Streaming a webcam in winxp to a linux server using VLC?

[pcm2a]

Currently I have a cheap usb webcam plugged into a winxp laptop with my cable modem. I have tried various bunk solutions to stream video like camstreams and currently am using windows media encoder.

What I would like to do is to run software on my winxp machine that will create the stream and send it to a linux server that is not on my cable modems network. It is a server that I pay for (for webhosting, ventrillo, etc) with bluehost. From there unlimited people could view my stream without bogging down my small 42k/s upload bandwidth of my cable mode.

Windows MEdia Encoder would do this if my server was a Windows MEdia server, but instead it is a linux box.

The VLS flow chart doesnt really tell me if this is possible or not.


Webcam->WinXP running VLC------------->Linux server running some VLS application (no grpahical interface)<------Users connect here to view via a webpage or media player, or VLC.

[pcm2a]

Reading through the complex documentation it looks like I should be able to stream to http from my winxp machine. Then on my linux server access the stream and re-braodcast it out where I have tons of bandwidth.

Does that sound correct?

[dionoea]

Yes, it sounds correct. (Now's the time when you ask "but how do I set it up?" :p)

[pcm2a]

Ha ha yeah! I can probably get it set up but I gave up on it when I decided that none of the "Transcode" options will allow it to play on a Windows Mobile 5 phone. My WM5 phone has Windows MEdia player 10 which can play most http and mms feeds as well as a rtsp player that can play some rtsp streams.

I have successfully streamed stuff with various webcam streamers like AbelCam and Tincam but could not get it going with VLC. I searched around on the forum and saw other people with the same issue but no solutions.

[dionoea]

This should work for windows media player:

Code: Select all

vlc <input> --sout "#transcode{vcodec=DIV3,vb=512,acodec=mp3,ab=128}:std{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,url=0.0.0.0:8080}"

You can then connect using "mms://<ip>:8080" (or "mmsh://<ip>:8080" using VLC).

[pcm2a]

Those settings worked great for streaming a file from my hard drive to media player in windows xp via mms://.
The settings didnt work at all for accessing the stream from media player in windows mobile 5.
The settings also didnt work for streaming a webcam to media player in windows xp via mms://

Might be that my webcam isnt what VLC wants it to be.

[dionoea]

Does the webcam at least play correctly in VLC? (if it doesn't please paste VLC's debug output when trying to play it)