Big Project: VLC as school tv station server. Help!

[bschmidt]

So here's the idea I have. I'd like to be able to set up VLC on a server here at my school (Carroll University) as a means of setting up a school tv station. It's a smaller school that doesn't have anything like the sort, so this would be a huge deal for a lot of students if I can get it setup correctly.

What I've done so far is just played around with some RTP streaming and I like what I see. With 0.8.6i I was able to stream DVDs with excellent quality as well, but now with 0.9.4 my computer doesn't seem to want to, but that is beside the main point.

What I'm looking for is the ability to dynamically manipulate a playlist that VLC streams. I've been looking around and it seems like there may be a way to do this but I haven't been able to say 100% if it is possible. This way we (the admins of the station) will be able to insert a new commercial into rotation, adjust shows and have all the control we'd need over the station.

Any recommendations or advice is welcome, thanks in advance!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

You can change the playlist dynamically with any of the interfaces.

[bschmidt]

I played with the HTTP interface for a little bit and wasn't able to keep VLC streaming. I can edit it's playlist, but anything I add after the initial stream doesn't want to stream anymore, it'll just play locally. Am I sending VLC the wrong commands?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Yo need to set the streaming parameters through the command line or the configuration, to keep them permanent.

[bschmidt]

Ok, I see what you mean. I successfully got the scheduler to work with a couple files on our system! The only problem I see now is that once the first file is done being played and it moves onto the next one, the VLC player that was viewing the stream stops playing and you have to restart the stream to watch the next show. Is there any way around this? I tried adding sout-keep to each element in the broadcast list but that didn't seem to help.

Thanks for all of your help so far, I'm starting to get really excited that this will work out!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Add --sout-keep to the command line and replace the leading # with '#gather' in your stream output chain.

[bschmidt]

The output chain would be the same as the Broadcast Element "Output:", correct? If so, my current output is:

Code: Select all

#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=800,scale=1,acodec=mp4a,ab=128,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=rtp{ttl=10,dst=239.255.0.1,mux=ts,port=1234,sap,group=pioTV,name=pioTV}}

Where would the #gather go in there?

Also, is it possible for me to add sout-keep to the Options part of the Broadcast Element?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

#transcode -> #gather:transcode

[bschmidt]

That works beautifully! Thank you very much! Now we just have a little bit more testing to make sure it'll work on everyone's computers and it looks like we'll have a good system set up

Thanks again!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

It might actually work better with gather after transcode{...}: now that I think about it (if you send inputs with different sizes).

[dynamitemedia]

can you show us some sample code on what you have gotten thus far?

i think after reading your post as well as a few experiements the rest of have done we could get a nice system set up.

couldn't the list be done dynamically with php and mysql?

i was working on this for a while but stopped to work on some other projects.

i would be very interested in get working on this again however.

get back to us with some coding your using, i also have some ideas i been working on