vlc-bittorrent (Bittorrent plugin for VLC)

What is this?

With vlc-bittorrent, you can open a .torrent file or magnet link with VLC and stream any media that it contains.

Example usage

$ vlc video.torrent
$ vlc http://example.com/video.torrent
$ vlc https://example.com/video.torrent
$ vlc ftp://example.com/video.torrent
$ vlc "magnet:?xt=urn:btih:...&dn=...&tr=..."
$ vlc "magnet://?xt=urn:btih:...&dn=...&tr=..."

Installing on Debian/Ubuntu

$ sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-bittorrent

Installing on Fedora

$ sudo dnf install vlc-bittorrent

FAQ

Does it upload/share/seed while playing?

Yes. It works as a regular Bittorrent client. It will upload as long as it’s playing.

Does it work on Ubuntu/Debian?

Yes!

Does it work on Windows, Mac OS X, Android, Windows RT, iOS, my toaster?

Probably. I have not tested. It should run since libtorrent works on most systems and the plugin is just standard C and C++. Patches are welcome.

Dependencies (on Linux)

• libtorrent (“libtorrent-rasterbar2.0” in Ubuntu 22.04)

Building from git on a recent Debian/Ubuntu

$ sudo apt-get install autoconf autoconf-archive automake libtool make libvlc-dev libvlccore-dev libtorrent-rasterbar-dev g++
$ git clone https://github.com/johang/vlc-bittorrent.git vlc-bittorrent
$ cd vlc-bittorrent
$ autoreconf -i
$ ./configure --prefix=/tmp/vlc
$ make
$ make install

Then, to load it in VLC player:

$ VLC_PLUGIN_PATH=/tmp/vlc/lib vlc --no-plugins-cache video.torrent