Vu Duo - VLC Stream Playlist Question??

[mcquaim]

Hi folks,

I have been trying to create a playlist of streams in VLC that corresponde to channel numbers on my VuDuo but Im not having much success.

I have individual m3u files saved off that specify the channel URL and then the stream settings, codec settings etc as generated by VLC.

I then created a playlist file adding each m3u file. When I launch the playlist file it plays the m3u files fine but it will not stream them!

My goal was to have a playlist of streams and be able to navigate the playlist remotely using the VLC WebInterface or by the new iPhone app VLC Remote.

Does anyone know if it's possible to create an m3u file when launched will then start to stream?

Sorry for the long winded post...

Cheers,
mcquaim

[mcquaim]

Hi All,

I have an answer to this problem and it works really well except for one little issue that I'll talk about later.

Anyway, to create a playlist of streams and be able to change the channels then follow these steps. This is based on VLC revision 1.1.7 and I'm running Win7 Home Premium.

1. Firstly, save the Channels.txt file I have attached to a location on your local machine as Channels.xspf. You can add whatever channels you want but for this example I have only included BBC1, BBC2, UTV and C4. To get the channel ref's you can find them in the channel bouquets on your VuDuo. If your VuDuo is password protexted then you will need to add the username and pasword to the url as follows:

http://username:password@vuDuo-ip:8001:channel ref.....

2. Secondly, save the VLC_Server.txt file to you local machine, desktop most likely place as VLC_Server.bat. Right click on this file and then click Edit. You need to change the path to where you saved Channels.xspf above. You might also want to change the quality settings, mine are set quite low as my broadband is rubbish.

3. Ensure that your router has ports 8080 and 12345 opened and forwarded to the machine you are currently working on. If you don't know how to do this then read some of the sticky's on how to do this.

4. Set yourself up with a dyndns.com account to keep your router's WAN ip address in sync with your new dyndns URL. Download the dyndns update client to automatically keep this updated.

5. Double click on the VLC_Server.bat file saved on your desktop. This will launch VLC player and start streaming the first item in your playlist. I have it set not to play locally but you can do what you wish.

6. On a remote pc (On LAN or Internet) open VLC and click Media -> Open Network Stream and type your new dyndns url and port number into the text box and click play:

http://xxxxx.dyndns.tv:12345 (xxxxx is whatever you specify on dyndns.com)

7. On your browser enter the url http://xxxxx.dyndns.tv:8080 and this will connect you to the VLC Web Interface of the PC currently streaming above at step 5. From here you can change the channels by navigating through the playlist by clicking on the Next and Previous buttons. This will switch the stream on the PC at step 5.

And that is it, remotely change your streaming TV from your VuDuo. A problem that I have noticed however is the the VLC Web Interface does not manage to take across the <title></title> tag from the Channels.xspf file. All you are left with is the actual stream reference for some reason. It is a bug that I have noticed has already been raised with the VideoLAN team.

If anyone has a better approach then please keep me posted.

Enjoy,
mcquaim

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