Is this the right software...

[Solter1]

Hi all

Before I spend a few hours compiling (and a few more trying to get things to work), I thought I'd check that VLS/VLC is what I'm after. Could anyone who's been there before answer some questions for me?....

I currently have 3 PCs, one running Linux the other Windows XP. I want to rip all my DVDs/CDs to the linux box and then serve them on demand to any of the PCs. I'd also like to stream music/vids wirelessly to a stereo/tv system (probably build a tiny linux box to receive the data).

From what I can tell VLS/VLS can do all this and more right?

Second question - assuming I eventually have a large number of tracks/dvds ripped to the server, does VideoLan provide sort of cataloging/browsing ability for clients or do I have to write my own web site etc to do that? Playlists? Any other add-on software to provide the functionality? (I read the bit in the docs about a built-in mini-http server, but lack of real-life examples didn't make it clear if it's what I want).

Cheers

Solter

[markfm]

Try doing a search in this forum for VOD (video on demand) -- it's a recurring topic. Depending on how ambitious you are, an answer for VOD is to use a real Web server front end, like Apache, with VLC then serving individual files as needed.

One possibility that I haven't seen, for small, in-house work, is to create a single shared drive on whichever machine you want to be the server. Then you just run a standard VLC session on the client boxes.

I'm looking at a high-res movie clip right now, shared off of a network drive on one of the servers where I work. I park files into the shared drive, can open them from anywhere with permissions to access the share.

(sometimes we miss the simple approaches)