casting any video to Chromecast
Jul. 24th, 2015 09:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
I'm getting slightly better/more knowledgeable about how to use this thing. So I got that going for me.
The funny/faceplam thing is that the question I was asking in my last entry actually has a very simple solution. Yet when you do a search for "how to cast your desktop from Chromecast" a bunch of stuff comes up that kinda-sorta works, when in fact the best solution is way simpler. And the "Chromecast 101" page is embarrassingly fluffy.
To be fair, searching for "how to cast any video on Chromecast" might have been better. It depends on your goal... If you literally want to cast your desktop and put something on your TV that's not a video, then another solution might work better. But all I want is be able to cast video from a source that's not necessarily YouTube or stored in the cloud anywhere -- specifically, I want to be able to cast videos that I have stored on an external hard drive that's on my home network but connected to a different PC. (Currently, I'm casting from my laptop to a TV in my room, whereas the hard drive where all my shows live is connected to the desktop PC in my office.)
Here are the casting methods I've found:
1) HERE'S THE ONE THAT WORKS BEST: It's so ridiculously simple it's kind of lame that it took me this long to figure out -- and really lame that Google doesn't make it clearer. Drag and drop the video you want to watch into Chrome. (Or, copy the system path into the address bar.) Then cast your tab as usual. Yep, that's it. It can handle MP4 vids, but seems to have a little trouble with AVI and MKV. And even then, it's not perfect -- I tried to watch Phineas and Ferb this way, and there was picture but no sound, whereas other MP4 files worked just fine. There's a tiny bit of lag from time to time, but nothing too terrible. (If you're wondering how this works with my specific system, I just go to my home network, access the files on my desktop PC, and drag and drop what I want to watch into Chrome. It's similar to how I stream from my Xbox downstairs, except the Xbox can actually connect directly to the home network.) Edit: OK, total brain fart moment for me...idreamofdraco said that she streams from her Blu-ray player, and duh, I do as well. It was what I did before getting a Chromecast, and it has the same file limitations, so really the Chromecast is just giving me the ability to cast YouTube video. I don't know why I spent all this time determined to make Chromecast do both -- the only benefit is that I don't have to switch back and forth. LOL... oh brain, you work in mysterious ways.
2) Chromecast also has something in beta called "cast entire screen." It's under the options/settings... you can cast your tab, cast just audio, or cast entire screen. The problem with this is that it's in beta, so it doesn't always work, and when it did work, the video was extremely choppy. (I read that this might be caused by one's Wi-Fi router, if it's too slow, but mine is really new and fairly up there in quality, so what kind of router do you need?!) But in theory, if they can get this feature to work smoothly, it would be the best way to do it.
3) Use a third-party app. I found a video of a guy who navigates his PC's file structure in a Chrome tab using an app called "File Manager" or something. It worked, but I could not figure out how to navigate to the homegroup, so it didn't work for my purposes. But if I just wanted to display stuff, including video, from my local machine, it would have been fine.
Obviously, if you just want to cast from YouTube, Hulu, Netflix or other programs that are natively supported by Chromecast, it does those things really well, and painlessly.
The funny/faceplam thing is that the question I was asking in my last entry actually has a very simple solution. Yet when you do a search for "how to cast your desktop from Chromecast" a bunch of stuff comes up that kinda-sorta works, when in fact the best solution is way simpler. And the "Chromecast 101" page is embarrassingly fluffy.
To be fair, searching for "how to cast any video on Chromecast" might have been better. It depends on your goal... If you literally want to cast your desktop and put something on your TV that's not a video, then another solution might work better. But all I want is be able to cast video from a source that's not necessarily YouTube or stored in the cloud anywhere -- specifically, I want to be able to cast videos that I have stored on an external hard drive that's on my home network but connected to a different PC. (Currently, I'm casting from my laptop to a TV in my room, whereas the hard drive where all my shows live is connected to the desktop PC in my office.)
Here are the casting methods I've found:
1) HERE'S THE ONE THAT WORKS BEST: It's so ridiculously simple it's kind of lame that it took me this long to figure out -- and really lame that Google doesn't make it clearer. Drag and drop the video you want to watch into Chrome. (Or, copy the system path into the address bar.) Then cast your tab as usual. Yep, that's it. It can handle MP4 vids, but seems to have a little trouble with AVI and MKV. And even then, it's not perfect -- I tried to watch Phineas and Ferb this way, and there was picture but no sound, whereas other MP4 files worked just fine. There's a tiny bit of lag from time to time, but nothing too terrible. (If you're wondering how this works with my specific system, I just go to my home network, access the files on my desktop PC, and drag and drop what I want to watch into Chrome. It's similar to how I stream from my Xbox downstairs, except the Xbox can actually connect directly to the home network.) Edit: OK, total brain fart moment for me...
idreamofdraco said that she streams from her Blu-ray player, and duh, I do as well. It was what I did before getting a Chromecast, and it has the same file limitations, so really the Chromecast is just giving me the ability to cast YouTube video. I don't know why I spent all this time determined to make Chromecast do both -- the only benefit is that I don't have to switch back and forth. LOL... oh brain, you work in mysterious ways.2) Chromecast also has something in beta called "cast entire screen." It's under the options/settings... you can cast your tab, cast just audio, or cast entire screen. The problem with this is that it's in beta, so it doesn't always work, and when it did work, the video was extremely choppy. (I read that this might be caused by one's Wi-Fi router, if it's too slow, but mine is really new and fairly up there in quality, so what kind of router do you need?!) But in theory, if they can get this feature to work smoothly, it would be the best way to do it.
3) Use a third-party app. I found a video of a guy who navigates his PC's file structure in a Chrome tab using an app called "File Manager" or something. It worked, but I could not figure out how to navigate to the homegroup, so it didn't work for my purposes. But if I just wanted to display stuff, including video, from my local machine, it would have been fine.
Obviously, if you just want to cast from YouTube, Hulu, Netflix or other programs that are natively supported by Chromecast, it does those things really well, and painlessly.
