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I've never done this myself but if you want to keep it simple and be able to play all video formats, why not just stream from VLC?
I'm happy to be corrected on this, but it seems the simplest solution to a potentially complex problem. Everybody uses VLC, right?
This is your best option. I did do movie nights with friends during the pandemic in a similar way, but I used OBS Studio to create the stream and Monaserver to stream it to all users. I did not know VLC can handle the streaming to users directly, making this dead simple to setup without additional software. You just need to know how to configure your router to allow the needed port forwarding.
Uhm this could be a good workaround, I'll look into it, thanks! It would solve the movies problem, but not any other screen sharing problem
Thank you!
No, of course not. I thought the movie sharing was your primary concern, sorry if I misunderstood. Hope this solves at least part of your problem.
VLC can capture desktop video
This won't work if host is behind CGNAT
You use Jitsi meet, their free service, to watch movies???
You can use OBS to do that, it looks like a lot but it is the best tool for that. Dont know if it has some ffplay/MPV plugin to internally play videos but I think so
gave me only "complex" answers
It is a complex question, even if you try so hard to deny that :-)
One sender only? Or how many possible senders?
How many Receivers?
Do they need to talk back or send back anything?
How far away are they (in terms of network)?
It would be just me sharing to everybody else on the internet (no more than 6 people)
Jitsi meet works great, the only problem is being able to share only "a portion" of what it currently does
My assumption:
Jellyfin has a watch-together function but to set all that up will probably be even more complex than the "complex" options ...
If OP gets Jellyfin working they can just share the tab or window that the Jellyfin web interface is running in. Jellyfin will take care of the playback. No need for the other people to use Jellyfin too.
A bit less simple, but for a great solution, you could host a jellyfin server and give each friend their own user account in order to then use the syncplay feature.
I already have a jellyfin instance, but syncplay didn't works very reliably for me, some users experienced freezing, jumps and other problems
Thanks for the suggestion anyway!
Why not just open the movie with Jellyfin in a tab and share that tab like you do now?
I love the idea of that feature, but it is not at all reliable in my experience.
What about Element/Matrix?
I think the problem is not something related to jitsi, meet, discord or matrix, but rather to the OS screensharing capabilities
Your half right. It's not really the OS's fault but rather the fault of the browsers and app-frameworks that use the browser in the background (electron). Because neither Firefox nor chrome have this feature implemented for Linux. The official Discord client doesn't do it either but other ones such as Sunroof do. It's possible that at least one Matrix client has learnt to share the screen with sound on Linux but I don't know of any (I also don't use Matrix a lot so don't pay too much attention to my experience on that)
On KDE Plasma 6 + Firefox (both Wayland) I can share a window and workaround audio sharing by routing desktop audio to microphone. Vesktop (Discord alternative) supports screenshare w/ audio.