SSH – How to Stream Over SSH Using VLC Media Player

sshstreamingvlc-media-player

Question:

Can I get a local VLC instance to stream media from a remote computer, via SSH?

This is with VLC running on the local computer that I'm watching the video on, not remotely via X11-over-SSH.

Are there any extra access modules for VLC which could enable SSH sources?

The local computer unfortunately runs Windows 7, and I want to avoid dual-booting if possible.


Probably unnecessary – my setup:

  1. I have a computer in the UK which auto-connects to a VPS via SSH and sets
    up reverse port-forwarding.

    For those interested in doing this, the UK computer uses:

    ssh -nNTP *:9000:localhost:22 user@vps

    where 9000 and tunnel@vps should be changed accordingly
    for your setup.

  2. I SSH/PuTTY to the mapped port on my VPS from wherever in the world I am,
    in order to access the UK computer. I connect from my local computer to the UK one over the SSH tunnel by then locally executing:

    ssh user@vps -p 9000

  3. This works great for getting a shell on the UK computer. I want to stream media from it though onto my local PC which unfortunately, runs Windows 7. This rules out SSHFS, and also win-sshfs which is quite buggy on Windows 7.

Currently, I use win-ssh to start copying the file over, then I get VLC to play the (incomplete) file. As long as the copy rate is above the media bitrate and win-ssh doesn't fail (which it does for most files), this works great. I'm looking for a more robust solution.

Best Answer

Try SFTP. It's the protocol used by SSH to transfer files and is supported by VLC in the Open Network Stream menu by typing sftp://<server>/<path to file> and then authenticating.

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