How To Stream With VLC 1.1.11

[ZenMystic]

Hi

How do I stream a video file using either VLC or windows media player classic from my computer to a friend's computer. I've read online it is possible to do this with VLC. But all the tutorials I have read are out of date with the current version of the VLC player.

If someone could help me set this up using the newest version of VLC player, I would appreciate it thank you.

[smok3]

i quickly tested on win7 using vlc to transcode/stream using h.264 in ts container and i get a blobby mess on the other side (and that is after trying at least 10 times with sligtly different parameters). I think vlc streaming is a myth.

maybe you can get some sense from a cli:
http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-howto/en/ch04.html#id349956

[ZenMystic]

I couldn't even get that far. On the computer that was steaming the file, it said it was Steaming. But nothing was picked up on the other side. No audio or video. So I must be doing something wrong. If VLC isn't the answer. What is? There has to be a simple program out there that will let me stream from one computer to another quickly and easily no?

[smok3]

assuming we want a general purpose, format independent "streaming", then some sort of remote file access is the easiest way:

a. SSH
1. server, a linux box with ssh server running and filed with media files
2. client: either linux, windows or osx
(its pretty easy with linux or osx, either use some sort of sshfs or maybe nautilus and then play with whatever player you wish)
on windows a working/free sshfs seems to be http://dokan-dev.net/en/download/#sshfs (basically mounts ssh to a drive letter...),

then you can use mplayer with "mplayer -cache 10000 file.mp4" or similar.

edit: dokan seems to be super-slow, something else with similar functionality.
edit2: ssh mounting as drive works fine with commercial expandrive.

b. web server (apache, lighty, ect)
"streaming" works just fine with client using "mplayer -cache 10000 http://domain/file.mkv", not so with mp4 files.

[ZenMystic]

I still can't believe… That there seems no easy way… To stream video that is not above my technical skills LOL I think I am just going to have them download the video clips in question… It will take a while but oh well.

Although after going to this amount of hustle. I would really like to get VLC working. I just wish I knew why VLC can't or won't pick up steam. Even if it was a big mess I wouldn't care. As long as I got to see it pick up something.

[smok3]

web server seems to be easy enough (if you don't need on-the-fly transcoding).