Postby markfm » 21 Jul 2004 03:27
About a week back, I believe, DJ posted something discussing the order of processing, going from the initial input (e.g., frame grabber) to the output stream.
For general use, vlc works well run as a batch/script/command file. I work with Windows, so in my case I have vlc parked in c:\vlc\vlc.exe
I can pretty much launch any stream I want using a command of the form:
c:\vlc\vlc.exe thing_to_stream how_I_want_it_streamed
You can get the information on proper things to put in for thing_to_stream and how_I-want_it_streamed by "playing" with the Streaming Wizard. Up in the top of Steps 1 and 2 are little command windows, where the Wizard stuffs the proper information. For instance, at Step 2 you might choose UDP, MPEG4 video at 768 kbps, mp3 audio at 192 kbps, MPEG TS encapsulation -- you can copy what's in the top of the window, use that in your command line.
This is just a hint. As written now, VLC isn't, say, an ActiveX component. It does provide very powerful command line operation, but not a classic accessible API. If I wanted to automate things, I would think in terms of using Shell commands to launch VLC, control its operation, and a third-party app like process.exe to control killing instances of VLC that I needed to stop.