# VideoLAN multicast

## joshdr77

hey,

i would love to be able to multicast video content to the computers on my home lan. I have followed the how to, which were very limited at the videoLAN website and have no idea how to set this up. If anyone has VideoLAN working with multicast let me know. If anyone can point my in the right direction related to multicasting plz do.

thanks josh

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## joshdr77

 :Sad: 

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## 0ctane

I do not know anything about multicast, but I know the portage entry is "vlc" and not "videolan".

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## joshdr77

i use gentoo as my desktop....clarkconnect is my server with vls running on it.

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## 0ctane

after i read about vlc a little more, I can see that my previous statement was dumb.  Sorry.

BTW, do you know of any streaming content on the web I can test out my client with?

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## joshdr77

use a dvd

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## 0ctane

That would work if I had a DVD drive.    :Sad: 

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## cPF

The idea got my attention for a week ago as well, and so I actually now finally managed to do something useful with vls. My dedicated box now distributes live television picture on a multicast subnet in my lan.  I first 'though spent some time searching for my dusty old bt848 tv tuner card, and got it running with the bttv kernelmodule. It was far worse trying to find a build of vls (argh) which compiles and supports v4l capturing devices(only available in CVS).. My suggestion is to use the one build from june-2003 in the cvs repository for those whom interested. Secondly I had to get and build the tree of ffmpeg from the latest CVS too.  (more confusion.. ) The design seems quite lighweight due to it runs with minimal dropped frames now.  The box is just a celeron1 375MHz and it does mpeg4 1000kbs compression at near 100% load. 

the working sources:

```
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.videolan.org:/var/cvs/videolan co -D "June 1 2003" vls

http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/cvs/

```

This is my vls.cfg:

```
BEGIN "Inputs"

   webcam                = "v4l"

END

BEGIN "webcam"

   Device                = "/dev/v4l/video0"

   Channel               = "1"

   Norm                  = "0"

#   Size                  = "752x576"

    Size                = "352x288"

   DeInterlace           = "0"

   Compression           = "mpeg4"

   Bitrate               = "1000"

   Quality               = "1.0"

   AudioDevice           = "/dev/random"

   AudioCompression      = "raw"

   AudioBitrate          = "0"

   AudioChannel          = "1"

END

BEGIN "Channels"

   multicast              = "network"

END

BEGIN "multicast"         # The client is on the same host as the server

    Domain  = "Inet4"

    Type    = "multicast"

    DstHost = "225.0.0.1"

    DstPort = "1234"

    TTL     = "1"

END

BEGIN "LaunchOnStartup"

   command1 = "start video multicast webcam"

END
```

I think I'm doing it correctly, but to use an multicast address you just need to route it to an interface. so

```
ip route add 225.0.0.1 dev eth0
```

Vls also seems to have reasonable support for streaming digital channels (even multiple I guess) from a DVB device, which will be my next goal. The rareness of  cards for DVB-C (cable) standard seems to be an obstacle on my way though.

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## joshdr77

I think I'm doing it correctly, but to use an multicast address you just need to route it to an interface. so

```
ip route add 225.0.0.1 dev eth0
```

thanks mate - it works

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## The DJ

 *joshdr77 wrote:*   

> hey,
> 
> I have followed the how to, which were very limited at the videoLAN website and have no idea how to set this up.

 

Well it IS difficult. The reason for that is simple. There are just too many possibilities and combinations.

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## jhboricua

I have it currently running on my network.  I posted a thread on the Anime forum at www.dslreports.com on how I did it.  Here is the link.  The streaming is done on a windows 2k3 machine, but since it is using the Videolan player for streaming and the skins for both versions are rather identical it should not be a problem to set it up on linux.

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