The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,

I am using V1.0.5 of VLC Media Player on a Windows XP Professional PC but have a problem using most telnet commands.

I have been successful in establishing a telnet connection to a remote VLC instance. When I type help I can see a list of
commands such as play, stop, pause and seek etc. but when I try to use them I get the response : Unknown command.

The same also applies when I connect to VLC locally using telnet. If I use the 'rc' interface, however, the commands all work
as expected.

What am I doing wrong, and help would be appreciated.

Regards Freddy

What charset you use in your telnet?

I will check tomorrow and post back.

Thanks for the response.

As far as I know I am using the default character that telnet uses, is there is way to check this?

I have since found that some commands, such as 'new', 'setup' and 'del', are respond with : Wrong command syntax. Command 'show' actually works without reporting an error message.

Perhaps the telnet interface is actually OK and I am expecting the commands to work as they do when using the rc interface. Perhaps my question should have been worded as follows.

I am able to establish a telnet connection, on a host PC, to a remote PC running VLC. What I would like to do on the host PC is make VLC on the remote PC play an MP3 file also on the remote PC.

How do I acheive this using only telnet commands?

Regards Freddy.

'new', 'setup' and 'del

are for VLM commands.

Have you tried putty as telnet client?

I suppose you are using the -I rc option (or --extraintf rc). I have observed similar behavior when connecting with TeraTerm to VLC, but VLC would just not react to the commands. Maybe an option is to start it with "--extraintf rc" and do something on the GUI and check if your telnet client gets informed of what happens...

I tried that and still these commands will not work.

On the remote PC (IP 140.8.0.50) I am starting VLC using the following command line.

vlc --extraintf rc --intf telnet --telnet-port 4212 --telnet-host 140.8.0.50

Also tried:
vlc --extraintf=rc --intf=telnet --telnet-port=4212 --telnet-host=140.8.0.50

rc starts as expected and I use it to start an mp3 track playing. The VLC GUI does not start.

On the host PC (IP 140.8.200.1) I start telnet as follows.

telnet 140.8.0.50 4212

The help command works and displays a list of commands as expected (including play, stop etc.). But when I try to stop the track that is already playing on the remote PC I get the telnet message.

stop : Unknown command

Nothing is updated at the telnet prompt for any commands typed at the rc prompt and vice-versa.

I did try putty but got the same results. I am using two PCs with Windows XP SP3, and there is no firewall between the two.

Anyone know what is happening here.

Have you tried VLC 1.1.0 nightly builds? http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/win32/?C=M;O=D trunks are 1.1.0

I think you are using the RC and the telnet interfaces together. As far as I know, the RC is for controlling the "main interface" of VLC (pause, play, etc.) and the telnet is for controlling the "control interface" (I don't understand the difference, though...) - try the following:

vlc --extraintf rc --rc-host <host running VLC>:<port>

On the other PC, start a telnet to the remote host and port. With "help" you should also get all commands, but pause, next etc. should also work. AND it should not ask for a password.

The difference on help is: using --extraintf telnet, you get something like:
Welcome, Master
> help
Commands Syntax:
new (name) vod|broadcast|schedule [properties]
setup (name) (properties)
(etc.)

using rc only, the response to help is something like:
help
+----[ Remote control commands ]
|
| add XYZ . . . . . . . . . . . . add XYZ to playlist
| enqueue XYZ . . . . . . . . . queue XYZ to playlist
| playlist . . . . . show items currently in playlist
(etc...)

Hope it helps