Fake a live video stream with VideoLan?

[[w]]

Hi

I have an odd question and this seemed like the most appropriate forum to post it in.

One of my clients would like to fake a live video stream. What this means is there would be an event and it would get recorded. At a later date we would make the "live feed" available on a website. For example we would advertise the start of the "live feed" at 6pm. If a user began streaming the video at 6:10pm, the video would start 10 mins in. If another user joined at 6:15pm, they would their video would start 15 mins in.

Is my description clear enough?

What I'm interested to know is
- Is it appropriate to do this with VideoLan and if so how?
- If not, would people be kind enough to help suggest other ways I could achieve this?

thanks in advance

[dionoea]

If I understand correctly what you want to do is start a live broadcast (say at 6PM) and have it behave exactly like live TV (if you start the channel 10 minutes late ... well you've missed 10 minutes of broadcast).

Then this is quite easy to configure. Depending on your setup you can use HTTP/MMSH unicast or UDP/RTP multicast.

[[w]]

Thanks for replying so quickly dionoea.

Yes what you are describing is what i want to do.

I've never done something like this so i don't know exactly what is involved. When i look at the docs for videolan on streaming, it's unclear to me how to get the stream to behave like "live TV".
From the docs it looks like anyone who connects to the stream i create will begin watching it from the beginning of the file?
Is there a term for what i'm trying to do? I wasn't very successful looking for a tutorial online. I suspect this has to do with not knowing the correct combination of words to look for.

Another follow up question is, the docs all show VLC being configured via the GUI. If I'm attempting to run this from a webserver host when i only have ftp / shell access, how could i configure VLC?

thanks

[Arite]

To stream a file/source like "live TV" you could try something like:

Code: Select all

vlc INPUT --sout '#duplicate{dst=std{access=udp,mux=ts,dst=239.255.12.42:1234}}'

Where INPUT is the input file/stream.

That would stream the video and audio as-is, encapsulated as MPEG-TS, via UDP to the multicast address 239.255.12.42 (port 1234).

Then, to test it, open another instance of VLC and open the UDP network stream. Or, via the commandline, run e.g.:

Code: Select all

vlc udp://@239.255.12.42:1234

Have a look at Chapter 3 and 4 of the VideoLAN Streaming Howto for more information on using the commandline and examples respectively:
http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-h ... to-en.html

Arite.

[[w]]

Thanks Artie.

I will give it a shot and see how it goes.

[sskdxb]

tried the command and not getting any picture on this computer or other computer, the IP address of them: the server 192.168.254.6 and the client 192.168.254.3. is it neceesary we need an multicast computer physically present to recive the packets??

i am having version 0.8.6i of Video lan VLC player. the command is mdified as this is not working with version 0.8.6i.

on the server side ran this command: "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" Excalibur.avi :sout=#duplicate{dst=display,dst=std{dst=std{access=udp,mux=ts,dst=239.255.12.42:1234}}'

on the client side ran this command: "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" udp://@239.255.12.42:1234

the server is playing the file and client not showing anything. same thing on the the server with another instance of the VLC.

pl help