VLC's Streaming, MKV reader?

[linkhyrule5]

As VLC seems to have trouble receiving and streaming MKV files (particularly regarding SSA subtitles), I'd like to start digging into the code to either understand why or else write my own software. This is ... ambitious bordering on hubristic for me, as I have essentially no prior experience in such, but I learn best on the job, so *shrug*. As such, I have two general questions:

1. Where can I find VLC's streaming libraries and stream-to-display readers? If I were going to build off what's already present, where would I look?
2. How can I write in a way that would make it easy for me to later create a pull request, assuming I actually manage to get anywhere here?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

No, VLC does not have any know problems in reading MKV files, even streamed.

[linkhyrule5]

It must at some point. Duplicate-streaming a MKV file with attached SSA subs seems to degrade the sub stream (I suspect that it's converting it to SRT format, but I can't be sure there - at any rate fonts and smart quotes are lost) on the display end, and on the remote end the subs don't appear at all. That's with the bare minimum of remuxing and no transcoding, so...

I suppose we could move this into the usage section, but in all honesty now I've been nerd-sniped and I'm curious to see how VLC does it anyway.