Streaming Video Made Easy

If you thought VLC Media Player was just capable of playing media files, think again. The media player enables you to stream your favorite video on a network and without spending extra money

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

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Apart from playing most video formats and supporting conversion from one to another, the VCL Media Player has a video streaming server built into it. All you need is a video file or video capture device and a few clicks to start broadcasting your videos over network. Here, we show you how to stream locally generated video content with this strong streaming tool.
Download the latest version of VLC player from 'vlc-media-player.en.sof tonic.com/' and install it on the machine you want to share your content from. Once installed, click on 'Media>Stream'. This will bring 'Open Media' window with four tabs on the top. Select tab depending on the source you are going to stream from. Here, we are streaming a local file. Click on 'File' tab and then click on 'Add' to add content to be streamed. Now add destination in front of 'New destination' and click on 'Add' button to add server address along with port (192.168.5.58:1234). Under transcoding option, select appropriate codec and click on 'Next>Stream'. Finally to capture this streaming window, open either Windows Media Player or VLC player. In case of former, click on 'File>Open URL', add your streaming server address (http://192.168. 5.58:1234) and you are done. In VLC, click on 'Media>Open Network Stream'. Add protocol along with the address and play. Besides media files, one can also stream live from installed video camera thus enhancing the utilization of this free software. To do so, open VLC Media Player, go to 'Media>Stream>Capture Devices' and select appropriate capturing device in front of 'Video device name'.

To stream media content, start VLC Media Player and click on 'Media>Stream'. Select first tab and click on 'Add' to add locally stored media.	Add destination of the streaming server. Simply select 'HTTP' protocol in front of 'New Destination' and click on 'Add' to mention local address.

You need to add the address of the streaming sever for others (clients) to connect. We have added local fixed IP of the machine.	From the same window, select appropriate 'Transcoding options'. In our implementation, we used 'WMV+WMA'.

To capture media streams from streaming server, open VLC Player on the machine connected to the same network and click on 'Media>Open Network Stream'.	After adding address and protocol of streaming server, click on 'Play' button and enjoy your streamed video.

You can also open stream video from the server in Windows Media Player. Click on 'File>Open URL' and add address along with protocol and play.	To stream live camera from VLC, simply go to 'Media>Stream>Capture Devices' and select device from 'Video device name'.

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