Best way to stream a video from one computer to another

**CkDGTAT** · September 28th, 2015

Hi,

Suppose I have 2 laptops A and B linked by rj45

I want to have a videostream of the webcam of A from laptop B.

What would you suggest to use?

PS:

My idea may be to set a simple ftp server from laptop A.

**TheFu** · September 29th, 2015

Don't use Plain FTP - EVER.
If you can write the file on "a", to shared storage, then "b" can play that file as it is being written. Use NFS.

However, Skype is probably easier.

BTW - you probably want to have a "router" on the network and not directly connect the two systems. Routers handle stuff and make life easier. With a cross-over cable (direct connection), you have to manually do everything.

**SeijiSensei** · September 29th, 2015

If laptop A with the camera is running a non-server version of Ubuntu with a GUI interface, a simple solution is to install openssh-server on the machine with the camera, then run "ssh -X laptop_A_name_or_IP" on laptop B. Now you will be logged into the remote machine. Run the camera software from the command prompt. You should see its output appear on the client machine.

For instance, if you're using cheese, and laptop A has address 10.10.10.10, then

Code:

[user@laptop_B]$ ssh -X 10.10.10.10
Enter your password
[user@laptop_A]$ cheese &

The ampersand puts cheese "into the background" so you can type additional commands if needed.

With this method you're not streaming the video over the wire, but simply exporting the output of cheese to laptop B.