Play a DVD over LAN via shared drive?

[turnstyle]

Hello all,

Wondering if this is possible:

1) put a DVD into the DVD drive on 'PC 1'
2) share that drive
3) mount it from 'PC 2' over the LAN, and play the DVD on 'PC 2'?

(so far I can't seem to get that to work)

Any tips appreciated! -Scott

[Arite]

Not sure whether you can mount an optical drive as a shared network drive. However, you could setup a dvdsimple:// network stream in VLC.

To do this:

1. Insert a DVD into your drive. In VLC, go to "File >> Open Disc..." and click on "DVD" (as supposed to "DVD (menus)") for the "Disc type".
2. Then enter, if it is not already correct, the Drive letter (e.g. "D:") for the "Device name". Enter a title, chapter etc. to be played (normally title "1" is the main feature, but not always).
3. Tick the "Stream/Save" tickbox and click on "Settings...". In the "Stream output" window tick the "UDP" tickbox and then enter the I.P. of the computer you want to stream to. If you want to stream to multiple computers then use a multicast I.P. address (e.g. 239.255.12.42). The default port of "1234" should be fine, but change it is you want to.
4. Since you will be streaming over a LAN you shouldn't need to transcode the video or audio so leave them unticked. Press "OK" and then "OK".

Then you should be streaming via UDP the selected title/chapter of the DVD.

To playback the streaming video/audio, open VLC on a different computer and go to "File >> Open Network Stream...". If you are just doing a unicast stream enter the port for "UDP/RTP" and press "OK". For multicast, select "UDP/RTP Multicast" and enter the multicast address and port and press "OK".

If you want to be able to control what you playback remotely (i.e. setup and control the streaming DVD on the computer you want to play it back on), then enable the Web Interface by opening an instance of VLC on the source computer, and then going to "Settings >> Add Interface >> Web Interface". Open up a browser (on any computer in you network) and enter in the address bar:

Code: Select all

IP:8080

Where "IP" is the I.P. address of the source computer. Then you can do all of the above (setup streaming DVD etc.) remotely.

Cheers, Arite.

[turnstyle]

Thanks & interesting -- though I gather that wouldn't work with "special features" etc.?

(seems like I *should* be able to share the drive over the LAN and use it as if it were locally attached)

thanks again, -Scott

[Arite]

Well I tried it with "DVD (menus)" (dvd://) and well, of course, doesn't work (since they have to be interactive for one thing). If you knew that a particular special feature was, for example, title 4 then you could play the video, just not navigate through the menus etc. to it interactively.

Anyway, apparently it is possible to share a CD/DVD drive over the Windows Network.

Here is how to do it (derived from here):

1. Disable simplified Windows file sharing - see here
2. Right click on your CD/DVD drive and click on "Sharing and Security...".
3. Click on the warning message to get to the main settings, and then select "Share this folder on the network", and give it a name. Then press "OK".

Then you should be able to see that drive over a network.

To playback in VLC (I have not tested this), you could try going to (on a different computer) "File >> Open Disc..." and for the "Device name" enter:

Code: Select all

\\Computer\Drive

Where "Computer" is the name of the PC, and "Drive" is the name given to the networked drive.

If that doesn't work then you could try treating it as a folder by going to "File >> Open Directory...".

Cheers, Arite.

[turnstyle]

Hey Artie, thanks -- I should have been clear that I've been able to share the DVD drive with the disc in it, and see that share from another PC over the LAN. I've also mounted it with a drive letter.

But when I actually try to play the disc, nothing happens.

If you're able to share the DVD from PC1 and open/play it on PC2, I'd love to hear what I'm doing wrong!

thanks again, -Scott

[Arite]

I tried it out and was unable to playback the DVD. I did both the "Open Disc..." method and the "Open Directory..." method. The former (understandably) did not do anything since it is shared as a folder, not a drive. The latter also did not work. However, I opened "VIDEO_TS" directly and it began to work, only then failed. The message output read (I'm paraphasing) a navigation error - unable to skip to the next block. This is presumaly since the DVD has CSS encryption, and VLC was reading it as an unencrypted folder. libdvdcss is presumably not enabled except when necessary for optical devices ("Open Disc..."), so when opening a folder it treats it as though it is unencrypted. Also, in order to do the encryption libdvdcss probably required more lower level access to e.g. the ASPI layer (just a guess) which would not be provided when sharing over the Windows Network.

It may, however, work with a unencrypted DVD (perhaps making an unencrypted backup of the disc using e.g. DVD Shrink would allow it to play), and if not then just making a backup onto a HDD should.

So in order to playback a DVD from another machine the best method I have tried which works is by using the RC interface/HTTP interface to set-up a dvdsimple:// stream.

Cheers, Arite.

[turnstyle]

Do you know if there's a way to ask somebody on the VLC team about whether this is possible?

It's great to know that there's a fallback method -- though I'm trying to set up less-techie family memebers to play DVDs, and picking VOBs and hunting for special features is too much for them.

Ideally, we could just play the DVD over the LAN as if it were locally attached -- if there is another approach I should try, I'd love to know -- or, if there's a way to make it a feature request, that would be great to know too.

Thanks also for giving it a try! -Scott

[Arite]

Do you know if there's a way to ask somebody on the VLC team about whether this is possible?

You could ask on IRC (there is an in-browser IRC client here), however j-b and funman are regularly on the forum too.

I had a look at the dvdread.c code in trunk (see here) and found this comment (excuse the incorrect PHP syntax highlighting ):

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65     #define CSSMETHOD_TEXT N_("Method used by libdvdcss for decryption") 66     #define CSSMETHOD_LONGTEXT N_( \ 67         "Set the method used by libdvdcss for key decryption.\n"  68         "title: decrypted title key is guessed from the encrypted sectors of "  69                "the stream. Thus it should work with a file as well as the "  70                "DVD device. But it sometimes takes much time to decrypt a title "  71                "key and may even fail. With this method, the key is only checked " 72                "at the beginning of each title, so it won't work if the key "  73                "changes in the middle of a title.\n"  74         "disc: the disc key is first cracked, then all title keys can be "  75                "decrypted instantly, which allows us to check them often.\n"  76         "key: the same as \"disc\" if you don't have a file with player keys "  77                "at compilation time. If you do, the decryption of the disc key "  78                "will be faster with this method. It is the one that was used by "  79                "libcss.\n"  80         "The default method is: key.")      

Which suggests that for the title libdvdcss method (for a bit more information see here) it should be possible with encrypted files too, so my theory about libdvdcss only working for optical disc reading and not files is probably incorrect (the easiest way to test this would be to try an unecrypted DVD-Video).

Arite.