Streaming issues and solutions

No video starts on Chromecast, or a message can not play this file is shown in local video player, or a message incompatible media type is shown.

This is most of the time due to a problem with Kodi internal security.
If Yatse says Error 401 - Unable to access this media then you are facing this problem, else to confirm this just try to offline download a file from Yatse and see if it shows error 401. See here for help about offline files. If you see error 401 then you are facing this problem. If not then see the rest of this article.

After having fixed the Kodi part, to avoid synchronisation problem it is recommended that you force a sync in Yatse, swipe to refresh (pull down) in corresponding section.

Kodi security

The Kodi security system include 2 different things:
  • Each file remotely accessed must be part of a source that have the allowsharing value to true. On some Kodi distribution, your media are scraped without being part of a source so can not be accessed.
  • The source check is made with case sensitivity, so if you have declared your source as SMB://server/share but your Kodi database contains media with a smb://server/Share path access will be denied.

• Missing or bad sources

Sometimes your media can be automatically scrapped without a corresponding source being present (rPI, Android, Linux). This is often the case for auto mounted drives like USB devices.
To fix this problem the simplest solution is to add a duplicate dummy source pointing to the to the same directory of the existing source (Do not set a content type to those sources to avoid duplicates):
  • On the Pi, go into Videos (And/Or Audio) > Files > Add Source and add the following two sources: /var/media and /media if you are unsure of where your media are stored.
  • On other devices you need to find the root folder containing your media then add it as a source go into Videos (And/Or Audio) > Files > Add Source then enter the media path.

If have manually added your sources in sources.xml, there's chances that you forget the allowsharing part or that you use login/password directly in urls. In that case please remove the sources and them back from Kodi GUI.

If you use MySQL as a Kodi database, then you can see all your media on all your Hosts even if you have not declared your sources on each clients. Unfortunately this does not allows remote access to your media. So you need to declare them on all your host (With correct case, so it's better to copy your sources.xml file to avoid mistakes)

• Case sensitivity problem.

The attempt to correct this at Kodi level was refused (See here) so you need to correct this on your side.

This is caused by a change in your sources between the first scrape and the access time. If there's a case difference (SMB:// vs smb:// for example) then access will be denied.
Since Kodi scraping does not take in account those case changes a rescrape does not fix the problem.
The only solution is to remove your faulty sources, accept the Kodi message asking to delete all related content, then add the source again and scrape it again from scratch.
To be sure you can also delete the MyVideoXX.db or MyMusicXX.db files in your Kodi home directory then rescrape.
 
See http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Media_sources for help on dealing with sources in Kodi and http://kodi.wiki/view/sources.xml if you want to deal with them manually (the allowsharing is the important part) (This Wiki is not 100% up to date regarding login/password in sources.xml, they will prevent remote access while working inside Kodi).

Password protected Media Center

Yatse support connecting to Media Center with password and can stream the content to other devices like UPnP. But some players (UPnP / Chromecast) does not support access to those protected media. You can use the Force UPnP for streaming advanced settings to force the usage of Kodi UPnP server to serve the media, as this one is not password protected.
But you need to activate all UPnP related options in Kodi settings for this to work.

Unsupported Media

Yatse is a powerful application that allows a lot of things to be connected even if they where not supposed to. But still Yatse is not a magic application and can not make impossible things happens.

Since Kodi does not support transcoding (The action of changing a media from a format to another) if your media are not compatible with the player that you chose then it won't play or play with limitations (no sound or no video).

  • See 'No sound or video' section below for details on Chromecast limitations.
  • See 'No sound or video' section below for details on adding support for DTS/AC3 to Mx Player.

Kodi also offer PVR integration and addons support that allow access to lot's of media, the problem is that Kodi addons API is limited and does not allow Yatse to gather the necessary data to access those data most of the time.

Meaning Yatse can not stream PVR and most addons that gives access to protected content, since Yatse can not have access to the security information needed for that.

Yatse can cast and stream from many different sources to many different targets.
Unfortunately not all Media Centers and players are equals and some combination may not be possible.
For example Kodi does not support streaming from Addons and PVR. (For addons you can still start them on Kodi first then migrate to the new player, it have a greater chance to work).
Kodi also do not support transcoding so playing .iso files will most of time don't work.
Remark: Yatse fully support Emby and Plex as sources that both support transcoding to address most of those issues.

For Kodi see Above point that gives solutions for other most common Kodi issues.

When playing to local device most Android players does support AC3 and DTS by default.
For Mx Player you can install a codec pack Download link to enable them again.

When playing to Chromecast you are limited to the codec that Chromecast support. (Supported codec list)
Since Kodi do not support transcoding please ensure that your media are supported by Chromecast

Remark: Streaming from most addons and PVR / Live TV will not work due to limitation of Kodi, as Yatse have no way to get the necessary data and authentication. This include most, if not all, pirated content addons.

Yatse can be used on the same device as Kodi (Android only) to stream plugins to Chromecast for example.

Kodi still does not transcode so the media needs to be compatible with your receiver

This can be achieved by configuring a playercorefactory.xml file inside Kodi. See http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Use_external_players_on_Android for complete documentation on this file.

To add Yatse as a possible player you need to add the following text to this file:

<player name="Yatse" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="true" video="true">
<filename>org.leetzone.android.yatsewidgetfree</filename>
<hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc>
<playcountminimumtime>120</playcountminimumtime>
</player>

And to set Yatse as the default player if needed you need to add:

<rule video="true" player="Yatse"/>

A complete file would look like:

<playercorefactory>
<players>
<player name="Yatse" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="true" video="true">
<filename>org.leetzone.android.yatsewidgetfree</filename>
<hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc>
<playcountminimumtime>120</playcountminimumtime>
</player>
</players>
<rules action="prepend">
<rule video="true" player="Yatse"/>
</rules>
</playercorefactory>

You can download a pre-configured file with Yatse as default player at: Download link

See http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Use_external_players_on_Android for the position of this file
Once this file is properly set-up and Kodi restarted, playing media inside Kodi will forward them to Yatse and allows you stream them to any compatible player.