blog/data/2018-02-14-vlc-bittorrent.txt

   1 Title: Using VLC to stream bittorrent sources
   2 Tags: english, video, verkidetfri
   3 Date: 2018-02-14 08:00
   4
   5 <p>A few days ago, a new major version of
   6 <a href="https://www.videolan.org/">VLC</a> was announced, and I
   7 decided to check out if it now supported streaming over
   8 <a href="http://bittorrent.org/">bittorrent</a> and
   9 <a href="https://webtorrent.io">webtorrent</a>.  Bittorrent is one of
  10 the most efficient ways to distribute large files on the Internet, and
  11 Webtorrent is a variant of Bittorrent using
  12 <a href="https://webrtc.org">WebRTC</a> as its transport channel,
  13 allowing web pages to stream and share files using the same technique.
  14 The network protocols are similar but not identical, so a client
  15 supporting one of them can not talk to a client supporting the other.
  16 I was a bit surprised with what I discovered when I started to look.
  17 Looking at
  18 <a href="https://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/3.0.0.html">the release
  19 notes</a> did not help answering this question, so I started searching
  20 the web.  I found several news articles from 2013, most of them
  21 tracing the news from Torrentfreak
  22 ("<a href=https://torrentfreak.com/open-source-giant-vlc-mulls-bittorrent-support-130211/">Open
  23 Source Giant VLC Mulls BitTorrent Streaming Support</a>"), about a
  24 initiative to pay someone to create a VLC patch for bittorrent
  25 support.  To figure out what happend with this initiative, I headed
  26 over to the #videolan IRC channel and asked if there were some bug or
  27 feature request tickets tracking such feature.  I got an answer from
  28 lead developer Jean-Babtiste Kempf, telling me that there was a patch
  29 but neither he nor anyone else knew where it was.  So I searched a bit
  30 more, and came across an independent
  31 <a href="https://github.com/johang/vlc-bittorrent">VLC plugin to add
  32 bittorrent support</a>, created by Johan Gunnarsson in 2016/2017.
  33 Again according to Jean-Babtiste, this is not the patch he was talking
  34 about.</p>
  35
  36 <p>Anyway, to test the plugin, I made a working Debian package from
  37 the git repository, with some modifications.  After installing this
  38 package, I could stream videos from
  39 <a href="https://www.archive.org/">The Internet Archive</a> using VLC
  40 commands like this:</p>
  41
  42 <p><blockquote><pre>
  43 vlc https://archive.org/download/LoveNest/LoveNest_archive.torrent
  44 </pre></blockquote></p>
  45
  46 <p>The plugin is supposed to handle magnet links too, but since The
  47 Internet Archive do not have magnet links and I did not want to spend
  48 time tracking down another source, I have not tested it.  It can take
  49 quite a while before the video start playing without any indication of
  50 what is going on from VLC.  It took 10-20 seconds when I measured it.
  51 Some times the plugin seem unable to find the correct video file to
  52 play, and show the metadata XML file name in the VLC status line.  I
  53 have no idea why.</p>
  54
  55 <p>I have created a <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/890360">request for
  56 a new package in Debian (RFP)</a> and
  57 <a href="https://github.com/johang/vlc-bittorrent/issues/1">asked if
  58 the upstream author is willing to help make this happen</a>.  Now we
  59 wait to see what come out of this.  I do not want to maintain a
  60 package that is not maintained upstream, nor do I really have time to
  61 maintain more packages myself, so I might leave it at this.  But I
  62 really hope someone step up to do the packaging, and hope upstream is
  63 still maintaining the source.  If you want to help, please update the
  64 RFP request or the upstream issue.</p>
  65
  66 <p>I have not found any traces of webtorrent support for VLC.</p>
  67
  68 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  69 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  70 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>