spec file; add graceful exit if required
gstreamer libav feature “avdec_aac” is missing: (this occurs in
RPM-based distributions that ship an incomplete FFmpeg for Patent or
License reasons, and rely on users installing an externally-supplied
complete FFmpeg).</p>
<p>1.65 2023-06-03 Eliminate pair_setup part of connection protocol to
allow faster connections with clients (thanks to <span class="citation"
data-cites="shuax">@shuax</span> #176 for this discovery); to revert,
uncomment a line in lib/dnssdint.h. Disconnect from audio device when
connection closes, to not block its use by other apps if uxplay is
running but not connected. Fix for AirMyPC client (broken since 1.60),
so its older non-NTP timestamp protocol works with -vsync. Corrected
parsing of configuration file entries that were in quotes.</p>
<p>1.64 2023-04-23 Timestamp-based synchronization of audio and video is
now the default in Mirror mode. (Use “-vsync no” to restore previous
behavior.) A configuration file can now be used for startup options.
Also some internal cleanups and a minor bugfix that fixes #192.</p>
<p>1.63 2023-02-12 Reworked audio-video synchronization, with new
options -vsync (for Mirror mode) and -async (for Audio-Only mode, to
sync with client video). Option -vsync makes software h264 decoding of
streamed videos with option -avdec viable on some recent Raspberry Pi
models. Internal change: all times are now processed in nanoseconds
units. Removed -ao option introduced in 1.62.</p>
<p>1.62 2023-01-18 Added Audio-only mode time offset -ao x to allow user
synchronization of ALAC audio playing on the server with video, song
lyrics, etc. playing on the client. x = 5.0 appears to be optimal in
many cases. Quality fixes: cleanup in volume changes, timestamps, some
bugfixes.</p>
<p>1.61 2022-12-30 Removed -t option (workaround for an Avahi issue,
correctly solved by opening network port UDP 5353 in firewall). Remove
-g debug flag from CMAKE_CFLAGS. Postpend (instead of prepend) build
environment CFLAGS to CMAKE_CFLAGS. Refactor parts of uxplay.cpp</p>
<p>1.60 2022-12-15 Added exit with error message if DNSServiceRegister
fails (instead of just stalling). Test for Client’s attempt to using
unsupported AirPlay 2 “REMOTE CONTROL” protocol (with no timing
channel), and exit if this occurs. Reworked metadata processing to
correctly parse DMAP header (previous version worked with DMAP messages
currently received, but was not correct).</p>
<p>1.59 2022-12-12 remove “ZOOMFIX” compile option and make compilation
with X11-dependence the default if X11 development libraries are
detected (this now also provides fullscreen mode with a F11 or Alt+Enter
key toggle); ZOOMFIX is now automatically applied for GStreamer &lt;
1.20. New cmake option -DNO_X11_DEPS compiles uxplay without X11
dependence. Reworked internal metadata handling. Fix segfault with “-vs
0”.</p>
<p>1.58 2022-10-29 Add option “-nohold” that will drop existing
connections when a new client connects. Update llhttp to v8.1.0.</p>
<p>1.57 2022-10-09 Minor fixes: (fix coredump on AUR on “stop
mirroring”, occurs when compiled with AUR CFLAGS -DFORTIFY_SOURCE);
graceful exit when required plugins are missing; improved support for
builds on Windows. Include audioresample in GStreamer audio
pipeline.</p>
<p>1.56 2022-09-01 Added support for building and running UxPlay-1.56 on
Windows (no changes to Unix (Linux, *BSD, macOS) codebase.)</p>
<p>1.56 2022-07-30 Remove -bt709 from -rpi, -rpiwl, -rpifb as GStreamer
is now fixed.</p>
<p>1.55 2022-07-04 Remove the bt709 fix from -v4l2 and create a new
-bt709 option (previous “-v4l2” is now “-v4l2 -bt709”). This allows the
currently-required -bt709 option to be used on its own on RPi without
-v4l2 (sometimes this give better results).</p>
<p>1.54 2022-06-25 Add support for “Cover Art” display in Audio-only
(ALAC) mode. Reverted a change that caused VAAPI to crash with AMD
POLARIS graphics cards. Minor internal changes to plist code and uxplay
option parsing.</p>
<p>1.53 2022-06-13 Internal changes to audio sync code, revised
documentation, Minor bugfix (fix assertion crash when resent audio
packets are empty).</p>
<p>1.52 2022-05-05 Cleaned up initial audio sync code, and reformatted
streaming debug output (readable aligned timestamps with decimal points
in seconds). Eliminate memory leaks (found by valgrind). Support for
display of ALAC (audio-only) metadata (soundtrack artist names, titles
etc.) in the uxplay terminal.</p>
<p>1.51 2022-04-24 Reworked options forVideo4Linux2 support (new option
-v4l2) and short options -rpi, -rpifb, -rpiwl as synonyms for -v4l2,
-v4l2 -vs kmssink, and -v4l2 -vs waylandsink. Reverted a change from
1.48 that broke reconnection after “Stop Mirroring” is sent by
client.</p>
<p>1.50 2022-04-22 Added -fs fullscreen option (for Wayland or VAAPI
plugins only), Changed -rpi to be for framebuffer (“lite”) RPi systems
and added -rpigl (OpenGL) and -rpiwl (Wayland) options for RPi Desktop
systems. Also modified timestamps from “DTS” to “PTS” for latency
improvement, plus internal cleanups.</p>
<p>1.49 2022-03-28 Addded options for dumping video and/or audio to
file, for debugging, etc. h264 PPS/SPS NALU’s are shown with -d. Fixed
video-not-working for M1 Mac clients.</p>
<p>1.48 2022-03-11 Made the GStreamer video pipeline fully configurable,
for use with hardware h264 decoding. Support for Raspberry Pi.</p>
<p>1.47 2022-02-05 Added -FPSdata option to display (in the terminal)
regular reports sent by the client about video streaming performance.
Internal cleanups of processing of video packets received from the
client. Added -reset n option to reset the connection after n ntp
timeouts (also reset after “connection reset by peer” error in video
stream).</p>
<p>1.46 2022-01-20 Restore pre-1.44 behavior (1.44 may have broken
hardware acceleration): once again use decodebin in the video pipeline;
introduce new option “-avdec” to force software h264 decoding by libav
h264, if needed (to prevent selection of vaapisink by autovideosink).
Update llhttp to v6.0.6. UxPlay now reports itself as AppleTV3,2.
Restrict connections to one client at a time (second client must now
wait for first client to disconnect).</p>
<p>1.45 2022-01-10 New behavior: close video window when client requests
“stop mirroring”. (A new “no close” option “-nc” is added for users who
wish to retain previous behavior that does not close the video
window).</p>
<p>1.44 2021-12-13 Omit hash of aeskey with ecdh_secret for an AirMyPC
client; make an internal rearrangement of where this hash is done. Fully
report all initial communications between client and server in -d debug
mode. Replace decodebin in GStreamer video pipeline by h264-specific
elements.</p>
<p>1.43 2021-12-07 Various internal changes, such as tests for
successful decryption, uniform treatment of informational/debug
messages, etc., updated README.</p>
<p>1.42 2021-11-20 Fix MAC detection to work with modern Linux interface
naming practices, MacOS and *BSD.</p>
<p>1.41 2021-11-11 Further cleanups of multiple audio format support
(internal changes, separated RAOP and GStreamer audio/video startup)</p>
<p>1.40 2021-11-09 Cleanup segfault in ALAC support, manpage location
fix, show request Plists in debug mode.</p>
<p>1.39 2021-11-06 Added support for Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio
streams.</p>
<p>1.38 2021-10-8 Add -as <em>audiosink</em> option to allow user to
choose the GStreamer audiosink.</p>
<p>1.37 2021-09-29 Append “<span class="citation"
data-cites="hostname">@hostname</span>” to AirPlay Server name, where
“hostname” is the name of the server running uxplay (reworked change in
1.36).</p>
<p>1.36 2021-09-29 Implemented suggestion (by <span class="citation"
data-cites="mrbesen">@mrbesen</span> and <span class="citation"
data-cites="PetrusZ">@PetrusZ</span>) to use hostname of machine runing
uxplay as the default server name</p>
<p>1.35.1 2021-09-28 Added the -vs 0 option for streaming audio, but not
displaying video.</p>
<p>1.35 2021-09-10 now uses a GLib MainLoop, and builds on macOS (tested
on Intel Mac, 10.15 ). New option -t <em>timeout</em> for relaunching
server if no connections were active in previous <em>timeout</em>
seconds (to renew Bonjour registration).</p>
<p>1.341 2021-09-04 fixed: render logger was not being destroyed by
stop_server()</p>
<p>1.34 2021-08-27 Fixed “ZOOMFIX”: the X11 window name fix was only
being made the first time the GStreamer window was created by uxplay,
and not if the server was relaunched after the GStreamer window was
closed, with uxplay still running. Corrected in v. 1.34</p>
<h3 id="building-openssl-1.1.1-from-source.">Building OpenSSL &gt;=
1.1.1 from source.</h3>
<p>If you need to do this, note that you may be able to use a newer
version (OpenSSL-3.0.1 is known to work). You will need the standard
development toolset (autoconf, automake, libtool). Download the source
code from <a
href="https://www.openssl.org/source/">https://www.openssl.org/source/</a>.
Install the downloaded openssl by opening a terminal in your Downloads
directory, and unpacking the source distribution: (“tar -xvzf
openssl-3.0.1.tar.gz ; cd openssl-3.0.1”). Then build/install with
“./config ; make ; sudo make install_dev”. This will typically install
the needed library <code>libcrypto.*</code>, either in /usr/local/lib or
/usr/local/lib64.</p>
<p><em>(Ignore the following for builds on MacOS:)</em> On some systems
like Debian or Ubuntu, you may also need to add a missing entry
<code>/usr/local/lib64</code> in /etc/ld.so.conf (or place a file
containing “/usr/local/lib64/libcrypto.so” in /etc/ld.so.conf.d) and
then run “sudo ldconfig”.</p>
<h3 id="building-libplist-2.0.0-from-source.">Building libplist &gt;=
2.0.0 from source.</h3>
<p><em>(Note: on Debian 9 “Stretch” or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS editions, you
can avoid this step by installing libplist-dev and libplist3 from Debian
10 or Ubuntu 18.04.)</em> As well as the usual build tools (autoconf,
automake, libtool), you may need to also install some libpython*-dev
package. Download the latest source with git from <a
href="https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libplist">https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libplist</a>,
or get the source from the Releases section (use the *.tar.bz2 release,
<strong>not</strong> the *.zip or *.tar.gz versions): download <a
href="https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libplist/releases/download/2.3.0/libplist-2.3.0.tar.bz2">libplist-2.3.0</a>,
then unpack it (“tar -xvjf libplist-2.3.0.tar.bz2 ; cd libplist-2.3.0”),
and build/install it: (“./configure ; make ; sudo make install”). This
will probably install libplist-2.0.* in /usr/local/lib. The new
libplist-2.3.0 release should be compatible with UxPlay; <a
href="https://github.com/libimobiledevice/libplist/releases/download/2.2.0/libplist-2.2.0.tar.bz2">libplist-2.2.0</a>
is also available if there are any issues.</p>
<p><em>(Ignore the following for builds on MacOS:)</em> On some systems
like Debian or Ubuntu, you may also need to add a missing entry
<code>/usr/local/lib</code> in /etc/ld.so.conf (or place a file
containing “/usr/local/lib/libplist-2.0.so” in /etc/ld.so.conf.d) and
then run “sudo ldconfig”.</p>
<h1 id="disclaimer">Disclaimer</h1>
<p>All the resources in this repository are written using only freely
available information from the internet. The code and related resources
are meant for educational purposes only. It is the responsibility of the
user to make sure all local laws are adhered to.</p>
<p>This project makes use of a third-party GPL library for handling
FairPlay. The legal status of that library is unclear. Should you be a
representative of Apple and have any objections against the legality of
the library and its use in this project, please contact the developers
and the appropriate steps will be taken.</p>
<p>Given the large number of third-party AirPlay receivers (mostly
closed-source) available for purchase, it is our understanding that an
open source implementation of the same functionality wouldn’t violate
any of Apple’s rights either.</p>
<h1 id="uxplay-authors">UxPlay authors</h1>
<p><em>[adapted from fdraschbacher’s notes on RPiPlay
antecedents]</em></p>
<p>The code in this repository accumulated from various sources over
time. Here is an attempt at listing the various authors and the
components they created:</p>
<p>UxPlay was initially created by <strong>antimof</strong> from
RPiPlay, by replacing its Raspberry-Pi-adapted OpenMAX video and audio
rendering system with GStreamer rendering for desktop Linux systems; the
antimof work on code in <code>renderers/</code> was later backported to
RPiPlay, and the antimof project became dormant, but was later revived
at the <a href="http://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay">current GitHub site</a>
to serve a wider community of users.</p>
<p>The previous authors of code included in UxPlay by inheritance from
RPiPlay include:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>EstebanKubata</strong>: Created a FairPlay library called <a
href="https://github.com/EstebanKubata/playfair">PlayFair</a>. Located
in the <code>lib/playfair</code> folder. License: GNU GPL</li>
<li><strong>Juho Vähä-Herttua</strong> and contributors: Created an
AirPlay audio server called <a
href="https://github.com/juhovh/shairplay">ShairPlay</a>, including
support for Fairplay based on PlayFair. Most of the code in
<code>lib/</code> originally stems from this project. License: GNU
LGPLv2.1+</li>
<li><strong>dsafa22</strong>: Created an AirPlay 2 mirroring server <a
href="https://github.com/dsafa22/AirplayServer">AirplayServer</a> (seems
gone now), for Android based on ShairPlay. Code is preserved <a
href="https://github.com/jiangban/AirplayServer">here</a>, and <a
href="https://github.com/FDH2/UxPlay/wiki/AirPlay2">see here</a> for the
description of the analysis of the AirPlay 2 mirror protocol that made
RPiPlay possible, by the AirplayServer author. All code in
<code>lib/</code> concerning mirroring is dsafa22’s work. License: GNU
LGPLv2.1+</li>
<li><strong>Florian Draschbacher</strong> (FD-) and contributors:
adapted dsafa22’s Android project for the Raspberry Pi, with extensive
cleanups, debugging and improvements. The project <a
href="https://github.com/FD-/RPiPlay">RPiPlay</a> is basically a port of
dsafa22’s code to the Raspberry Pi, utilizing OpenMAX and OpenSSL for
better performance on the Pi. License GPL v3. FD- has written an
interesting note on the history of <a
href="http://github.com/FD-/RPiPlay#airplay-protocol-versions">Airplay
protocol versions</a>, available at the RPiPlay github repository.</li>
</ul>
<p>Independent of UxPlay, but used by it and bundled with it:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Fedor Indutny</strong> (of Node.js, and formerly Joyent,
Inc) and contributors: Created an http parsing library called <a
href="https://github.com/nodejs/llhttp">llhttp</a>. Located at
<code>lib/llhttp/</code>. License: MIT</li>
</ul>