Broadcast desktop to remote PC

[igor_jans1]

Hi! I want to understand how you can implement in labview to broadcast desktop to remote computer and be able to record the broadcast in file?
I'm a student and don't have much labview experience, so I'm asking for help from the community. Thank you!

[Bob_Schor]

Before you start wondering how to do things you don't know about in LabVIEW, a programming language with which you have little experience, get more LabVIEW experience doing simpler things.

What does it mean to "broadcast desktop to remote computer and be able to record the broadcast in file"?  Are you trying to create a video recording system in LabVIEW?  Are you trying to create some sort of Web Service?  I suspect that you are about a year or two of LabVIEW experience away from being able to do this (in LabVIEW).

Bob Schor

[igor_jans1]

Hello, Bob! It will be enough for me to be able to broadcast my desktop on the local network and to be able to record it. All this needs to be done with the standard labview tools.

I have little experience with labview, but this is my study assignment.

[Bob_Schor]

Please explain what "broadcast my desktop on the local network" means.  Are you trying to create a version of Zoom, or WebEx, or Microsoft Teams, using LabVIEW?  I would estimate that for someone with "little experience with LabVIEW" who is doing this as a "study assignment" (which I interpret as working on it largely by yourself), this should require one to three years of effort, with no guarantee of success.

Bob Schor

[igor_jans1]

yes this is exactly so, I also do not understand how to do it ... that's why I turned to the community for help

[RTSLVU]

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@igor_jans1 wrote:

Hi! I want to understand how you can implement in labview to broadcast desktop to remote computer and be able to record the broadcast in file?
I'm a student and don't have much labview experience, so I'm asking for help from the community. Thank you!

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Broadcast your desktop and be able to record it?

IMHO: you need to have a long talk with your instructor before it gets too late, because while this may be possible with LabVIEW it's not going to be easy.

In fact I would even say that LabVIEW is the wrong tool for this job. I don't know what programing language would be the "best" but a more general purpose language like one of the C derivatives or maybe Python would probably be better.

[billko]

It takes whole teams of developers months to years to develop something like this.

[RavensFan]

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@billko wrote:

It takes whole teams of developers months to years to develop something like this.

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But with little to no LabVIEW experience, and asking a few questions on a community forum such as this, I'm sure that those months to years could be cut down to just a few days in time to get the assignment turned in before the due date.  🤔

[Worle]

I would look at calling a third party program to do the screen capture, broadcast and file saving. 

my recommendations would be ffmpeg which can be downloaded as compiled executables from a link on the ffmpeg website.

you can call ffmpeg from your labview code using system exec with something like

ffmpeg.exe -f gdigrab -I desktop -f mpegts -vcodec mpeg4 udp:\\127.0.0.1:25000

this will stream your desktop as an mpeg4 encoded video stream over udp to your local host. Change the 127.0.0.1 to the desired up of your destination. 

this can be viewed with an appropriate viewer (ffplay vlc player etc)

ffmpeg is a very capable bit of code so ready the documentation to see the full capabilities. You would be able to adapt the command to record the stream to a file. 

more advice can be given if you answer a few more questions 

- what are you planning on viewing the stream in (web browser, another labview program that you are writing, stand alone player)

- how are you transmitting the stream (WiFi, local network using cables, internet)

- how many clients need to view the stream.

- what sort of latency is required 

ps. I have read the rest of the replies to this and they may be a little negative. It is definitely doable with ffmpeg. I do agree though. Trying to write your own would be verging on impossible with labview. You only have to look at The source code for ffmpeg to get an idea how much work would be involved. 

[igor_jans1]

thanks for your answer, I will think about it now.

I answer the questions posed:

1) This was not discussed, so I will use the easiest option to implement.
2) The broadcast will be on a local network (between two computers on my desk), they are connected to the network via Wi-Fi and cable.
3) 1 client
4) latency is not that important