[streaming] trickplay and streaming of h264 files

[Hussain Ali Pardawalla]

Hello.

I would be grateful if someone could help me out with the following problems/clarifications.

I am trying to see if it's possible to stream video files over a dsl network (in particular h264/avc video files), and if possible enable Video on Demand services, using VLS as a server and VLC as a client. I am working on a SuSe 9.1 OS. It's been about 1 week since I have moved to Linux envioronment, so please excuse me if some of my questions seem extremely simple or silly. 


1. There is a trickplay option in vls, with the default setting being "normal". What options/features does this setting enable? Also what other settings are there besides "normal" and what are their features.

2. From the mailing archives and the FAQ's , it seems that Video on Demand using VLS as a server is only possible if a 3rd party RTSP server is setup or an http server is used. However it seems that the trick play option enables one to forward, start, stop, pause and rewind movies. Is it not possible to allow users to use these feautures through VLC, or is the trickplay option only intended for the server administrators benefits? 

3. If multiple video streams are being sent to one client using VLS, how does one use VLC to determine what video files are being streamed? On a side note, I managed to get this done by streaming videos to different ports but to the same client (i.e. ip address), using unicast. I was unable to figure out how to let VLC see what files were being streamed, and to choose from the available ones.  I had to manually specify the ports to check if my videos were being streamed.

4. There seems to be an experimental x264 library. If I downloaded and compiled that library, would I need to re-compile VLS and VLC to use them. Up till now I have been unsucessful in being able to play h264/avc files using VLC. I tried going to the following url: http://svn.videolan.org/x264/trunk to download the files, but it seems the page does not exists. Can someone please provide me with the correct address, or is this only available to developers only at the moment? 

Thanks.

Regards,
Hussain.

--
Hussain Ali Pardawalla
Graduate Student
MSc. Communications Engineering
Technical University of Munich

E-Mail: hussain at mytum.de