A lot of people seem to be having problems (issues) with the original way I had proposed here using command line. So, I figured I make it real simple and do a graphical tutorial with screen shots to boot . In this example we first deal with the server (running windows) at IP address 192.168.1.1, then we move to our client (Mac OSX) at IP address 192.168.1.2 and view the servers screen remotely through streaming video. So first on the server (remember 192.168.1.1 is the IP address):

1) Bring up VLC and select File/Open Capture Device (Ctrl-A). You should see this screen modify the bottom portion (Advanced Options), so it looks like this picture below. You can decrease screen-fps to 15 if you like to speed things up a bit.

2) On that same screen Click on the Settings… button beside Stream/Save and you’ll see the following screen. Make sure it’s configured this way if you want to do the streaming through HTTP protocol. Audio Codec does not need to be checked, since there is no audio, I just put it in as habit. Note the Address field is the IP address of the same machine (the server in this case), which is 192.168.1.1. This can be a bit confusing.
3) Press Okay twice and your VLC server is up and running serving your desktop to whoever wants to watch (Note: This WILL slow down your server machine considerably).
4) Go to your client machine (192.168.1.2 in our case), run VLC and go to File/Open Network menu option and fill it in as follows. Note that we’re connecting to our server at 192.168.1.1 now.
5) Press okay and you should see the stream from your server now…..DONE!!

Check this out…..it’s absolutely amazing that the pilot actually managed to pull it off.

Just watch this. I promise.

A buddy of mine (thanks Mike) showed me this today. There is a input Access module in the newer versions of VLC (0.8.6+) called “screen” which makes this possible. To stream your desktop to another machine (ip address: 192.168.1.2 in this case) just use the following command in Linux (sorry command line only):vlc screen:// :screen-fps=30 :screen-caching=100 --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=4096,acodec=mpga,ab=256,scale=1,width=1280,height=800}:rtp{dst=192.168.1.2,port=1234,access=udp,mux=ts}'or in Windows (slightly different syntax) use this command:vlc screen:// :screen-fps=30 :screen-caching=100 :sout=#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=2048,scale=1,acodec=mpga,ab=192,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=rtp,mux=ts,dst=192.168.1.1:1234}}This is one massive command, so lets take a look at it in more detail:

• screen:// is our input module selection (if you just run vlc screen:// you’ll see your own screen on the server inside vlc….kinda cool)
• :screen-fps=30 specifies that we want to screengrab at 30 fps (from default 5 fps)
• :screen-caching=100 sets the internal caching to 100ms (from default 300 ms)
• –sout is our output chain.
• #transcode tells vlc that we first want to transcode the input using parameters to follow
• {} contains our transcoding parameters
• vcodec=mp4v sets the video codec to mpeg4 video
• vb=4096 sets the bitrate of the transcoded video (4Mb/s)
• acodec=mpga sets the audio codec to mpeg audio (mp3). Audio does not work yet, this is a place holder.
• ab=256 sets the bitrate of the transcoded audio (256 Kb/s)
• scale=1 sets the scaling value
• width=1280 sets the width of the transcoded video to 1280 pixels
• height=800 sets the height of the transcoded video to 800 pixels
• :rtp tells VLC that we want to use rtp protocol to send the encoder output to our receiver machine using Real Time Protocol.
• dst=192.168.1.2 is the ip address of our destination/playback machine
• port=1234 is the default port on the destination/playback machine
• access=udp specifies UDP protocol
• mux=ts sets multiplexing to mpeg-2 Transport stream

Now on the destination machine just open vlc, goto File/Open Network and by default the Media Resource Locator on top of the window should read udp:// and UDP/RTP with port 1234 should be selected. If it’s not select UDP/RTP (option 1) and put 1234 as the port number. Press Okay and you should see the video stream from the other machine (your server machine). That’s it….Opensource comes to rescue again

If you like to see some of the most prolific Engineers and Scientists of our time talk about how we got to where we are in computers, head over to the Computer History Museum Channel on You Tube. Oh, and if you’re ever in Northern California somewhere, take a side trip to Mountain View and visit the Museum in person, I did.

Speaking of hand tracking, here is a video of a guy playing around with an unknown system (looks a bit like linux). Very cool demo and almost perfect tracking. Not sure if it’s IR or not, you can see him in the corner of the screen, but can’t quite tell how it’s done. Anyways, I’m posting it since it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen. From the description:

A C++ computer vision application to emulate the mouse and the keyboard in any application using hand gestures and a low-cost webcam.

Head over to youconvertit.com. I’ve been waiting for something like this since the early days of the web and it seems like these people have done it. It’s simple, go to the site, upload your file and choose which format you want to convert it to. Give them your email address and they will send you a link to the converted file when it’s done. simple.

They can handle more than 70 different types of graphics, 40 different document formats, 7 different types of audio files and more that 10 different video file formats. As a bonus they also allow you to do unit conversion

Take this with a grain of salt (maybe a rather large grain), but this soon to be released product (September 25th) might be a goodway to introduce kids (and adults) to green screen concepts for cheap. It even comes with a “Tripod”….Ooooohhhhh……Triipoooddd

Hot on the heels of AJA video’s NAB announcement of their IO HD box, MOTU has just announced their version of Portable Studio in a box, the MOTU V3HD. According to MOTU’s website “With one simple plug-and-play FireWire connection, the V3HD turns your Mac or PC desktop or laptop computer into a powerful HD/SD video production workstation equipped with all the video and audio I/O you need.” Both boxes seem — at first glance — to be very similar. AJA’s box works with Apple’s ProPres 422 (hardware), while V3HD seems to be hardwired for DVCPro HD (hardware). V3HD works with FinalCut Pro on Mac platform and supports Adobe Premiere Pro on Windows. All you need is a Workstation/Laptop with Firewire 400/800 connections. So go ahead and build that portable HD/SD studio you always wanted…..it’s easy.