Syncing multiple VLC Players

[jimv]

Just found VLC video and this forum, and think it might resolve a design challenge I have, but before I spend a lot of time on it, wanted to check to see if it's even possible.
I need to syncronize 3 different videos, projected on screens, so that they start/stop/change to the next track, etc, at the same time.
The original idea was to use 3 matched dvd players, setting next to each other, and 1 remote control to sync them. In general, it seems to work, but because of the placement of the DVD players/projectors, cable length, getting heads to start at the exact same time, etc, we're not sure it will work, and we are looking for alternatives.
I'm wondering if I could use 3 laptops, each connected to a projector, each running VLC video player, and then use the web interface to control all 3 players at the same time?
Possible? Good/Bad idea? Easy/hard to implement? (I have about 5 weeks to get working, and have a good solid programming background).
Any ideas appreciated!

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Easier is to have 1 VLC streaming the DVD file and 3 VLC listening to it, so you will be synchronised.

[jimv]

1 VLC streaming the DVD file

But it's 3 different video files. IE, 3 totally seperate video's, but they need to start/play at the same time.

[kurinjinat]

Hai jimv ,

did u find any solution for playing 3 vide files playin with synchronisation

I also want to have

any ides please

[fkuehne]

VLC provides the netsync module, which is made for this kind of stuff.

[transformania]

According to NetSync's documentation, it's only for a single stream. I, too, need to synchronize *different* videos; I don't care if they're streams or files, local or remote.

In other words, when Computer-A is on frame 47 of File-1.mp4, I want Computer-B to be on frame 47 of File-2.mp4, and so on.

The NetSync page mentions using it in conjunction with the VideoWall plug-in. The problem is that I want to use the full resolution of each screen, which happens to be 1080p. That does mean I have to go to a lot of trouble to generate content that spans that, and output to 6 carefully cropped files (this will all be 3d rendering), but I'd really like to try to get this working. Else I could make a single file as big as all six screens I'm using, but that would be a 11,520 x 1,080 file (!)

[ywuw2486]

I am also trying to do this. I have the need to do it with eight (8) Different Files. I am assuming that the simplest solution would be to have setup the file for playback on 8 separate client machines, and then blast them with an HTTP command that commences playback from a master machine either by command or schedule. I don't necessarily need them to be frame exact, but within 3 or 4 frames would be fine.

[transformania]

Just a quick update (I've got some persons smarter than me noodling on this now): we found this...

http://vvvv.org/tiki-index.php?page=tonfilm-VideoSync

...but we haven't tested it yet. Outside of that, our other idea to test out is to use a Windows Server box with Windows Media Streaming Services, and have all 6 videos streamed from it to the 6 playback PC's. Since all the *decoding* is done by the playback PC's, all the beef you need is with the disk speed on the server PC. We did some quick math and worst-case scenario (30Mbits/sec aka Blu-ray) would require 180Mbit/sec sustained read rate on the server, which is doable with a modest RAID setup these days. The last trick is to learn the command line interface for Windows Media Services so that you can start all 6 streams at the same time. Then when each playback PC "tunes in", ostensibly each stream will be at the same frame as the other 5.

[mr.bryce]

this would be great for 3D playback as well, considering VLC is free software and stereoscopic players are not.
i am using a mirror setup and VLC would be perfect for this.
I would be loading the left and right eye files in two separate players, and just check the horizontal flip on one of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HudH36ynUig

[Inyuki]

2 people here, wanting to watch 2 copies of the same HQ video file on their respective machines on 2 different continents, with dynamic IP addresses, and if one clisk "PAUSE" to go to a toilet/bathroom, it should "PAUSE" movie on both sides.

Wouldn't it be doable by adding some P2P capability to exchange minuscule amount of information about frames and controls between VLC clients?

[Inyuki]

I have an idea: since we have "SPACEBAR" key for play/pause, we can reduce the problem to optionally syncing that one key of two keyboards. Since keylogging requires too many rights, and libvlc is not readily available on different platforms, the result is this tiny file:

A quick solution: https://github.com/Mindey/vlcirc

If computer clocks are in sync, the synchronization could be improved by sending exact time, like +1 sec., to avoid error due to the different ping times.