[streaming] Re: vls vs. vlc

[Alexis de Lattre]

I'll try to answer this difficult question...

First, let me say that I am neither a VLC developer nor a VLS developer,
but only a member of the documentation team ! :)

Let me remind you of the history of VideoLAN :

Before VLC's stream output, we had two very different programs :

- VLS, a Linux-only program written in C++, that is basically a MPEG
Transport Stream engine, with a very basic telnet interface,

- VLC, a multi-plateform program written in C, that implements demuxers,
codecs, video and audio outputs and graphical interfaces.

In september 2002, Christophe Massiot, a core VLC developer, gave the
idea of taking advantage of the multiple demuxers and codecs
implemented in VLC to build a Stream Ouput who's ultimate goal was to be
able to do transcoding.

Laurent Aimar and Eric Petit, who already had some good experience of
VLC, took the job and created a stream output for VLC, that was released
with VLC 0.5.0 in late January. VLC's stream output is now begginning to do
some transcoding.

Today, the features of each program are described here :

http://www.videolan.org/streaming/features.html

Basically :

- VLC is good at streaming various MPEG files in various encapsulation
  formats (avi, mov, ogg, mp4...) with a nice graphical interface ;

- VLS is good at streaming DVDs, satellite channels and digital terrestial
  TV channels.

In general, VLC has more features, but VLS is still more reliable.

To be a real streamer, VLC would need to be able to read multiple sources
at the same time. VLS can do this since it's origin, but VLC can't do
this for the moment. Some VLC developers are working on a new version of
the VLC input, known as "Input 4", which should address this issue.

The biggest problem we face is "How do we explain that to our users ?".
There are 2 problems :

1. the name of the programs : it's very difficult to explain that VLC
can also be used as a server... ! I don't have any idea on how to solve
this :-(

2. explain the similarities and differences of VLC and VLS. That's what
we try to do in the VideoLAN HOWTO and on the "streaming features page".

For a particular use where you can either use VLC or VLS, we don't
give hints on which program is better for this use, because we prefer
our users to try both and see which one is better in their particular
situation and configuration.


But in my opinion, what is more important, is that VLS and VLC
developers are not the same persons ; and that they are free to
developer the soft they prefer... !

You have the same thing with :
- Xine / Mplayer / VLC
- Gnome / KDE
- Python / Perl / PHP
- Debian / Mandrake / RedHat / SuSE

That's how the OpenSource mouvement runs, and it has shown in the past
that is was a good engine for innovation and enhancement.

I hope that VLC and VLS developers will give their point of view on this
issue...

-- 
Alexis
-- 
This is the streaming mailing-list, see http://www.videolan.org/streaming/
To unsubscribe, please read http://www.videolan.org/support/lists.html
If you are in trouble, please contact <postmaster at videolan.org>