dart_cast 0.7.4

A pure Dart cross-platform casting package supporting Chromecast (CASTV2), AirPlay, and DLNA with built-in HTTP proxy for header injection.

0.7.4

New

• CastMedia.defaultSubtitle names the subtitle track playback starts with (matched by URL against subtitles). Honoured by Chromecast (activeTrackIds on LOAD) and DLNA (picked over subtitles.first)

Fixed

• Chromecast no longer activates the first subtitle track when none was chosen — the track-list order silently picked the on-screen language (a French-first list produced French subtitles regardless of what the app showed as selected). No defaultSubtitle now means no subtitle shown
• Chromecast re-asserts the active subtitle after every pause → resume, including pauses from the TV remote. The Default Media Receiver can stop rendering cues after a pause/resume cycle while still reporting the track active; toggling the track set (deactivate + reactivate) re-attaches its renderer, which is what users were doing by hand
• Chromecast LOAD retries are no longer failed by the previous attempt's dying receiver session. An unsolicited IDLE/ERROR broadcast from a session that neither answers the in-flight LOAD's requestId nor matches its session id is now ignored as a stale corpse (and its session deprecated). Observed live: a next-episode LOAD was declared failed 1ms after being sent — the corpse of the failed first attempt — while the receiver went on to play the episode fine, leaving the app convinced the old episode was still playing

0.7.3

New

• MediaSource readers may now open asynchronously — an async function satisfies the reader, so sources backed by Android content:// URIs, network handles or a decrypt handshake no longer need a Stream.fromFuture(...) workaround (#12). Existing synchronous readers are unaffected; an async* reader needs a declared return type, which the MediaSource docs show

0.7.2

Fixed

• AirPlay: receivers advertising both AirPlay 1 and AirPlay 2 video (Apple TVs, the macOS receiver) now get one AirPlay 1 attempt if the AirPlay 2 /play returns 404. 0.7.0 sent every AirPlay 2 device down the V2 path and never offered V1, so a device implementing only the older endpoints could not play at all. The retry is gated on the device advertising bit 0 — it is not a return of the blind version probe 0.7.0 removed

0.7.1

Documentation only — no code changes.

• AirPlay's status, the reason video fails on the receivers tested, and how to check your own device moved out of the README into doc/AIRPLAY.md
• Protocol status is scoped to the devices actually tested rather than reading as a verdict on AirPlay itself; results from other hardware, an Apple TV especially, are welcome
• The feature table distinguishes "implemented but blocked by the receiver" from "not built yet"

0.7.0

AirPlay 2 and DLNA fixes plus caller-supplied byte sources, driven by testing against a TCL Google TV.

Breaking

• AirPlay selects its protocol version from the advertised feature bits instead of probing /play; devices with no video bit throw UnsupportedFeatureException immediately

• AirPlaySession.connect() pairs with every AirPlay 2 receiver, so it can now throw NeedsPairingException where it previously returned a session. If you call connect() on an AirPlay 2 device and do not catch that exception, this release will start throwing at you. The old behaviour was not useful — the session it returned had fallen back to a legacy path those devices reject, so it could not cast anything — but it did not fail either. Handle it by prompting for the on-screen passcode and calling pairSetup(pin), or by catching it and offering Chromecast/DLNA instead:

  try {
    await session.connect();
  } on NeedsPairingException {
    // Show the code on the TV, then:
    await session.pairSetup(pinTheUserTyped);
    await session.connect();
  }
  

  Most smart TVs use PIN-less transient pairing and never reach this path; it is devices that demand a passcode which now surface it.

• AirPlayMediaController.dispose() returns Future<void>; play() takes startPositionSeconds: instead of startPosition:

Fixed

• DLNA: seeking works when casting HLS — it previously stopped playback outright
• DLNA: HLS casts report the real duration instead of one second
• DLNA: a playback command no longer crashes with ClientException: Connection closed before full header was received when the renderer drops an idle connection — the action is retried once (#9)
• DLNA: a renderer that accepts a connection then stalls fails after 10s instead of hanging the caller forever
• DLNA: routine connection churn no longer floods the log with errors
• AirPlay: AirPlay 2 receivers pair and establish a session correctly — PIN-less transient pairing, RTSP setup and keep-alive, all confirmed against a real TV. The package previously fell back to a legacy path these devices reject
• AirPlay: failures report a cause instead of being swallowed — an unsupported device, a rejected handshake or a receiver-reported error now surfaces
• AirPlay: further video-path corrections (protocol version selection, playback-state parsing, request ordering, startPosition). Unverified end to end — no receiver tested accepts a video URL, so nothing past the handshake can be exercised yet

New

• MediaSource + MediaProxy.registerSource() + CastMedia.source() — cast bytes the package cannot open itself: Android content:// URIs, Flutter assets, decrypted or in-memory content (#12). The application supplies a range-aware reader; the proxy handles HTTP, byte ranges and seeking. Works on Chromecast, DLNA and AirPlay, since it uses the same route local files already use
• AirPlayTimingServer, transient pairing, PlaybackInfo.error
• HlsParser.totalDuration / extractSegments, MediaProxy.probeHlsDuration / parseTimeSeekRange
• tool/airplay_probe.dart, tool/airplay_hardware_check.dart, tool/dlna_hardware_check.dart, tool/chromecast_hardware_check.dart — hardware verification scripts

Known limitations

• AirPlay video does not play on the TV tested and cannot: that receiver exposes no /play endpoint, and Apple's own QuickTime fails on it identically — use Chromecast
• DLNA sidecar subtitles did not render on the TV tested; embed SRT in MKV

0.6.0

New

• Alt-audio HLS sources (split video + audio) now play on Chromecast and DLNA — pure-Dart MPEG-TS remuxer combines them into one muxed stream
• MediaProxy.registerAltAudioMuxed() — synthetic single-stream HLS master backed by per-segment muxing
• HlsParser.extractAudioRenditions + audioGroup on extractVariants entries
• TS DVB-table stripper for proxied video/mp2t, on by default; opt out via registerMedia(stripDvbTables: false)
• MediaLoadFailedException from loadMedia() on LOAD_FAILED / IDLE+ERROR / 15s timeout, carrying the receiver-reported reason
• HLS LOAD retries pass-through → muxer + stripper on failure, with requestId / mediaSessionId filtering against stale responses
• ChromecastSession.enableReceiverDebugNamespaces (default false) — opt-in CaC + debugoverlay subscribe and verbose receiver logging for debugging

Fixed

• setSubtitle() activates the correct track (was always trackId=1)
• CORS Access-Control-Allow-Origin echoes the receiver Origin when the LOAD includes a tracks array
• State machine accepts loading → {buffering, paused, idle} and idle → {buffering, playing, paused}
• DLNA: failed loadMedia returns to idle instead of stuck in loading
• Content-Length only forwarded when the body streams through unchanged
• Proxy segment / subtitle URLs end in .ts / .vtt for the Chromecast URL-extension probe
• image/* Content-Type on proxied MPEG-TS subresources rewritten to video/mp2t

0.5.1

Fixed

• Pub points (static analysis): Resolved the six pana lints under lib/ that kept the 0.5.0 static-analysis score at 40/50:
  • curly_braces_in_flow_control_structures in ts_keyframe_scanner.dart and airplay/auth/airplay_auth.dart — single-statement if bodies now wrapped in braces.
  • use_super_parameters on the two CastMessage_* enum constructors — converted to super-parameter syntax.
  • camel_case_types on the hand-written CastMessage_ProtocolVersion / CastMessage_PayloadType bindings in chromecast/proto/cast_channel.dart — suppressed via a file-level // ignore_for_file: camel_case_types, since these identifiers intentionally mirror the names protoc --dart_out would emit for Chromium's cast_channel.proto.

0.5.0

Changed

• protobuf: Upgraded protobuf dependency from ^3.1.0 to ^6.0.0 for the latest performance improvements and bug fixes (#6). Hand-written CastMessage bindings remain compatible; no API changes.
• Minimum Dart SDK: Bumped sdk constraint from ^3.0.0 to ^3.7.0 (required by protobuf 4.1.1+).

0.4.3

Fixed

• Analyzer warnings: Resolved pre-existing unused variable warnings in test files
• Code formatting: Applied dart format to all source files

0.4.2

Fixed

• Proxy IP selection: MediaProxy now picks the local interface on the same subnet as the target cast device, fixing casting failures on Android where the proxy would bind to a non-WiFi address unreachable by the cast device
• Concurrent loadMedia guard: All protocol sessions (Chromecast, AirPlay, DLNA) now ignore duplicate loadMedia() calls while one is already in progress, preventing multiple LOAD messages from being sent to the device
• Socket disconnect detection: Chromecast session now handles message stream errors and unexpected closures, transitioning to disconnected state so the app can react (previously the session stayed "connected" after a network drop)

0.4.1

Fixed

• DLNA start position: seek now deferred until TV confirms PLAYING state (immediate seek was ignored by TVs still loading)
• Chromecast subtitles for local files: subtitle files now served via HTTP/1.1 with CORS headers (HTTP/1.0 path lacked Access-Control-Allow-Origin required by Shaka Player)
• Http10FileServer: returns 416 Range Not Satisfiable for invalid/out-of-bounds ranges
• SubtitleConverter.vttToSrt(): uses targeted regex for timestamp dots (no longer corrupts non-timestamp content), expands 2-component MM:SS timestamps to HH:MM:SS
• Removed stray response.close() after socket detach in synthetic content handler

New

• Updated example app with optimistic slider state, keyboard shortcuts, mute toggle, and responsive layout
• Added protocol feature indicators in example device picker
• Updated README with "What Works Where" feature matrix, protocol notes, and DLNA local files guide

0.4.0

Breaking

• DLNA file serving now uses HTTP/1.0 via raw sockets instead of Dart's HttpServer response. This fixes playback on TCL Google TV and other renderers that reject HTTP/1.1.
• Removed DLNA-specific HTTP headers (transferMode.dlna.org, contentFeatures.dlna.org, Connection: close) from file responses — these caused some DLNA renderers to reject content.
• Cleared Dart's default security headers (x-frame-options, x-xss-protection, x-content-type-options) from the proxy server.

New

• Http10FileServer — reusable HTTP/1.0 file server class for DLNA compatibility
• CastMediaType.mkv — MKV container support for casting with embedded subtitles
• SubtitleConverter.vttToSrt() — WebVTT to SRT conversion
• SubtitleConverter.toAss() — VTT/SRT to ASS conversion with customizable styling (font, outline, shadow, margins)
• MediaProxy.registerSubtitleVariants() — registers both SRT and VTT subtitle variants for maximum TV compatibility
• DLNA subtitle variants: DIDL-Lite now includes both SRT and VTT subtitle URLs with proper format/type attributes
• DLNA seek instantly updates position without waiting for next polling cycle
• MKV content type detection and proxy URL extension support

Fixed

• DLNA playback failing on TCL Google TV and similar renderers that reject HTTP/1.1 responses
• DLNA flags mismatch between DIDL-Lite protocolInfo (21500000) and HTTP headers (01700000) — now aligned to 01700000 matching VLC and MiniDLNA
• Missing DLNA.ORG_PN profile name in protocolInfo (AVC_MP4_HP_HD_AAC for MP4, MPEG_TS_HD_NA_ISO for TS)
• DLNA seeking not working — Range responses now correctly return 206 with Content-Range
• Subtitle file proxy URLs missing file extensions (.vtt, .srt) — some TVs need extensions to recognize subtitle files
• Synthetic content (subtitle playlists, converted subtitles) now served via HTTP/1.0 for DLNA compatibility

0.3.1

• Added protocol status table to README with testing coverage and known limitations
• Documented DLNA MP4 playback issues (TV-dependent, some reject proxy-served MP4)
• Documented DLNA subtitle limitations (sec:CaptionInfoEx not universally supported)
• Documented AirPlay video casting limitations (404 on some Google TV devices)
• Recommended Chromecast as the primary tested protocol for local file casting

0.3.0

Breaking changes

• DefaultMediaTransformer no longer wraps local TS files in HLS — it serves them directly via the proxy. Use TsHlsMediaTransformer or FfmpegMediaTransformer for Chromecast-compatible local TS casting.
• CastMedia.useChunkedHls is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. TsHlsMediaTransformer always uses chunked HLS.
• ChromecastSession now defaults to TsHlsMediaTransformer instead of DefaultMediaTransformer.

New

• TsHlsMediaTransformer — wraps local TS files in keyframe-aligned HLS playlists for Chromecast compatibility
• MediaProxy.setPatPmt() / MediaProxy.setFirstPts() — enable correct PAT/PMT prepending and PTS offset for virtual HLS segments
• FfmpegMediaTransformer reference implementation in example app — remuxes TS→MP4 via ffmpeg with progress callbacks and mobile platform support
• doc/LOCAL_FILE_CASTING.md — comprehensive guide covering remux, HLS wrapping, and transcode approaches with tradeoffs

Migration guide

Replace direct DefaultMediaTransformer usage for local TS files:

// Before (0.2.x) — DefaultMediaTransformer handled local TS→HLS internally
final session = await device.connect();

// After (0.3.0) — choose your transformer explicitly
// Option A: FFmpeg remux (recommended)
final session = await device.connect(
  mediaTransformer: FfmpegMediaTransformer(),
);

// Option B: Built-in HLS wrapping (no external tools)
final session = await device.connect(
  mediaTransformer: TsHlsMediaTransformer(),
);

0.2.1

Local file casting

• Local file support with CastMedia.file() constructor
• MediaTransformer interface for extensible media format preparation
• TsKeyframeScanner for keyframe-aligned HLS segment boundaries
• Virtual segment URLs for Chromecast compatibility (replaces EXT-X-BYTERANGE)
• useChunkedHls flag for chunked vs single-segment HLS
• Local subtitle support with automatic SRT-to-VTT conversion

Chromecast fixes

• Fixed local file casting — HLS playlists and file routes were destroyed by cleanup before the device could fetch them
• CORS preflight (OPTIONS) handler for HLS segment requests
• RFC 8216-compliant TARGETDURATION calculation
• Consistent application/x-mpegURL content type across all HLS responses
• File extension on proxy URLs for HLS player format detection
• Volume updates via RECEIVER_STATUS instead of optimistic update

DLNA improvements

• Duration metadata via DIDL-Lite <res duration="HH:MM:SS"> attribute
• DLNA-specific HTTP headers (transferMode.dlna.org, DLNA.ORG_OP=01 flags)
• Serve local TS files directly (not piped through HLS)

Other

• Retry mDNS queries 3 times for slow-responding devices
• Comprehensive logging for all discovery providers and sessions
• Subtitle proxy for Chromecast (CORS + SRT conversion)
• Log viewer and custom media input in example app

0.2.0

• AirPlay feature flag detection via mDNS TXT records (AirPlayFeatures class parses features/ft bitmask)
• AirPlayMediaController with V1/V2 /play format auto-negotiation (V1 binary plist → V1 text/parameters → V2 with RTSP SETUP)
• UnsupportedFeatureException thrown immediately when a device lacks video support bits (0 and 49)
• PlaybackException thrown when all /play format attempts are rejected by the device
• Breaking: HapSession no longer has play, stop, scrub, or rate methods — use AirPlayMediaController instead
• Added doc/PROTOCOL_REFERENCES.md with links to AirPlay, Chromecast, and DLNA specs
• Added doc/FUTURE_WORK.md documenting AirPlay screen mirroring and RAOP audio streaming roadmap

0.1.0

• Initial release
• Chromecast (CASTV2) protocol support with default media receiver
• AirPlay 1 video casting support
• DLNA/UPnP protocol support with AVTransport and RenderingControl
• Built-in HTTP proxy server for custom header injection
• HLS m3u8 playlist URL rewriting through proxy
• Local file serving for downloaded content
• Subtitle support across all protocols (WebVTT, SRT)
• Cross-platform: Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Linux
• Pluggable device discovery (default: multicast_dns, injectable: bonsoir)
• 366+ tests with mock servers for each protocol
• Flutter example app with device picker and remote control