blog/data/2018-09-24-vlc-bittorrent.txt

   1 Title: VLC in Debian now can do bittorrent streaming
   2 Tags: english, video, verkidetfri
   3 Date: 2018-09-24 21:20
   4
   5 <p>Back in February, I got curious to see
   6 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_VLC_to_stream_bittorrent_sources.html">if
   7 VLC now supported Bittorrent streaming</a>.  It did not, despite the
   8 fact that the idea and code to handle such streaming had been floating
   9 around for years.  I did however find
  10 <a href="https://github.com/johang/vlc-bittorrent">a standalone plugin
  11 for VLC</a> to do it, and half a year later I decided to wrap up the
  12 plugin and get it into Debian.  I uploaded it to NEW a few days ago,
  13 and am very happy to report that it
  14 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/vlc-plugin-bittorrent">entered
  15 Debian</a> a few hours ago, and should be available in Debian/Unstable
  16 tomorrow, and Debian/Testing in a few days.</p>
  17
  18 <p>With the vlc-plugin-bittorrent package installed you should be able
  19 to stream videos using a simple call to</p>
  20
  21 <p><blockquote><pre>
  22 vlc https://archive.org/download/TheGoat/TheGoat_archive.torrent
  23 </pre></blockquote></p>
  24
  25 </p>It can handle magnet links too.  Now if only native vlc had
  26 bittorrent support.  Then a lot more would be helping each other to
  27 share public domain and creative commons movies.  The plugin need some
  28 stability work with seeking and picking the right file in a torrent
  29 with many files, but is already usable.  Please note that the plugin
  30 is not removing downloaded files when vlc is stopped, so it can fill
  31 up your disk if you are not careful.  Have fun. :)</p>
  32
  33 <p>I would love to get help maintaining this package.  Get in touch if
  34 you are interested.</p>
  35
  36 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  37 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  38 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>