The VideoLAN Forums

hello,
i have a smal problem
i want send a video with VLC to 2 other PC in my network.

how does mulitcast work?
what IP must I enter at the server?

its working when i send the stream via udp to the IP of one PC, and receiving at that PC, but i even dont have the video at all 2 PC`s

only puting a new ip in the udp/multicasting slot at the server, and reveiving this ip at the 2 pcs dont work.

sry for this silly question, but i searched now for some time and found no solution

Multicasting is fine for home use, be careful if you are in a corporate environment, so you don't flood the network.

Anyhow, try plugging in 239.20.30.40 for the UDP address field at the server, in the Stream Output window

Then, at the clients, do an Open -- Network Stream, pick the second UDP choice, the one with an Address field. Plug in 239.20.30.40.

yes fine thx,

when i use this ip for the multicast it workes

how big is the network load for exampte 5 Pc`s. 1 stream server and 4 clients?

In multicast, it only sends out the one copy of the video, then as many peopla as want can "listen in" -- no additional bandwidth or CPU load on the server.

The down side is that the multicast is literally sent to every PC attached to the network, unless blocking ia activated in the switch. No big deal, normally, but it can mess up a corporate network if there are routers between sites, and the video starts getting sent through those routers -- it then uses up bandwidth on the router.

Alternately, if you only have a couple of users, you can command VLC to send multiple copies of the stream, one to each specific user's IP. I don't know if you can do that from the wxwindows interface -- it is definitely something you can do from a command line, is explained in the VLC documents. Look at the Videolan How-To document, Chapter 9.

it is possible to run a server, and only when i want to spectate, that i add (or something else) the ip form the server and then i can see the video?

so i send not the stream to each IP in the network

For that, use the MMS streaming option on the server, and in the Server MMS address space you put in the server's IP address.

Then, any individual wanting to see the video selects the MMS option on their end, and types in your server's IP address.

The server opens up a new point-to-point (addressed) connection for each client that subscribes (connects) to the server using this approach.

hm yes,
server:
option MMSH
Adress: 192.168.2.10 Port: 1234

and start, its running

client:
HTTP/FTP/MMS
puting the server IP in the URL field and i am changing http:// to mms://

it dot work, bzw.

markfm wrote about multicast "The down side is that the multicast is literally sent to every PC attached to the network... it [can] uses up bandwidth on the router".

But, in the docs about multicast http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Multicast-HOWTO-1.html

it explains the whole purpose of multi-cast is to avoid transmitting the packet to each station (like broadcast packets do). When I look at my switch when sending broadcast packets I can see activity to every port--it's using up the network bandwidth. When I use multi-cast, I would expect to only see activity on the ports for the pc's that have subscribed. However, instead the activity lights all lite up solid, which I've never seen before.

So, from looking at the lights on the switch markfm is somehow right that multicast does affect the other pc's on the network. But from reading the tldp docs, the whole purpose of multi-cast was to prevent that from happening, like it does with broadcast packets.

basically, multicast is great if your network hardware supports it. But unfortunately, cheap hardware doesn't.