The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,
I use vlc 0.9.4. I need to control it with telnet.
I configured vlc for telnet. I can access with a telnet interface.
I need to send some basic command, such as play, pause, .. but I can't. How can I do it ?
Thx.

hi,

try to get a list of available commands. That is how I do it with the rc-interface, so no guarantees.

best regards
vilac

But do you really want to do with VLC through the telnet interface? What do you want to play? The telnet interface is aimed to configure VLM (a broadcast/VoD server), not to play anything.

Yes, you should use rc instead.

I'm also looking into this,but a bit confused by the info in the FAQ which I found:

>"Start VLC with -I rc or --extraintf rc. When you get the Remote control interface initialized, `h' for help message, press h and >Enter to get help about available commands.
>
>To be able to remote connect to your VLC using a TCP socket (telnet-like connexion), use --rc-host your_host:port. Then, by >connecting (using telnet or netcat) to the host on the given port, you will get the command shell.

This brings up a remote interface on the same client running vlc. Was hoping to be able to telnet into the client, do what's mentioned in the above post.

Also found a bit about streaming locally, which would be ok, but couldn't work out the syntax

new (name) vod|broadcast|schedule [properties]
output (output_name)

So can you do something like
new testplaylist broadcast output (--sout-display) (input <testfile.mpg>) -fullscreen loop
control testplaylist play

Any help from anyone else using telnet to control vlc playing a local file would be great thanks!

Thanks, syntax gone wrong
Simon

galsammy, i have this problem too. There is some commads that working - help, exit, quit .. else. But the needed is not working like you write. In will be very nice, developers fix this problem. Best regards!!
The same in russian:
У меня проблема с работой с телнет. работают только несколько команд help, exit, quit .. а другие не работают. Было бы не плохо если бы их починили. А зачем вам управление ВЛС с помощью телнета?
Пошл нах!!!

I'm having the same issue here, with telnet it's too complex, since as stated above it's for streaming only. I have a partial success using the following command line, with this I could connect via a hyperterminal window, and "pause" stops and starts my music fine. The m3u file is a playlist I defined, I have not figured out how to load the playlist "remotely" (maybe using the menu command or something).
The --rc-quiet option is very important, if you don't use it, you have first to press enter in the command line window so that it starts accepting the commands from the telnet client (no idea why this is so).

Next step is to achieve the remote "login" programmatically, but this is somehow not working yet...