tunnel netcat video streams to mplayer

Question

I am sending a video stream over my network and I want to encrypt it with ssh. This solution below works:

on machine 1 I run

./capture | nc 192.168.1.65 5001

on machine 2 I run

netcat -l -p 5001 | mplayer -fps 30 -cache 1024 -

This gives me video.

However trying to make machine 1 listen for a connection does not work:

on machine 1 I run

./capture | netcat -l 3333 -vvv

on machine 2 I run

netcat 192.168.1.85 3333 | mplayer -fps 31 -cache 1024 –

mplayer tells me that:

MPlayer 1.2-4.2.1 (C) 2000-2015 MPlayer Team

Playing –.
File not found: '–'
Failed to open –.
No bind found for key '0       '.


Exiting... (End of file)
write(stdout): Broken pipe

Question 1: Why does it not work the other way around

Question 2: I have ssh keys set up, how do I send the video stream over ssh?

Thanks

Answer 1

The answer to question 1:

The mplayer complains that File not found: '–' even though it should read standard input. This has nothing to do with netcat or networking at all. The porblem is in command line interpretation. If there is an a dash character alone - (hex code 2D) then mplayer reads the standard input. But the command line contains character – (hex code 96). Visial similarity of these characters is just a coincidence.

The answer to question 2:

It is a straightforward use case and there are a swarm of answers and examples how to tunnel something over ssh. For example ssh tunnelling explanation gives a good introduction how to use ssh for tunneling.