[streaming] WMP and VLC streaming

[Simen Thoresen]

Hi All,

I've just started looking into streaming from a (transcoding) VLC server to 
(several) WMP clients. My target would typically be a real-time captured 
stream sent to several Win2k and WinXP clients, running whatever 
WMP-versions the users have installed, and my aim is something that 'just 
works' for the users, ie without having to download any extra codecs, 
plugins or programs.

Help, please?

So far, I've found the VLC streaming HOWTO, 
(http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-howto/en/ch04.html#id294660), where 
the commandline is written out almost exactly as I want it;

./vlc file.avi --sout
'#transcode{vcodec=DIV3,vb=180,scale=0.5,acodec=mp3,
ab=64,channels=2}:std{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,dst=:8080}'
(linebreaks added by me - I'm prototyping this with a fixed file before 
moving to capturing the live feed)

On my home system (2 WinXP clients, both running WMP10, one with various 
additional codecs installed, the other one not much customized), this works 
perfectly.

But.
On my office test network, I have two machines playing perfectly, 3 or 4 
machines playing just audio  and leaving video blank, and 2 or 3 machines 
playing audio, while rendering video as a single horizontal line, as 
described previously on this list;
http://www.via.ecp.fr/via/ml/streaming/2006-05/msg00011.html
I believe most of the above are WMP9 (and possibly older). The two working 
clients may also both be WMP10.

In both of the two failure-situations, WMP shows the full bitrate and 
identifies the codecs correctly, so there is no obvious sign that WMP itself 
sees anything amiss. Testing with other codecs, I get the expected behaviour 
of WMP not finding the codec, and complaining about an unknown/unsupported 
codec.

VLC has not had any problems using and rendering the stream properly when 
I've tried it on the same systems where I've seen the failures.

I have been using both VLC 8.4 and VLC 8.4a-builds (precompiled by Dag 
Wieers) under Linux, and VLC 8.5 (precompiled by the developers for Win32), 
and have not seen any changes in the behaviour between these.

My questions; Is the line in the HOWTO known to work with other WMPs than 
WMP10? Specifically, is it known to work with unmodified WinXP and Win2K 
WMPs? In that case, what am I doing wrong?
Also, a more general question; Is this the correct  approach for this 
project - I want to be able to stream to as many WMP-installs as possible, 
with no control over the client configuration. I'm fairly new to streaming 
and while I do enjoy learning about it, my ultimate goal is something that 
is usable.

With thanks in advance,
-S
-- 
Simen Thoresen, Dolphin ICS

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