The VideoLAN Forums

Hello everybody,

I would like to know if you can do "random streaming" of a video file with VLC. That is, you should not need to download the whole file for seeing a certain moment of the video (for instance, if you want to begin to play it at the middle...). Is anybody adding this to VLC? Is it planned to be included anytime?

In some Flash players this is possible. It is called "pseudostreaming" and it is based on some meta information that you keep on FLV and MP4 files (on MP4 files with H.264 encoding this meta information is called "moov atom", it is index information).

Some help would be very appreciated.

Thank you very much.

The RTSP VOD mode can do that depending on the input file format (but it's quite intensive). Generally, it's simpler to just put share the file via an HTTP or FTP server and open URL in the client.

Thanks for your reply, but I do not understand your answer.... what do you mean about using a "http or ftp" servers? I was talking about doing real streaming (that is, viewing the video while it is being downloaded).

I will study more about the RTSP VOD mode.... thank you.