Its main use is to act like an AppleTV for screen-mirroring (with audio) of iOS/iPadOS/macOS clients (iPhones, iPads, MacBooks) in a window on the server display (with the possibility of sharing that window on screen-sharing applications such as Zoom) on a host running Linux, macOS, or other unix. UxPlay supports a “legacy” form of Apple’s AirPlay Mirror protocol introduced in iOS 12; client devices running iOS/iPadOS 9.3.5 or later are supported, as is a (non-free) Windows-based AirPlay-client software emulator, AirMyPC. (Details of what is publically known about Apple’s AirPlay2 protocol can be found here and here).
The UxPlay server and its client must be on the same local area network, on which a Bonjour/Zeroconf mDNS/DNS-SD server 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 Avahi, through the avahi-daemon service, and is included in most Linux distributions (this service can also be provided by macOS, iOS or Windows servers).
Connections to the UxPlay server by iOS/MacOS clients can be initiated both in AirPlay Mirror mode (which streams lossily-compressed AAC audio while mirroring the client screen, or in the alternative AirPlay Audio mode which streams Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio without screen mirroring (the accompanying metadata and cover art in this mode is not displayed). Switching between these two modes during an active connection is possible: in Mirror mode, close the mirror window and start an Audio mode connection, switch back by initiating a Mirror mode connection. Note that Apple DRM (as in Apple TV app content on the client) cannot be decrypted by UxPlay, and (unlike with a true AppleTV), the client cannot run a http connection on the server instead of streaming content from one on the client.
-UxPlay uses GStreamer Plugins for rendering audio and video, and does not offer the alternative Raspberry-Pi-specific audio and video renderers available in RPiPlay. It is tested on a number of systems, including (among others) Debian 10.11 “Buster” and 11.2 “Bullseye”, Ubuntu 20.04 and 21.10, Linux Mint 20.2, Pop!_OS 21.10 (NVIDIA edition), Rocky Linux 8.4 (a CentOS successor), OpenSUSE 15.3, macOS 10.15.7, FreeBSD 13.0.
+UxPlay uses GStreamer Plugins for rendering audio and video, and does not offer the alternative Raspberry-Pi-specific audio and video renderers available in RPiPlay. It is tested on a number of systems, including (among others) Debian 10.11 “Buster” and 11.2 “Bullseye”, Ubuntu 20.04 and 21.10, Linux Mint 20.2, Pop!_OS 21.10 (NVIDIA edition), Rocky Linux 8.5 (a CentOS successor), OpenSUSE 15.3, macOS 10.15.7, FreeBSD 13.0.
Using Gstreamer means that video and audio are supported “out of the box”, using a choice of plugins. Gstreamer decoding is plugin agnostic, and uses accelerated decoders if available. For Intel integrated graphics, the VAAPI plugin is preferable, (but don’t use it with NVIDIA).
Some Linux distributions such as Debian do not allow distribution of compiled GPL code linked to OpenSSL-1.1.1 because its “dual OpenSSL/SSLeay” license has some incompatibilities with GPL, unless all code authors have explicitly given an “exception” to allow such linking (the historical origins of UxPlay make this impossible to obtain). Other distributions treat OpenSSL as a “System Library” which the GPL allows linking to.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 1b1cf92..6cbccbf 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ and does not offer the alternative Raspberry-Pi-specific audio and video renderers available in [RPiPlay](https://github.com/FD-/RPiPlay). It is tested on a number of systems, including (among others) Debian 10.11 "Buster" and 11.2 "Bullseye", Ubuntu 20.04 and 21.10, Linux Mint 20.2, Pop!\_OS 21.10 (NVIDIA edition), -Rocky Linux 8.4 (a CentOS successor), OpenSUSE 15.3, macOS 10.15.7, FreeBSD 13.0. +Rocky Linux 8.5 (a CentOS successor), OpenSUSE 15.3, macOS 10.15.7, FreeBSD 13.0. Using Gstreamer means that video and audio are supported "out of the box", using a choice of plugins. Gstreamer decoding is plugin agnostic, and uses accelerated decoders if diff --git a/README.txt b/README.txt index 0e64579..63ec2c6 100644 --- a/README.txt +++ b/README.txt @@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ not offer the alternative Raspberry-Pi-specific audio and video renderers available in [RPiPlay](https://github.com/FD-/RPiPlay). It is tested on a number of systems, including (among others) Debian 10.11 "Buster" and 11.2 "Bullseye", Ubuntu 20.04 and 21.10, Linux Mint 20.2, -Pop!\_OS 21.10 (NVIDIA edition), Rocky Linux 8.4 (a CentOS successor), +Pop!\_OS 21.10 (NVIDIA edition), Rocky Linux 8.5 (a CentOS successor), OpenSUSE 15.3, macOS 10.15.7, FreeBSD 13.0. Using Gstreamer means that video and audio are supported "out of the