How to watch streams on VLC
The majority of the popular stream services such as Twitch.tv, Justin.tv, GOMTV.net, etc, display their streams through the flash plugin. Because of that a lot of users might experience high CPU usage generated by the flash plugin as well as causing the stream to lag more because of the overhead that is created.
Thankfully there is a way to watch those streams directly in your VLC player with the use of Livestreamer.
Livestreamer currently supports the following services:
| Name | Live | VOD | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aliez.tv | Yes | No | |
| Azubu.tv | Yes | No | |
| Cast3D.tv | Yes | Yes | |
| Dailymotion | Yes | No | |
| Euronews.com | Yes | No | |
| Filmon.com | Yes | Yes | Only SD (HD requires authentication) |
| Freedocast | Yes | No | |
| GOMTV.net | Yes | Yes | Requires authentication. |
| Hashd.tv | Yes | Yes | |
| ILive | Yes | – | |
| Livestation | Yes | – | |
| Livestream | Yes | – | Both new and old site supported. |
| Mips | Yes | – | |
| Owncast.me | Yes | – | |
| SVT Play | Yes | Yes | Videos may be geo-restricted to Sweden. |
| Twitch/Justin.tv | Yes | Yes | Possible to authenticate for access to protected streams. |
| UStream TV | Yes | Yes | |
| Veetle.com | Yes | Yes | |
| Weeb.tv | Yes | – | Requires rtmpdump with K-S-V patches. |
| YouTube | Yes | Yes | |
| YYCast | Yes | – |
The usage of Livestreamer is fairly easy. First you will need the link of the stream you would like to watch. Example: twitch.tv/<streamer id>
Then we need to find which, if any, streams are available, this is done by passing the stream link to Livestreamer as follows.
livestreamer.exe twitch.tv/<streamer id>
The above example will output the streams that are available to watch, assuming the stream link is valid and currently live. The output will be something similar to this if the above requirements are met:
1 2 3 | [cli][info] Found matching plugin twitch for URL http://www.twitch.tv/<streamer id> Available streams: mobile_high (best), mobile_low (worst), mobile_medium, mobile _mobile |
The part we are interested about are the “available streams”. Assuming available streams are found we can simply execute Livestreamer again with the link and the quality you want to watch as parameters.
Example:
livestreamer.exe twitch.tv/<streamer id> mobile_high
Alternative you can use the words in the parenthesis (best/worst etc).
And there you have it. Livestreamer should then launch VLC for you and start displaying the stream.
Note: Keep in mind that by viewing the streams through VLC you will not receive any ads the streamers will play. If you wish to support the streamers please consider running the stream on a separate browser in the background with the lowest quality while setting it on mute so it won’t bother you while still supporting your favorite streamers.
You can download the current latest version of Livestreamer below.
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