PC vlc stream to 2 different ip's simultaneously

[livinzlife]

I have found plenty of information on using vlc to stream to another computer on your own network or to a certain ip address but I can not find any on this.
Here is my goal:
I have a pc with all of my dvds backed up on it in a folder (movies/dvdname/video_ts)
I need to be able to access these for streaming from my mac in my own home on my own network
I need my friend to be able to access these for streaming from his mac in his home on his network
I need for this to be able to work if we both choose to watch a movie at the same time. Me watching one and him watching another from different places.
I can not find any information on something like this, maybe because its not possible with vlc. If it isnt, what should I be looking at to accomplish my goal?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

That's file sharing. Use SMB/CIFS or NFS, or whatever.

VLC could stream those, but you'd loose DVD menus in the process.

[livinzlife]

I do not want to move the file to my computer to view it. Wouldn't that be a file share? Id like for all the files to stay on the pc and stream videos/music to both my mac and my friends mac at our houses.

[popper]

I do not want to move the file to my computer to view it. Wouldn't that be a file share? Id like for all the files to stay on the pc and stream videos/music to both my mac and my friends mac at our houses.

Nope, What Remi seems to imply (he's very vaige and expects you to know a fair amount about networking, VLC and other tech terms etc,in all his sparse answers here you might notice e ) (and what im adviseing here)is that you setup a totally seperate interconnected (wireless)LAN line between you and your friends simple FreeNAS (Network Attached Server) with all your files on there and share them over that link.

why do i say a seperate LAN, because you may want to power down your main home LAN PC's when not in use, but always keep the freeNAS LAN files available to your friend and any temp wireless laptops you might have.

its pritty simple assuming you and your friends are within wireless or wired reach of each other, given your talking rather large binary video data store,all you need is say a "freenas" liveCD http://www.freenas.org/ and spare PC with populated drives at both locations, 2 or more old wireless 11g (15-20Mbit/s average max) or the far better and faster current data throughput "11n" (60Mbit/s +) wireless routers setup for light wep security so as not to overload the wireless routers CPU's processing and pushing through the large video data streams, helping keep video streaming stalls down to a minimum.

your-mainLAN-192.168.0.*<===>Freenas-10.0.0.*<=>your-wireless-router<--wireless-*WDS->his-wireless-router<=>freenas-10.0.0.*<===>his-mainLAN-192.168.0.*

you might prefer to hard wire the two wireless routers together though if your within 300 feet, as that makes it slightly easyer as the data is flowing over the wire not the wireless sections.

place the wireless routers high up in your houses, say your lofts, as they will have clearer paths to follow and so far stronger signals and far easyer to route any ethernet cable on a permanant basis.

*WDS stands for Wireless Distribution System, a simple way to connect two or more wireless routers without using direct ethernet wires, it does take some wireless bandwidth away from your data streaming for it's use though.

the end result, your mass storage freenas expandable servers and routers are all up high, and out of the way, and any time you want to see any VLC streams stored on any/eather freenas PC, you simply connect to your local wireless router, and can see all the visable freeNAS on the 10.0.0.1 community wireless network you and your friends have setup cheap and easily.

OC you then have the massive advantage that any of your other friends locally within reach of the routers, can also setup their own FreeNAS/wireless 10.0.0.1 in their lofts, spare/bed rooms etc, and simply join your small and growing community (wirless)LAN and start pooling all your/their seperate FreeNAS storage for the common good and use.

you should also think about using "multicast" addresses and placing announcements on each one, so you and your band of wireless brothers can easily see, connect to ,and watch a single currently playing /upcoming stream "at the same time", if nothing else but to save wireless bandwidth if more than one single person wants to see the same video data OC....

just so we are clear, when you say "move the file to my computer to view it" you are moving the file to your local PC temp folder, every time you play/stream it,(just as you copy the webs pages before your bowser put it onscreen) but you DO NOT Need to pre copy it before hand, or use up more local HD space than is needed to buffer the streaming...

[livinzlife]

Well my friend and I are not at the same location, we are almost 40 miles apart. Consider it this way. Three different locations. I want the pc at a house in one town with several video and audio files. I want me(at my home in a separate town 10 miles away) to be able to have this content streaming on my computer. I want my friend nick(at his home in a separate town 40 miles away) to be able to have this content streaming on his computer. Is vlc not the right thing for this? Am I looking at something like windows home server or what?
I am pretty new to this so try to keep it basic for me.

Thanks alot!

[Greg]

OK... Basics
So I will be basic and simple
Firstly, do you want to "Stream"? That is all clients (friends) watch the same video output from a streamer(Eg VLC), watching the same DVD,Video file, Live Camera,Audio file, etc. All at the same time?
Or
Do you and your friends/clients want to share eachothers (or just yours) video/audio files and watch/hear them when you feel like it?
Or
Both???

What you have described sounds like a somewhat serious and complex broadcast situation. But, I could be very wrong?

So at the risk of being "Very wrong" and very basic.....
I think to start with, you need a web server. Perhaps "Windows Home Server?"... Perhaps "Apache" perhaps MS ISS? or indeed many others
(I would personally go for "Apache")
You can then share your video/audio, or any other files with whoever you wish locally on a LAN network or out into the wider world, WAN, the Internet.
If you are OK with handling this and a bit more
Now.... you can use VLC as part of your solution to (stream) broadcast your media, when and where you want possibly via a website

Or VLC a stand alone to stream your media to specific IP(s) as you require, using VLC as a server (you?) and your friends (clients) using VLC or **SPAM ALERT** versa.


From a streaming perspective
You have a local (home?) network so start by putting VLC on two local machines and play with VLC at both ends

So a couple of parting questions
Do you have a web server?
Is it accessable from LAN and WAN?
Are you comfortable with basic networking principals? if not,,, go explore. It's not horribly hard, just requires a bit of effort.

Good luck

PS. Basic enough, or too basic?

[Greg]

So "Spam-- alert" did not like me saying "vis_a" versa.... Please read as such.

[Arite]

That word is censored since it is a credit card type. Isn't it "vice-versa" though anyway .

As for the streaming to two different IP's:
http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation: ... _streaming

You might need to do some port-forwarding on the client end if you are streaming over the net though.

Arite.

[tcc]

Hi,

Give SinCast a try (from sinderon.com). It's a freeware front-end for VLC that may be able to handle the streaming scenario that you described. If you want help using SinCast send email to support at sinderon dot com.

Regards,
tcc