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- <meta name="Description" content="Web streaming">
- <meta name="Keywords" content="MPEG, Web, streaming, VideoLAN">
- <meta name="Author"
- content="Christophe Massiot, massiot@via.ecp.fr">
- <link rev="made" href="mailto:massiot@via.ecp.fr">
- <title>How to setup VLC for web streaming (X11 only)</title>
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- <h1> How to set up VLC for web streaming (X11 only) </h1>
-
- <h2> Abstract </h2>
-
-VLC is a separate application which can either read a plain file or a TS
-network stream. Using XSwallow, it is possible to incorporate VLC video
-output window right into the window of a browser. With additional
-tricks, it is also possible to launch a VLMS (VideoLAN MiniServer) on the
-server-side, and have the client read a live network stream. This document,
-intended for expert users only, describes the ways to do it.
-
-
- <h2> Installing and configuring XSwallow for plain MPEG files </h2>
-
-XSwallow is a software which allows any X11 window to be "swallowed"
-(technically, just reparented, so that it has no effet on performance
-anyhow) into the window of a netscape-compatible browser (Navigator,
-Mozilla, Konqueror, Galeon, Opera...). This is indeed a trick in the X11
-windowing model, and don't even expect to port this behaviour to any
-non-X11-based operating system, even supported by VLC (MS Windows,
-MacOS X, BeOS, QNX, ...). <p>
-
-Download it here : <a href="http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/XSwallow.html">
-http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/XSwallow.html</a>. Compilation is really
-straightforward, it basically boils down to some :
-<pre> make -f makefile.linux </pre> <p>
-
-Place the resulting xswallow.so in a directory scanned by your browser
-for plug-ins (for instance, /usr/lib/netscape/plugins, this scan path
-can with some browsers be read in $NPX_PLUGIN_PATH) and xswallow.conf
-in the directory indicated by the environment variable $MOZILLA_HOME. If
-it is currently unset, <b>set it</b> with for instance :
-<pre> export MOZILLA_HOME=/etc </pre> <p>
-
-Of course your mileage may vary. The last step is to customize xswallow.conf
-so that it launches VLC to handle MPEG files. Comment out all lines you
-don't need, and add :
-<pre>
-video/mpeg; mpeg,mpg,vob; vlc -I dummy -V xvideo %s; VLC (XVideo output); VideoLAN
-</pre> <p>
-
-Notes :
-<ul>
- <li> This assumes vlc is in your $PATH, if it is not the case, adapt it.
- <li> If nothing shows up, it might be because VLC cannot find its plug-ins.
- Please check that they are in an appropriate place (such as
- /usr/lib/videolan/vlc). You can try to add -vvvvv to the arguments to
- see where it fails.
- <li> The third field on the line is the actual name of the window to
- swallow. This is currently annoying, you will have to guess the
- name of the video output window, ie. changing the version number
- and the output plug-in (to SDL for instance if you use SDL). At
- present there is no way to force VLC to use a definite name, but
- it will be added by 0.2.90.
- <li> When the window is first spawned, it will appear on screen and
- then be quicky reparented, making some flickering. The usual
- workaround is to make the window appear at offset +10000+10000
- using the --geometry switch, but it is not currently supported
- by VLC. The will be addressed by 0.2.90 too.
- <li> If your window manager isn't configured for automatic placement
- of new windows, it may ask you to manually place the window before
- XSwallow can swallow it. This is annoying, too. The only workaround
- is to disable the functionality (for instance with twm, add
- RandomPlacement in .twmrc). It will be addressed at the same time
- with --geometry.
- <li> XSwallow will first download the file, and then launch VLC. There
- is no way to begin reading the stream before it is complete, à la
- QuickTime plug-in. This will be addressed in a future version of
- VLC (0.4). If you want to do live streaming, proceed to the next
- chapter.
-</ul> <p>
-
-From now on, if you have your browser reload its plug-in list, it will
-display VideoLAN as application handler for video/mpeg. You should now
-try and see what it yields.
-
-
- <h2> Tricks for live web streaming using VLMS </h2>
-
-With a little trick, it is possible to stream a video using VLC and VLMS,
-and make it appear in a Web browser (without having a local copy of the
-file). This will only work if there is no firewall (nor masquerading)
-between the server and the client. It requires to have a CGI support
-built into the Web server. <p>
-
-Here is the sketch :
-<ul>
- <li> The client requests a specific page, say video.html. This page
- contains an image tag to a file vlc.ts, AND launches a VLMS
- through a CGI script.
- <li> The client receives the vlc.ts file which contains the address
- of the VLMS server, and through a special mime-type in XSwallow
- spawns a VLC.
- <li> As soon as VLC begins to receive the stream, it is swallowed by
- XSwallow and appears in the browser's window.
-</ul>
-
- <h3> Configuring the Web server </h3>
-
-In this section I will only give configuration directives for Apache.
-You need to add a new MIME type for TS stream in httpd.conf :
-<pre> AddType video/x-mpeg-ts .ts </pre> <p>
-
-And relaunch your Web server (apachectl reload). Next, create the vlc.html
-page. You need two specific lines, one to load vlc.ts, the other to start
-the VLMS server ; for instance in PHP (adapt it for Perl, Java, or whatever) :
-<pre>
-<img src="vlc.ts">
-<?php system("/var/www/cgi-bin/stream.sh $REMOTE_ADDR mystream.mpg > /dev/null 2>&1 &"); ?>
-</pre> <p>
-
-Where stream.sh is a simple shell script :
-<pre>
-#!/bin/sh
-vlms -d $1 -a mpeg $2
-</pre> <p>
-
-VLMS starts streaming mystream.mpg to $REMOTE_ADDR (the IP address fetched
-by the server, this is why you cannot do it through firewalls) on port 1234.
-
-Notes :
-<ul>
- <li> The -a mpeg option may surprise you ; the VLMS doesn't preparse the
- stream and thus cannot know which audio channel to send. If you had
- an AC3 audio track, you could have put -a ac3. You can also
- activate subtitles with -s.
- <li> VLMS only reads MPEG-1 files from version 0.2 on. If you have an
- older version, you may want to upgrade.
- <li> It is possible that, due to the client latency, the client misses
- the first frames of the stream. I have no ideal workaround for this.
- <li> Some streams (especially MPEG-1) only have one sequence header at the
- beginning of the stream. Since the client risks missing it, it may
- be completely unable to decode the stream _at all_. If you only get
- a blank screen, please try with another stream, such as one test
- stream on <a href="ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/videolan/streams">
- ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/videolan/streams</a> before issuing
- a bug report.
- <li> You should be careful that the stream.sh script is indeed launched
- in the background. If your CGI program waits for it, it doesn't
- hang up the connection until it finishes, and Web browsers wait
- for the connection to be closed before launching plug-ins. In
- that case you have nothing on screen, not even a <em> Click to
- abort swallow </em> message.
-</ul> <p>
-
-Finally, create the vlc.ts file. It just contains the address of the server,
-so that VLC can bind on it (you can't retrieve that from XSwallow). For
-instance :
-<pre> streaming.idealx.com </pre> <p>
-
- <h3> Configuring XSwallow </h3>
-
-You need to add an entry video/x-mpeg-ts in you xswallow.conf :
-<pre> video/x-mpeg-ts; ts; video-streaming.sh %s; VLC (XVideo output); VideoLAN </pre> <p>
-
-The same provisions as before apply here. The video-streaming.sh file is a
-simple shell script which retrieves the server's name and spawns VLC :
-<pre>
-#!/bin/sh
-SERVER=$( cat $@ )
-vlc -I dummy -V xvideo ts://$SERVER
-</pre> <p>
-
-Here you go. This is quite a hack, but it will hold until the next major
-release of VLC.
-
-
- <h2> Acknowledgements </h2>
-
-This page has been written by <a href="mailto:massiot@via.ecp.fr">
-Christophe Massiot</a> for <a href="http://www.idealx.com/"> IDEALX
-S.A.S</a>. <br>
-<em> $Id$ </em>
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