Questions about the VLC player/server

[the4runner]

Hey all,

I'm a newbie to this forum.
Just became a member, and I tried browsing thru some previous topics but couldnt find anything relevant to what I was looking.

I went over a little documentation of VLC and I think its the software I need for my project. Just had a couple of questions though before I dig deeper.

My project is based on overlay networks. I plan to demonstrate that live video can be sent across overlay networks too.
The basic setup is that there is this server to which clients are all connected in a sort of an application level tree (the overlay network).
now i would like to use VLC to produce a stream of video which I could use my tree to transport to each client and feed it to the VLC player on the other end.

Is this possible or am I just being stupid and missing something??

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, does VLC server recognize a logitech webcam for receiving the raw video input?

Thanks!!

[markfm]

No idea about your network approach, but if you're using either Win2K or WinXP the camera should be fine. I've used VLC under both OSs with a $20 CompUSA USB Webcam without a problem.

What you're doing from the server (Webcam-equipped VLC) is streaming a DirectShow Input device (the Webcam). If you play around in Settings -- Preferences, click the Advanced checkbox, you can select the device to use as your default (so that VLC recognizes, for instance, that the Webcam is the right DShow video input automatically) Settings -- Preferences is also where you set your default rersolution -- 144x120,, 320x240, whatever -- the limit is that you cannot exceed what your Webcam provides (my cheapo allows me to use a 320x240, though it then slows the frame rate down, but will not let me select a 640x480, since the camera device does not support that res.)

[the4runner]

Hi again,

Sorry I forgot to mention.
I'm trying to do this on a redhat 9.0 system.

By overlay network, I mean an application layer network established in the form of a spanning tree. The nodes in the tree are all connected by socket connections. I want to send the video stream using these sockets.

I really need to know if myapproach of doing application level streaming will work. Suppose I take RTP packets from the server and serve them on the client side, would it work?