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