The VideoLAN Forums

What I'm after is to do some heavy scripting, making movie playlists and so on for my home lan

I want to know if you can give VLC a movie to stream, but paused until one of my other PCs connects to it - it will then commence from the start of the film

(Serving PC is in the office, leisure PC is in the lounge - want to be able to double click a link to a film and have it stream from the beginning)

Thanks in advance

Hi FireW0lf,

In my understanding that is called Video on Demand (VoD). Try that search term on the forum and find several other threads. Also the documentation has some information, although examples are missing, and it is not clear how/what type of clients can request a VoD. It looks like vod is not really working yet, or not on all platforms, but it is being worked on.

Regards,

Baritone

Yeah thanks Baritone - I saw that in the streaming how-to, it gives a heading for broadcast/scheduling/VoD, and then explains the first two. It gets to Video on Demand, and theres nothing but a title

I've checked using the inbuilt webserver and the remote control and telnet - nothing for VoD at all

At the moment, I have to have VLC(server) running in the background

My client PC (thru a quick VB proggy) has to telnet into the server, set up a broadcast, play it, pause, then fire up VLC on the client and connect to it

Very hacky way of doing it

VoD would be much much simpler

Try the HTTP interface -- give you a browser-based method to start a stream.

Thanks markfm - I was looking at that, but I dont like the look and style of the http interface, and the http interface as of the latest build (dont know about others) only has broadcast and schedule - no VoD (just like the docs)

Actually the documentation explains it well, it just doesn't have an example. So I tried to enter VoD "media" using the telnet intf, but it doesn't seem to work:

new test vod input d:\test.mpg enabled

Another thing that puzzles me: in the doc it says for VoD --sout does not need to be specified. But then how do I call my VoD?? What client do I use, what kind of stream do I get? I tried specifying --sout for an HTTP stream, but that doesn't work either. I could start streaming with "control play", but that's not VoD

Baritone: what docs are these? i looked in the streaming howto - there was a section on scheduling/broadcast/vod - but i saw nothing for VoD in that - is there a diff doc or am i just being exceptionally dense and blind?

Baritone: i also tried to telnet in

new Test vod enabled
setup Test input E:\Films\Test.mpg
(the telnet session paused at this point for a second or 2 while it checked the file - then i got the telnet prompt back)
show media

(output was:
Test
type : vod
enabled : yes
instances
)

No i do not know how to connect to it either - tried udp, http, etc etc - no joy

I first tried to connect using one of the other PC's on my lan, then tried from the same pc - stuck

I was pointing at http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-h ... /ch05.html, but it looks like you have already found it.

Baritone:

when setting up a new Vod

new (Name of Vod) vod input (filename) enabled

eg

"new Scary vod input E:\Films\ScaryMovie.avi enabled"

then use a VLC on your other PC that you wish to connect from, and connect as RTSP using THE NAME of the stream as you called it in VLM

for the above example:

rtsp://server.ip.address/Scary



It works

FireW0lf, you are a great guy. This works for me as well. Thanks for your persistance. I think I tried most of these steps, but not in this exact combination and order

I think we should have a look to see if we can change the documentation and submit it for addition to the versioning system. Would you like to do that or shall I have a go?

Baritone

...or a great girl for that matter

I've already spoke to some of the videolan people about me redoing all the documentation for every aspect of using vlc - seems like a good idea to me, as I'm very good at writing and explaining things

Sure, go ahead.

Is it possible to do transcoding when using RTSP vod?

I can get the vod/rtsp setup working as described in this thread (and others) but I've tried lots of ways to transcode the video down to something my slow link can handle, and nothing works. It appears as if the "setup <item> output" command is ignored for rtsp.

Anyone?

edit -- After a bit of playing around, I was able to transcode some streams. Seems that RTSP is a bit picky about which video codecs will transcode successfully. Not sure if that's on the sending or receiving end, though. The server is started with "--rtsp-host=0.0.0.0:8001" on the command line, and then here's my vlm config:

new p1 vod input "my-file.mpg" enabled
setup p1 output #transcode{vcodec=mpgv,acodec=mp3,vb=192,ab=48,scale=.5,deinterlace}

hi tx413

I've not looked at transcoding yet via VoD, but I have found that some DiVX4 and XViD's have problems when you try to vod them

Adding "mux=mp2t" seems to correct this - Dont know if that will help with your transcoding too. May have a look at this later to see if it does

Good luck

FireW0lf

It would really be cool if there was a step by step guide for this.

Say I have a movie a d:\mymovie.mpg and I want to play it from another computer on the network and stream this move. The two computers are connected via a 1MBit line so I need to transcode.

I start up VLC on the server side how? with what command line?

I then telnet? from the client to tell VLC on the server to get ready to stream (with transcoding) that file ... (give example of the commands to type in)

And then http? from the client to the server on a particular port to start up the stream?

Will I then be able to jump around in the file? What client software to use? VLC ? QuickTime Player?

Well, the docs are somewhat lacking in layout, even tho the content is pretty good

On the server PC have VLC running as a service, with the telnet port open

That way you can just telnet into from any other machine at any time


Telnet is both a protocol, and a program. Most OSes including Windows and *ix have a telnet client

In Window Start/Run/Cmd (or "Command" if W9x)

Then "telnet"

You cmd prompt looks the same, but is now a telnet client

Type "open <myServerIP> 4212" (4212 is the default telnet server port)

Then see my previous post about the commands to use within the telnet client

It seems that no, you wont be able to seek in a file. It plays on the server, the client just views this, and so can only watch what is being currently played (if you know what i mean)

The docs would be better if users assited in creating them.

Hi, I successfully stream an avi file using the example in docs, but when I connect to it via VLC (the RTSP protocol? ) I get only audio. Seek works, everything is fine, but how can I get video also? In docs it says there is no need for mux in vod. Thanks for any help.