Linux Multimedia Hacks

Stream Video with VLC

VLC provides the ability to stream video to and from any platform it runs on.

There are many different commercial streaming video servers out on the Internet, but if you have installed VLC [Hack #56] , not only can you view videos, but you can also stream them across the network. This hack describes how to use the VLC streaming video wizard to stream your video content across the network.

There are a number of reasons you might want to stream video using VLC besides just “because you can.” Streaming video across the network puts the primary load of encoding video onto the server. This means you can play back video on systems that might be too slow to play the video otherwise because the viewing application only needs to perform one task—decoding the video rather than the two tasks of encoding and simultaneously decoding. Or you might store your video files on a fileserver and want to play them on your laptop over the wireless network, but the wireless link is a bit too slow to play it directly over the network. Or, you might just want to play the same video on multiple computers at the same time. Whatever the reason, VLC provides a wizard that takes most of the guesswork out of configuring a streaming server.

To set up the streaming video server, first launch VLC and click File → Wizard. Select “Stream to Network” in the window that appears and click Next. The next window lets you choose the input stream to use. You may choose to input using a local file, in ...