VideoLAN.org (Not to be Confused with VideoLAN.com) May 14, 2011
Posted by Russ Software, LLC in Free Apps.Tags: VideoLAN
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Last week I got to work on an interesting (unusual) project for my FCF (favorite client forever!). All he told me before I came over was that it involved setting up a video camera. I of course assumed outdoor surveillance or spy cameras secretly pointed at employees, the usual stuff.
I was surpised when I got there, however, and found out the camera was for inspecting the inside of wells dug around landfills (not sure why they need this but it involves geology and maybe chemistry) as was at the end of a long cable on a spool. The problem was they couldn’t get it to work when connecting to a laptop. It worked fine connected to a portable video device but they neeed to take snapshots and to record video which couldn’t be done on the portable device that came with the camera.
I quickly determined the problem was no software/drivers, no documentation, no cable/connection method between camera and laptop – no problem.
The solution involved Pinnace Dazzle (available at Radio Shack), the proper cable connectors between camera and Dazzle (from RadioShack), VLC Media Player from www.VideoLAN.org and brute force trial and error (since the camera documentation left this detail out) selection of the streaming video protocol to use (fortunately there are only a few hundred (just kidding!) until we got it to work on only our 4th attempt. Be sure you look for VideoLAN.org and not VideoLAN.com as they are 2 entirely different things. One is software the other hardware.
I was introduced to VLC Media Player a number of years ago by some of my Bulgarian friends (of course former spys now since living in the US and members of sleeper cells so I can’t divulge their names and the real heros of this blog post).
The amazing thing is VLC Media Player is free and open source meaning it will always be free – check it out. The engineer I was working with asked me why anyone would develop such a great program and then give it away for free.
I told him that hatred and distrust of big corporations such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc., that operate on the profit motive (capitalism) runs deep with some (subversive) people (“communists” in polite circles). Just kidding of course, VideoLAN.org is NOT a communist organization! I’m just glad there are open source people out there for practically any software you can imagine so the punchline is to be sure to first check open source (free) before running to CompUSA to buy something.
