VideoLAN is a complete software solution for video streaming, developed by students at the Ecole Centrale Paris, under the General Public License (GPL). It has been designed for broadcasting MPEG2 videos on local area networks (LAN), but it can be extended to metropolitan or wide area networks, thanks to the multicast technology. The VideoLAN solution includes a server, which can broadcast video streams from various sources (DVD, satellite, camera, ...), a client, which can receive, decode and display MPEG2 streams and, if necessary, a channel server which makes the client receive the right stream.
DVD --->- Unicast/Broadcast/Multicast
\ ---
File --->-- -------- / \ --------
|->-| Server |=====>====| LAN |---->-----| Client |
Satellite ->-- | (VLS) | \ / | (VLC) |
/ -------- --- --------
MPEG2 -->- ^
encoder |
v
----------------
| Channel Server |
| (VLCS) |
----------------
More details about the whole project can be found at
http://www.videolan.org.
The VideoLAN Server (vls) was designed to read MPEG videos from various sources (DVDs for instance) and broadcast them on a network, in MPEG2-TS format. Depending on the network capabilities, the VideoLAN Server can send the streams in unicast, broadcast, or multicast mode.
The VideoLAN Server is supposed to work under any Unix-like operating system. A Windows port may be written one day or another ;)
You will need libdvdread if you want to stream DVDs with vls, and libdvdcss for reading encrypted DVDs. BE CAREFUL: if you want to use libdvdcss with libdvdread, do not use the libdvdread stable release, because it only works with an old version of libdvdcss.
DVB support requires libdvbpsi and the DVB drivers installed.
Vls is a very light software and needs few ressources. A Pentium 100 MHz with 32 MB of memory should be enough for broadcasting one stream (then it takes about 50% of CPU time). On my Pentium III 800 MHz, I can broadcast more than 5 streams and vls eats less than 1% of CPU ! When broadcasting a lot of streams stored on a hard disk, the actual limitation is not the processor but the disk (especially when using IDE disks).
If you have any questions about the VideoLAN Server, you can contact us at our mailing-list vls@videolan.org