Enterprise Software Development

Streaming Video From Home to Work

Have you ever wanted to stream some video from your house to a remote location. Like to your cell phone, or to your computer at work? Maybe you are scheduled to work late during the World Cup, or NBA Finals. Well here is a simple way to stream that video/audio using VLC (VideoLAN media player).

Requirements:

• A knowledge of how to open ports on your home router / home computer firewall
• VLC (at the time of this article we used 0.8.6c for windows)

The source PC:

VLC Source Settings

• Start VLC
• Click on File … Open
• Click on the tab that will be your source
  • File – You can even open DVD ISO’s with this one
  • Disc – You can use a DVD disc as the source (this is a little weird though since you will not be able to control the DVD menu remotely)
  • DirectShow – This is if you would want to stream from a hardware video source, like a webcam, or even a TV Tuner (like my DViCO HDTV 5 Lite clear QAM tuner)
• After you pick your source, we need to do some work on the advanced panel beneath your source.
• Click on the Stream/Save checkbox
• Click on the Settings… button
• Check the HTTP option in the Outputs frame, note the TCP port 1234 (you can change this if you want to)
• Select ASF in the Encapsulation Method frame
• Check the Video codec, select mp4v, and Bitrate (i used 512 because my DSL upstream is 768) in the Transcoding options frame
• Check the Audio codec, select mpga, and Bitrate (i used 96 because my DSL upstream is 768) in the Transcoding options frame

You will want to monkey with the Transcoding options if your client is not VLC, like if its Media Player, or QuickTime (if its QuickTime you may need to change the Encapsulation method to something else, like MP4 (maybe) )

Firewall Settings

• Modify your firewall to allow the TCP port that was selected in VLC (the default is 1234)

The client PC

• Start VLC
• Click File … Open Network Stream
• Select HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/MMS
• Type in your source PCs IP address and TCP port in the URL textbox (ex: http://mycomputer.dyndns.org:1234)
• You may want to add some Caching under Advanced Options, especially if your Bitrates selected in the Transcoding Options add up to close to your available upstream bandwidth.

Tweaking the Settings

If your video is getting jumpy

Its likely that your stream is too large for your upstream to handle.

It can be useful to watch the Stream and Media Info window (on the client VLC) and the Statistics tab, to monitor the Input bitrate … if you see that bitrate stay above your available upstream too often, then adjusting the source bitrate should fix this problem.

Extra Information

• VideoLAN website – all the documentation for VLC
• Doom9.org – excelent source of transcoding knowledge
• VideoHelp.com – many many many HOW TO articles on audio/video

Listen to your tunes and movies at work!