Universal Media Server | Forum

Hi.

I have my media library on my main PC and I run UMS on it. I can access the media locally on my network no problems. DLNA works really well for this. However, I would like to be able to access, watch and possibly download my media remotely from outside my network.

On my iPhone I can access my media and download the files via web browsers (tested safari and brave), but not play anything. It always says the format is unsupported.

On android devices (like the T’Eyes CC3 in my car), I can watch and download the files.

Is there any way to be able to play files from within safari or other web browsers on iOS devices. Alternatively, is there a way to access the media via apps like VLC and Infuse? I see a bunch of options for connecting to servers, however none of them work when connecting to my network remotely using my static IP address and port 9001 (UNS on main pc) or 9002 (UMS on my laptop). I’ve even tried inputting my username and password when setting these up.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

UMS was made for serving local networks, but some people have managed to set it up to be accessed from the internet. It is not something I know how to do, all I know is you have to forward all the right ports used for the protocols as well as the ones used for UMS.
There is a post somewhere on the forum on how to set it up but don't know where.

Another way that should work is if you set up your own VPN on your computer then your device can connect to UMS over the internet as if it was on the same network.

Maybe @Boss can help you with this as he has much more knowledge about networking than me.

I Don't know about support on Safari as I don't have anything apple, but I was sure that it should play in it. Maybe safari won't play HLS MP4 videos or there needs to be a special format for them.

VLC should work well and would be much better than a web browser, the videos will not need to be transcoded either as VLC can play just about any format.
IIRC UMS should show up in the playlist section once detected but not sure.

I see you have a static IP which is good.
Have you put in port forwards in your router for ports 9001 and 9002?

9001 is for playing the media and 9002 is to access the UMS settings/config.

If you are not familiar with port forwards, you would forward ports 9001 and 9002 to the IP of the computer running UMS to the same ports.

But... you would need some type of security otherwise anyone could run UMS from outside your network just as you would be able to.

VLC
I see that VLC can access windows shares via SMB (samba). I dont have any experience doing that with VLC but it should work with a VPN.

Another way which would work:
Run a SFTP server program on your computer which has UMS on it.
Install FE File Explorer on your iphone.
Configure FE File Explorer to have access via SFTP to your computer running UMS.
From FE File Explorer you can access your media files and play them via VLC or the built in media player in FE File Explorer.

Or... maybe setup a Linux server running 24/7 with UMS, SSH, SFTP and whatever else you want running on it.

PS. Whichever method you use, you will need to have a decent upload speed on the connection where your computer is which hosts the media files.

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