Vlc

How to play DVDs

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

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.

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.

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/

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'.

Taiwan radios

• rtsp://live2.rti.org.tw/rti4.sdp (discovered by open http://music.rti.org.tw/music in Linux Chrome browser)
• rtmp://news98-t24.griffinmas.com/live/news98

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

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

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

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.

VLC & screensaver

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