To my surprise, one of VLC Remote’s users showed me how you actually can run multiple copies of VLC and remote control them with VLC Remote. (thank you Calvin!)

He is using them to stream to 4 zones in his house, but there are plenty of other reasons you might want to do this.

The trick is simply to run VLC from the command line and specify a different http-port value for each.

For Mac os, I used:

/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC --http-port 8090
/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC --http-port 8091

for Windows, the equivalent would be:

c:\Program Files (X86)\VideoLAN\VLC\VLC -VVV --http-port 8090
c:\Program Files (X86)\VideoLAN\VLC\VLC -VVV --http-port 8091

You’ll then need to add computers manually in VLC remote using the IP address of your computer and port 8090 (or whatever port you use).

If you’re doing this regularly, you’ll probably want to set up a batch file to start up your multiple instances. Calvin was able to set up his batch script so it pointed to individual audio devices in his streaming setup.

cd "c:\Program Files (X86)\VideoLAN\VLC\"


rem VLC session 1 with gigaport1 audio, port 8310, and russound1$

start cmd.exe /k "VLC -VVV --http-port 8310 --directx-audio-device={32776569-ABD9-4C9D-89B1-11E47A93EDEF} --directx-audio-speaker=Stereo \\atomic\russound1$"


rem VLc session 2 with gigaport2 audio, port 8320, and russound2$

start cmd.exe /k "VLC -VVV --http-port 8320 --directx-audio-device={39E33C1B-A451-4185-B470-2CBAEB769018} --directx-audio-speaker=Stereo \\atomic\russound2$"


rem VLC session 3 with  gigaport3 audio, port 8330, and russound3$

start cmd.exe /k "VLC -VVV --http-port 8330 --directx-audio-device={CF04DBB5-952D-4AEE-80F6-AEC2AFDAF671} --direct x-audio-speaker=Stereo \\atomic\russound3$


rem vlc session 4 with gigaport4 audio, port 8340, and russound4$

start cmd.exe /k "VLC -VVV --http-port 8340 --directx-audio-device={EEF16A7C-842C-4DA3-BA65-E8F24C0A0266} --direct x-audio-speaker=Stereo \\atomic\russound4$

Towards the end of 2014, I added a feature in VLC Remote to auto-save your position in a movie, and restart at the same place if you re-loaded that movie.

Since then, VLC have built the same feature into VLC itself.

It doesn’t make sense for the remote to be battling VLC – so I’ll be removing the ‘save playback positions’ feature from the remote and letting you set your preference in VLC.

This is how to do that:

Windows

0) Open the preferences (Menu/Tools/Preferences)
1) Select ‘All’ in the bottom right ‘Show Settings’ option
2) In the left pane, select ‘Interface / Main interfaces / QT’
3) In the right pane, scroll down until you find ‘Continue playback?’ and select ‘Always’
4) Click ‘Save’ in the bottom right.

Mac OS

0) Open the preferences (Menu/VLC/Preferences)
1) Click ‘Show All’ in the bottom right button (this will show more preferences)
2) In the left pane, select ‘Interface / Main interfaces / macosx’
3) In the right pane, scroll down until you find ‘Continue playback?’ and select ‘Always’
4) Click ‘Save’ in the bottom right.

That’s all!