Play video files in a local Lan folder with KDE

Question

I'm trying to play video files in a LAN network folder from within dolphin. These are Samba folders which I can access, delete files and write and copy from. The same video files play perfectly with any video player when I copy them to my local folder beforehand.

Any help?

Answer 1

Dolphin's interface is feeding VLC a file as far as I know. Have you tried bumping up the cache for the file input plugin?

Tools -> Preferences -> Choose "All" in "Show Settings" -> Input / Codecs -> Access Modules -> File -> Caching value (ms) -> 3000 or 6000 or 12000

Also bump up the network cache value.

If it is getting passed an SMB uri, which I doubt it is, try this:

Tools -> Preferences -> Choose "All" in "Show Settings" -> Input / Codecs -> Access Modules -> SMB -> Caching value in ms -> 3000 or 6000 or 12000

Answer 2

I don't use KDE but would like to do make a suggestion:

if you can copy the url from within dolphin and open it with a media player, would that work for you? is so i will give example for VLC

• open vlc

• advanced open file (ctrl+shift+o)

• open the tab "network"

• enter the URL which should look something like smb://yourmachine/videos/todaysvideo/intereresting_movie.avi

caveats:

1. This solution does not work from within dolphin as you requested
2. it probably does not work if you have to login to have access to the file (but maybe you can (temporarily) lower these restrictions)

Answer 3

Mediatomb could be used to host the files over UPnP. The files could then be accessed with something like XBMC (you can add UPnP shares as a video folder). It's a bit of an overkill but I use such setup at home to view movies from different machines, and all files are stored on a server.

You could also just set up a Dropbox share between the boxes, as I recall, it attempt to serve files via LAN before resorting to WAN.

Edit: I see you edited your question and now mentioned Samba. XBMC also works with samba shares if I recall correctly. In any case, you could mount those Samba shares on the other boxes with (I think) FUSE.

Answer 4

Ok everybody, now I found out whats up: Like "ClashTheBunny" pointed out Dolphin feeds the link to vlc - so to access the file you have to open VLC preferences > show all > input/codecs > access modules > smb and enter your smb browsing credentials (smb user/password). I left the domain blank because I use the standard workgroup browsing... works like a charme!