Vlc

How to play DVDs

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs

“VLC is Unable to Open the MRL” Error

Fixing “VLC is Unable to Open the MRL” Error [Quick Tip]

Find TuneIn streaming URL

Follow this video, I can get the streaming url of WQER Chinese radio.

1. Right click and select inspect
2. On the right panel, select 'Network' tab
3. Pay attention to the row with long 'Waterfall'
4. Right click and select copy -> copy link address

This method also works to find out the cbsnews/live streaming URL (https://cbsnhls-i.akamaihd.net/hls/live/264710/cbsn_hlsprod_2/master_360.m3u8). I can watch the streaming in VLC.

The method does not work on Enlightened Piano Radio which uses html5 mp3 driver. The website has an advantage of showing currently playing songs.

Sniff out the link

Video Download Helper (Firefox Add-on, 2.7M users). It works to find

• the streaming URL of CBSN New York
• the streaming URL of CBSN.
• RStudio webinars
• Enlightened Piano Radio

Video Downloader professional (Firefox Add-on, 292K users) also has a good number of users and reviews.

Playlist

The internet streaming I played will be automatically added to LIBRARY > Playlist. These stations will be gone once I quit VLC unless I save the playlist (eg <vlc_playlist.m3u>).

Docked playlist

On Linux, View -> Check 'Docked Playlist'.

On Mac, I don't find a similar option.

Addons

Use VLC to listen tunein radio

Download link http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php?content=152788. Click the download button to download the file "TuneIn-Radio-VLC-master.zip". Unzip it. A new folder "TuneIn-Radio-VLC-master" will be created.

curl -L https://github.com/diegofn/TuneIn-Radio-VLC/archive/master.zip > TuneinRadioVLC.zip
unzip TuneinRadioVLC.zip

Create two new subfolders and place the lua files

• move the “tunein.lua” file to the VLC folder so it can be found and run by VLC.
  • In Linux, move the “tunein.lua” file to ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/sd/

    mkdir -p ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/sd/
    mkdir -p ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/playlist
    cp TuneIn-Radio-VLC-master/tunein.lua ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/sd/

  • In Windows, move the “tunein.lua” file to %AppData%/VLC/VideoLAN/lua/sd.
  • In Mac OS X, move the “tunein.lua” file to VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/lua/sd

    sudo cp TuneIn-Radio-VLC-master/tunein.lua /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/lua/sd/
    sudo cp -R TuneIn-Radio-VLC-master/playlist/* /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/lua/playlist/

• move the “radiotimes.lua” and “streamtheworld.lua” files from the Playlist folder to “/lua/playlist” folder in the VLC directory.

  cp TuneIn-Radio-VLC-master/playlist/* ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/playlist/

Close and open VLC. Go to “View -> Playlist”. At the sidebar, under the Internet section, you should now see “TuneIn Radio” in the list. Click on it and you will be able to access your Favorites.

Note that

1. the TuneIn Radio will be LOST once I upgrade VLC (tested on Mac).
2. on Linux, right click menu has an item called 'Information'. The 'Codec' tab will show the Location (IP address) information. Mac VLC does not have 'Information'.

Youtube playlist

• How to Watch Entire YouTube Playlists in VLC
• https://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/?content=149909

It does not work on my VLC 3.0.4

Taiwan radios

https://medium.com/@k21_79139/台灣電台直播源列表-a318adf3b7

• rtsp://live2.rti.org.tw/rti4.sdp (discovered by open http://music.rti.org.tw/music in Linux Chrome browser)
• https://www.rti.org.tw/radio/onAirPlayer/id/2 (央廣音樂網Live), 央廣音樂網, http://www.rti.tw/
• http://www.news98.com.tw/, rtmp://news98-t24.griffinmas.com/live/news98 (old), http://cast.news98.com.tw:8000/news98

Music radios

• 青苹果音乐台 rtsp://mms.qpgsky.com/ting/audio/0/58295/44/48/2013

Local radios

• WAMU: http://wamu-1.streamguys.com/wamu-1
• WETA: http://stream.weta.org:8000/;
• WGTS: http://sc1.christiannetcast.com:9032/;
• WTOP: https://20603.live.streamtheworld.com/WTOPFM.mp3

Edit network streaming history

• Linux, the configuration file is located at ~/.config/vlc/vlc-qt-interface.conf
• Windows, the configure file is %appdata%/vlc/vlc-qt-interface.conf

5 tips

Make VLC More Awesome With These Simple Tips

1. Watch YouTube videos with VLC
2. Convert videos to different formats
3. Record Audio/Video From Source
4. Download subtitles automatically
5. Take A Snapshot

Use VLC to record internet radio (suitable if the stream is continuous)

GUI

On VLC 3.0.8 I am using in Ubuntu 18.04, the 'stream' option is gone in Open Network Stream... dialog. This option is not gone but it is hidden under the "play" button. The "play" button has a drop-down menu with 'Enqueue', 'Play', 'Stream', and 'Convert' options. We can choose the Convert option from there. I use this method to convert a m3u8 URL and save it as a mp4 file. For a 19:41 minutes videos, it takes 216MB disk space for the 1280x720 29.97fps video.

The URL is obtained through the Video DownloadHelper v7.3.9 (3M users) add-on/extension on Firefox.

Command line

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-record-internet-radio-using-vlc.html

sudo apt-get install vlc browser-plugin-vlc

• http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Precise#Restricted_Extras

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FFmpeg#Precise_Configurations

sudo apt-get install lame  libmp3lame0
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra-53 libavdevice-extra-53 libavfilter-extra-2 libavformat-extra-53 \
                     libavutil-extra-51 libpostproc-extra-52 libswscale-extra-2

A successful run will have an output like

VLC media player 2.0.3 Twoflower (revision 2.0.2-93-g77aa89e)
[0x2329ca8] dummy interface: using the dummy interface module...
[0x7fac2c007428] mux_dummy mux: Open
[0x7fac2c003598] access_mms access: selecting stream[0x1] audio (39 Kib/s)
[0x7fac2c003598] access_mms access: connection successful
[0x7fac2c003598] access_mms access error: failed to send command
[0x7fac2c005fe8] idummy demux: command `quit'

Audio device

I can specify to use a bluetooth device to output the audio in VLC while the browser still uses the regular 3.5mm as the output.

Play audio using a command line mode

See also my Beaglebone page for a comparison of different possibilities. For VLC, there are 3 interface modes. The following example is to run vlc in a text mode with the ncurses library.

sudo apt-get install vlc-nox
vlc -I ncurses XXX.mp3
vlc --help

Play youtube using VLC from a command line

See this post

vlc -I http https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlW77conmAc

Play youtube using minitube (not VLC)

https://flavio.tordini.org/minitube

Note that it can search or browse videos but you can not paste URLs to play them. Minitube can play videos continuously from searched videos.

Frame rate

File:VlcFrameRate.png

Extract Images with VLC

5 Ways to Extract Video Frames and Save to Images

Keyboard shortcuts

cheatography.com and howtogeek

• Ctrl + arrow: forward/backward 1 minute (Add the 'CMD' key on macOS)
• Alt + arrow: forward/backward 10 seconds (Add the 'CMD' key on macOS)
• Shift + arrow: forward/backward 3 seconds (Add the 'CMD' key on macOS)
• [ or -: decrease speed
• ]: increase speed

Global Hotkeys

https://wiki.videolan.org/How_to_set_global_hotkeys/

For example, I choose F8 for play/pause.

Convert video or audio files

How to Convert a Video or Audio File Using VLC

VLC & screensaver

It seems the screensaver will be deactivated if some video is opened (even not it is not playing).

Alternatives

5 Streaming Audio Players for Linux. Spotify, Clementine, Odio, Streamtuner2, VLC.