VLC Server Setup
VLC nightly build page
http://nightlies.videolan.org
VLC release version page
http://www.videolan.org
Introduction
Why we need VLC? Because Flash Player does not let us open/read/play video files except flv, swf and from the latest beta mp4,etc…
VLC helps us because it can read almost every type of video file with generic compression/encapsulation and can stream as FLV much like FMS, but even better.
It also helps that it’s free and open source.
Step 1: Install VLC
Download and install the latest VLC “nightly build” for your OS, from the link at the top of the page (we need the nightly, because the official release version does not implement streaming, which is what we need to use).
Step 2: Run VLC
VLC can be run from command line or as an application — for our purpose the command line version is better because let us specify as many options as we need.
On Windows OS create a .bat file with the following line, insert the correct path to VLC
(on other OS put the line in a script)
“C:\path\to\VLC\vlc.exe” –no-mmx –no-mmxext –no-audio –extraintf telnet
What the options mean:
–no-mmx –no-mmxext not to use mmx instructions (due to a bug, newer pc crash without it)
–no-audio save bandwidth (mandatory, actually VLCmodule does not handle audio)
–extraintf telnet allow us to control VLC via telnet commands (sent out from onyx)
To load VLC without the standard graphic interface put –intf telnet instead of –extraintf telnet. Run the .bat file
For more VLC commands:
http://wiki.videolan.org/index.php/VLC_command-line_help
Step 3: Modify files.xml
Manually insert an entry with the full path to the file, like so:
where the field “name” must contain the full path to the video file (\/ in the path doesn’t mind) and “thumb” is as usual. The vlc:// will tell Onyx to use the vlc module rather than the normal file system module.
Just to be sure, avoid white spaces in the path.
3.2 Automatic Building:
Run OnyxLibrary.jar and click create: will do the job, building the xml files for your video
folder automatically
Just to be sure: backup your xml files.
Step 4: Run Onyx
With VLC loaded run Onyx and look in the console window for the line “VLC loaded”
Drag your avi/mpg/etc from the browser to a layer and after a bit of delay you should have the movie playing in Onyx.
Known issues and Bugs
Actually this is a quite buggy feature I’m trying to improve step by step. Some fine tuning
could be taken into account at VLC command line, some inside the Onyx module.
Most of the issue is due to the fact that the stream coming out from VLC does not contain
metadata (as happen in a normal FLV) so all the info about current video position must be
calculated real time. At the state of the art this mean that the clip could be played only once,
making the stuff useful only for long videos (dvd vobs too).
Also moving the marker back and forth will result in unwanted behaviors :(