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Does anybody know is it possible to stream movie from PC (using VLC or similar) .. to Kodi (XBMC) .. perhaps via AirPlay or something similar ? .. I want to be able to push stream from PC to Kodi (like AirPlay does) .. NOT to create shared folder and access it over the network.. I would like PC to be the one thar initiates playback .. same as I do over iPhone Airplay.. I have tried to look into VLC manual but noting seems appropirate..

Thank you, M

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  • I think it is.. because I can play from my iphone to my kodi device nicely.. I just want to play from PC instead of iphone.. But its not even neccessary to play over AirPlay.. any other transport will be ok .. important thing is that i want PC to initiate playback.. and stream it to kod like AirPlay does... and NOT to share folder on PC and then access it from kodi..
    – Marko3d
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 11:44
  • Doing a quick search it appears you are right. It also appears you should look at the search results also. How you do this clearly documented.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 11:48
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    And following to that.. only problem I have is how to stream from PC (VLC) to Kodi AirPlay.. Serach results you posted shows only how to enable AirPlay on Kodi.. I have googled alot before posting here.. :(
    – Marko3d
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 13:23

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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Streaming from VLC to Kodi is pretty simple and I can walk you through the steps. The only thing I don't think you can do is make VLC initiate the playback... that has to come from Kodi itself, I'm afraid. Since you are connecting to VLC from Kodi, if you pause the stream on VLC's side, Kodi will drop the connection. I have yet to see a way of making VLC initiate the playback like the 'Send to Kodi' add-on for Firefox/Chrome does.

Anyway, if you are still interested, here's a way to stream a file from VLC on your PC to any Kodi player you have...

1: On your PC, open Notepad and copy & paste this: 

#EXTINF:0,VLC Stream
http://xxx.xxx.x.x:10803
  • Note: You will have to change the x's to the connection your PC uses. For example, your PC might be at: '192.168.0.6' (Keep the ':10803' port part at the end. This is important!)

2: Once that's done, save the file somewhere with a .strm extension. For example: 'VLCStream.strm'

3: You now need to copy 'VLCStream.strm' to a folder on your Kodi player or, if you have an online server/personal webspace, etc, copy it there instead. This is because you need to play that .strm file from Kodi.

4: Next, open VLC and from the menu, choose: 'Media >> Stream...' (or Ctrl+S)

5: From the 'File' tab, click on 'Add...' and select the video file you want to stream.

6: Once you have chosen the file, click on the 'Stream' button.

7: Click 'Next'.

8: In the 'Destination Setup' window, click on the 'File' dropdown menu and choose 'HTTP', then click on 'Add'.

9: Leave the path as it is (should just be a forward slash) but in the 'Port' section, change '8080' to '10803' and click on 'Next'

10: In the next window, uncheck 'Activate Transcoding'.

11: Click 'Next'.

12: Click 'Stream'.

13: Your VLC should now play and display 'Streaming - VLC Media Player' in the window title.

  • Note: You won't see or hear the file being played locally but it IS working. If you want to make sure, you can check the 'Display Locally' box in the window in step 8.

14: Open Kodi and choose 'Videos >>> Files'.

  • Note: Although I use a different skin, I'm writing this for the default 'Confluence' skin for Kodi. Some menu names/icons may be different.

15: What you have to do now is select the .strm file you saved to your Kodi folder, or to your server, and you should now see the streaming video playing in Kodi. (I'm guessing you already know how to link to a specific folder/server so I don't need to go over that)

Hopefully, if you followed the steps correctly, you should now have the file streaming from VLC to Kodi. If it doesn't work, close VLC and follow the steps again. It works for me and does so each and every time.

I hope this has been of some help to you and if you find out a way to make VLC initiate playback, do let us know.

IB

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  • Thank you .. but this is not what I'm looking for... VLC can act as a streaming server.. and thats fine.. I could accomplish the same by usin IceCast or similar.. but important thing I need is that my computer PUSHes stream to Kodi (as same as AirPlay does).. so.. I play file on computer and it automaticaly starts on Kodi .. Currently I can do it from my iPhone (via AirPlay)
    – Marko3d
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 21:11
  • Yeah, only AirPlay and the 'Send to Kodi' addon pushes as far as I know. I'd like to be able to do this too but have never found a solution.
    – irn-bru
    Commented Jul 29, 2015 at 21:18
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DLNA controller

It seems like nobody else is getting the concept here. There are 4 types of DLNA devices that work as 2 sets. There's the client and server setups where the computer is the server and hosts the file, and XBMC is the client and can access and play media from the server, but this is not what we want. The other pair is renderer/controller. XBMC is a DLNA renderer, and you need controller software on the pc. I personally have used Kinsky before, its cross platform and does a decent job.
There is a full list under "UPnP control points" on this page.

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  • I know it's been a while, but many thanks for this answer - in spite of trying to read into DLNA for a while, it was hard for me to get a grasp on it, until I read this description. I just wanted to clarify - when you have controller software on your PC, and DLNA renderer on XBMC on another machine, does the controller send a stream of rendered pixels (and audio) at framerate to renderer (for a video), or not?
    – sdaau
    Commented May 5, 2022 at 19:33
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You might not know this: VLC can grab your Screen and stream it, so basically you would have to open the stream, fullscreen it, start VLC via commandline and then open the shortcut in Kodi.

Not pretty but should work.

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  • VLC is very powerfull and for the average user, it is overkill. I can confirm that this will work.
    – Mogget
    Commented Nov 28, 2015 at 5:30
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try rtsp

The setup with the http seemed to be a bit fiddly for me.

Instead, I tried to use the rtsp protocol and found it worked better (no surprise as it is a connectionless streaming protocol)

To use that:

  1. put rtsp://yourhostname:8554/ in your rtspStreamFromHostname.strm file

  2. add a streaming destination using RTSP protocol with default settings

    port: 8554 path: / to the VLC stream.

  3. transcoding is on by default resulting in the following settings:

:sout=#transcode{vcodec=h264,acodec=mpga,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100}:rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8554/} :sout-keep

However, for some content no transcoding is required. In this case the following config is sufficient and works much smoother ONLY if the player understands the codec of the source!

:sout=#rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8554/} :sout-keep

If its not working check the used port on your systems for already open sockets. netstat -tulpen or tcpview is your friend!

Also I think its good to know that this approach is not turning the kodi into a listening rtsp player (a la chromcast). So when the stream is stopped kodi stops too. That needs further investigation.

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  • It is vital that you save your file as ANSI and not UTF-8. Notepad saves as ANSI by default, but other text editors tend to default to UTF-8. Kodi 16.1 would not open the file correctly when saved as UTF-8.
    – Phil Ricketts
    Commented Oct 20, 2016 at 23:40

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