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Tutorial: RAR playback with Emby


gardar

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gardar

After reading through the forums and "googling" around I finally found a solution that enables me to use rars with Emby.

 

 

The solution is to mount the directories that contain your rar files with rar2fs and then point Emby to that location.

 

What rar2fs does is displaying the contents of your rar files rather than the rar files, so this is completely transparent to Emby.

 

You can read further about rar2fs here: http://hasse69.github.io/rar2fs/

 

 

rar2fs only works on operating systems that support fuse, I have only tried linux but mac os and freebsd might work as well.

 

If you are using windows for your Emby server you might mount your rar files with rar2fs on a linux server and then share that directory over the network. (Or just set up a Emby server on linux :) )

 

 

These instructions are based on Debian 8. If you are using a different distro and having difficulty using these instructions then please leave a comment.

 

 

Prerequisites:

sudo aptitude install make wget fuse libfuse-dev g++

Then we'll fetch the sources:

wget http://www.rarlab.com/rar/unrarsrc-5.2.3.tar.gz
wget https://github.com/hasse69/rar2fs/releases/download/v1.20.0/rar2fs-1.20.0.tar.gz

We'll begin by installing unrar and the unrar library

tar -zxvf unrarsrc-5.2.3.tar.gz
cd unrar
make
sudo make install
make lib
sudo make install-lib
cd ..

Next we'll install rar2fs

tar -zxvf rar2fs-1.20.0.tar.gz
cd rar2fs-1.20.0
./configure --with-unrar=../unrar --with-unrar-lib=/usr/lib/
make
sudo make install

Then we can mount our directory, rar2fs works with all sub directories so you only have to mount the highest directory in the hierarchy.

rar2fs -o allow_other --seek-length=1 /path/to/your/directory /path/to/where/you/want/to/mount

Then you can point Emby to the path where you just mounted.

 

 

To make rar2fs mount on boot you can add this line to your fstab:

rar2fs#/path/to/your/directory /path/to/where/you/want/to/mount/ fuse allow_other,--seek-length=1	0 0

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

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Mwuanno

I have that setup (albeit with plex, please don't shoot me) and I can say that it does work.

 

However, there are limitations and issues that I have battled with for ages now (over a year):

 

FUSE is a "userspace" filesystem - which means it's not native to linux and therefore filesystem events like new folder or new file and so on does not work. It's possibly worse than an SMB connection to your NAS, or at least on par. This means the scanning engine cannot pickup these events, and has to scan the library "manually".

 

Timestamps on the media files inside the rar-archives, cannot be updated. At least the plex scanner has been optimized to only look in folders and files with an updated timestamp, in order to scan faster. This messes a bit with the scans, and I often have to manually scan and correct things with touch to update timestamps of the folders, or nothing happens.

 

The reason for wanting native rar playback (and native playback of iso-files, I haven't seen if emby does this), is possibly due to being spoiled by XBMC for so many years. XBMC is sadly client-side only, and has next to no app support and with no server, no transcode options. But for just accessing media stored in rar-files, in nearly any format possible - it just works.

 

If I can get an emby server, that can natively access my rar-archives, and iso images inside rar-archives (my dvd collection was originally ripped to .iso, back when XBMC was the only contender), can still transcode - I'm gonna be so ecstatic I'll adopt a puppy and post pictures, while also hitting that donate button with something that resembles at least 3 figures. I know that's next to nothing, and I have no idea how much time a developer would need to implement these things and test them. I can't code myself, just scripting(which is NOT coding, I know), so I'm completely dependent on others and throwing money at my screen might at least be an incentive of sorts ? If this is offensive, I apologize deeply.

 

Anyway, I will follow the emby project and read up on development - but without these functions, my plex installation will continue to be the primary platform. Also, my phone is ios, and I seem to be missing an app for that, but that should be in the works if I read that correctly.

 

Lastly, this was no critique, I think you're doing an awesome job and the gpu transcoding as an example is mindblowing to me. I can't fathom why your "competitor" hasn't gone down that road yet.

 

Make Emby go to eleven!

 

/Mwu

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  • 1 month later...
korvgryta

I have that setup (albeit with plex, please don't shoot me) and I can say that it does work.

 

However, there are limitations and issues that I have battled with for ages now (over a year):

 

FUSE is a "userspace" filesystem - which means it's not native to linux and therefore filesystem events like new folder or new file and so on does not work. It's possibly worse than an SMB connection to your NAS, or at least on par. This means the scanning engine cannot pickup these events, and has to scan the library "manually".

 

Timestamps on the media files inside the rar-archives, cannot be updated. At least the plex scanner has been optimized to only look in folders and files with an updated timestamp, in order to scan faster. This messes a bit with the scans, and I often have to manually scan and correct things with touch to update timestamps of the folders, or nothing happens.

 

The reason for wanting native rar playback (and native playback of iso-files, I haven't seen if emby does this), is possibly due to being spoiled by XBMC for so many years. XBMC is sadly client-side only, and has next to no app support and with no server, no transcode options. But for just accessing media stored in rar-files, in nearly any format possible - it just works.

 

If I can get an emby server, that can natively access my rar-archives, and iso images inside rar-archives (my dvd collection was originally ripped to .iso, back when XBMC was the only contender), can still transcode - I'm gonna be so ecstatic I'll adopt a puppy and post pictures, while also hitting that donate button with something that resembles at least 3 figures. I know that's next to nothing, and I have no idea how much time a developer would need to implement these things and test them. I can't code myself, just scripting(which is NOT coding, I know), so I'm completely dependent on others and throwing money at my screen might at least be an incentive of sorts ? If this is offensive, I apologize deeply.

 

Anyway, I will follow the emby project and read up on development - but without these functions, my plex installation will continue to be the primary platform. Also, my phone is ios, and I seem to be missing an app for that, but that should be in the works if I read that correctly.

 

Lastly, this was no critique, I think you're doing an awesome job and the gpu transcoding as an example is mindblowing to me. I can't fathom why your "competitor" hasn't gone down that road yet.

 

Make Emby go to eleven!

 

/Mwu

 

I agree with everything above :)

 

I started a thread about this some time ago and just like you I am following this project and hoping it will one day go to eleven! :)

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