[Solved] Is playing shared video files possible?

[gosa]

Hi all,

I'm sorry if this has been up before - I did some "random" searching, but since I'm not quite sure what to call it I'm kind of stuck...

In my home I have three computers, all running LMDE. There's the desktop computer with a bit more "punch" in it (running on an Core i7 860), there's my "toy" the Asus 1000HE Netbook and there's the old Acer Laptop that got new life when we ditched Windows for LMDE.

Now - most of the stuff I do I do on the Desktop computer, and that's also the computer that holds the most storage space. That's where my video files are.
I've managed to set up sharing (SAMBA) of some of my folders with the help of some threads I found here in the forum, and I've also verified that I can get to those shares and copy files from them to the laptop and the netbook.

But - I'd like to try to take this one step further by playing video from this computer on either the laptop or the netbook. My first choice was to just mount the shared folder and then try to open the video file in VLC, but that gave me an error message saying "VLC is unable to open the MRL 'smb:/lmde/tv/vidoefile.avi'. Check the log file for details. (What log file by the way - can't find anything that resembles a log file in VLC)

So - is there another way of doing this? Another type of sharing/program?

Thanks in advance,
/gosa

BTW - if someone feels this doesn't belong in the LMDE-section, feel free to move me.

Edit - I'm not interested in some kind of streaming setup. I just want to be able to play a file that is on a computer on my home network. (Or is that also called streaming?)

[Fornhamfred]

Yes this is definetely possible. I have my LMDE machine networked to my Windows XP machine and have been able to play video files from the windows machine on LMDE. The files play on Totem and are .avi files.

I have never had any luck with VLC and use SMPlayer on LMDE.

I think your problem probably relates to permissions.

Good Luck

[altair4]

First, make sure you connect to the share using Nautilus - this will mount it.

When you use vlc > open file : you will get a "open one or more files to open" box.

Right click an empty space on that box and select "Show Hidden Files"

Now go to the ".gvfs" folder and there you will find the mount of the remote share and it's contents.

[gosa]

First, make sure you connect to the share using Nautilus - this will mount it.

When you use vlc > open file : you will get a "open one or more files to open" box.

Right click an empty space on that box and select "Show Hidden Files"

Now go to the ".gvfs" folder and there you will find the mount of the remote share and it's contents.

This one is not working for me... I get an empty folder when opening .gvfs (I have Nautilus set to always show hidden files so that can't be the problem)

I did manage to open movies using Totem though (thanks Fornhamfred for making me try - I'm so "locked on VLC that I never run anything else).
- Didn't get the speed I wished for though so maybe my network isn't good enough for it... I'll do some further testing before I scrap the idea completely, but I'll mark this one as solved for now...

(Would've been nice to get it to work in VLC though)

Thanks to you both for taking the time to reply!

/gosa

[altair4]

This one is not working for me... I get an empty folder when opening .gvfs (I have Nautilus set to always show hidden files so that can't be the problem)

I looked at your post again ( I have to remember to read the post first and then respond ) and realized you are running LMDE.

You need to install gvfs-fuse:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install gvfs-fuse

And add yourself to the fuse group:

Code: Select all

sudo gpasswd -a your-user-name fuse

Then logout and login again to enable group membership.

[gosa]

I looked at your post again ( I have to remember to read the post first and then respond ) and realized you are running LMDE.

You need to install gvfs-fuse:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install gvfs-fuse

And add yourself to the fuse group:

Code: Select all

sudo gpasswd -a your-user-name fuse

Then logout and login again to enable group membership.

Ok, I installed gvfs-fuse. Since I'm already a member of fuse group from another thing that I've been wrestling with I just logged out/in again.
- And it worked!

One thing though... I don't have to go into the .gvfs folder (that one still shows up as empty) to play videos in VLC. It's enough to just open the share directly and choose "Play with VLC Player" from the right-click context menu. And today it actually plays smoothly. I suppose my problems from the other day might be related to the torrents I was running at the time...

Anyway - mission accomplished.
- Thanks a lot for your help!