The VideoLAN Forums

Posted: **27 Jul 2010 19:20**

Hi VLC community,

this is my question: How do I start multiple vlc instances via command line and have each vlc instance connected with a unique unix socket?
and this is the story behind it:

I'm using VLC successfully to stream, produce snapshots, and play the stream on another Mac. My environment is Mac OS X 10.6.4
All of those things work fine - my next goal is to control all of this via applescript and a small GUI.

Ultimate idea: I need to control VLC via shell scripts e.g.:

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set openCMD to "/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC udp://@224.0.0.1:1234 --no-osd &>/dev/null &"
do shell script openCMD

Now this works perfectly but I am running multiple instances of VLC
1 - continous snapshots with scene video filter;
2 - record stream;
3 - play stream fullscreen on another display

Hence I want to be able to control each VLC instance seperately via shell commands which I can issue over Applescript.
I read this tut http://n0tablog.wordpress.com/2009/02/0 ... ogramming/ on setting up VLC with a unix socket via GUI preferences - works like a charm BUT (and this is my actual question) how can I start VLC via command line and assign a unique (vlc1.sock vlc2.sock vlc3.sock) unix socket to each instance.

Vlc -H gave me some direction with the --rc flags, I tried the following but without success:

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/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC udp://@224.0.0.1:1234 --no-osd --extraintf=rc --rc-unix=/Users/kalliope/vlc1.sock --rc-fake-tty

I also tried putting the --rc flags before the stream but without success (video plays, but no socket created)

Is this the correct approach? Maybe I'm missing some arguments?
Does anyone have a solution or experience with this question?

I'm glad for any input, direction or hint

Thx
VLC rocks

-crackstone

Posted: **27 Jul 2010 22:21**

I am afraid RC is a bit buggy on OSX...
I would use http intf with different ports, but that may get more difficult.

Posted: **05 Aug 2010 18:17**

Just looked into it again and followed another hint on the web by just using the following command:

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vlc --rc-unix=/Users/user/socket1

I start a stream manually with this instance just for testing purposes
and

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vlc --rc-unix=/Users/user/socket2 udp://@224.0.0.1:1234

Somehow the video won't auto play when issuing this command but
the sockets are created successfully and I can communicate to them via the following commands:

for example

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echo play | nc -U /Users/user/socket2

and

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echo fullscreen | nc -U /Users/user/socket2

and can of course communicate to the streaming instance as well

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echo stop | nc -U /Users/user/socket1

This should suffice for the time being - I'll see what bumps up next.

@j-b: could you maybe elaborate on the buggy issues? Any known bugs?

Thx for the input

Posted: **03 Jan 2019 01:26**

I am using this both on my macosx and linux and it works well.
On linux the shell commands are slightly different:

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vlc -I oldrc --rc-unix=/home/user/Documents/Sockets/socket1.sock
vlc -I oldrc --rc-unix=/home/user/Documents/Sockets/socket2.sock

and

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echo play | nc -U /home/user/Documents/Sockets/socket1.sock
echo enqueue /home/user/Documents/DualscreenVLC/videos/MVI_2534.MP4 | nc -U /home/user/Documents/Sockets/socket1.sock

I am attempting to use subprocess.Popen in Python for further control but here I run into difficulties on Linux (Ubuntu). It either hangs on the stdout.read() call or when I take this away, all the shell commands are only executed after the script finishes and I get a broken pipe error. The issue seems to be specifically with the 'echo' commands. Did I migrate wrong?
This is the python script:

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import subprocess
import time

Socket1Location = "/Users/user/socket1.sock"
Socket2Location = "/Users/user/socket2.sock"
video1 = "/Users/user/Documents/Scripts/DualscreenVLC/videos/video01.mp4"
video2 = "/Users/user/Documents/Scripts/DualscreenVLC/videos/video02.mp4"

def RunVLCCommand1(cmd):
	p = subprocess.Popen("echo " + cmd + " | nc -U " + Socket1Location, shell = True, stdout = subprocess.PIPE)
	errcode = p.wait()
	retval = p.stdout.read()
	print "returning: " + retval
	return retval 
	
def RunVLCCommand2(cmd):
	p = subprocess.Popen("echo " + cmd + " | nc -U " + Socket2Location, shell = True, stdout = subprocess.PIPE)
	errcode = p.wait()
	retval = p.stdout.read()
	print "returning: " + retval
	return retval 

subprocess.Popen(["/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC","--rc-unix=/Users/user/socket1.sock"])
subprocess.Popen(["/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC","--rc-unix=/Users/user/socket2.sock"])

#RunVLCCommand1 and 2 can now be used to send commands to VLC

Posted: **03 Jan 2019 09:47**

Hi, subprocess is used to open a process. As you want to execute bash code (with the pipe syntax), you might want to start bash:

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	p = subprocess.Popen("bash -c 'echo " + cmd + " | nc -U " + Socket1Location + "'", shell = True, stdout = subprocess.PIPE)

Posted: **04 Jan 2019 05:27**

Thank you for the suggestion.
I tried it out but it also seems like it hangs. In the activity monitor I can see the two vlc instances but also a sh (shell) for each echo command I have send. When I add bash it replaces the sh instances with bash. Does this mean I am trying to execute scripts in wrong shells?

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How to start multiple vlc's each with unique unix socket

How to start multiple vlc's each with unique unix socket

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