How do I make it a default player

[Wilie Coyote]

VLC is one of the better players I have come across.

But I am wonderinging how do I make it the default player when ever a site wants to play a quicktime clip or I want to play a quicktime clip?

This would be useful especially on movie preview sites. What I am asking is when IE gets to a site asking for quicktime VideoLAN should launch and play it.

Also the same goes for Realplayer formats.

I am looking for a step by step guide please.

Thanks for any help.

[markfm]

You need to set vlc as the default program for whatever file types you want.

There are two ways to do this. The first method is to open a Windows Explorer window. Select Tools -- Folder Options, then click on the File Types tab. Scroll down to find the file extension you want (example, MPEG uses the two extensions ".mpg" and ".mpeg"), then click the Change button to let you select the default program. Browse to where you keep vlc.exe, select it.

The second method is from a DOS command line. The commands are assoc and ftype. For setting vlc to play mpeg files, what I type into a DOS shell is:
assoc .mpg=mpegfile
assoc .mpeg=mpegfile
ftype mpegfile="C:\Program Files\vlc\vlc.exe" "%1"

Windows uses an "association", maps file extensions to logical names. In the above I chose to map both .mpg and .mpeg to the logical name "mpegfile". The ftype command is what tells Windows what to do with the file. The C:\ part is the full path to the program, vlc.exe. The "%1" tells Windows that it is working against the first parameter in its input buffer (this is ancient DOS batch file stuff, where you pull off strings from a command line using %1, %2, etc. for the first, second,... chunks of text)

Note that there is no "white space" around the "=" sign -- the strings are of the form "g=m", NOT "g = m".

The above is the generic way to do it, will launch VLC with the user command GUI bar and open the movie.

[Wilie Coyote]

Hello,

Thanks for the info. I tried as indicated making th mov extension default to VLC. It did NOT work as I am still being asked to load quicktime.

I did restart my browswer (all instances....even restarted my box) but no luck. THe site that I am using is:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pict ... _high.html

If I click on a mov extension on my HDD it does work as long as there are no spaces in the name. As for real formats have not tried. Want to do one step at a time.


Any idea?

[markfm]

Apologies, my error -- you are looking for a plugin, launching within IE, rather than simply a file association.

There's no plugin for IE.

I downloaded the high resolution sample, unzipped it, for kicks renamed it "hellboy trailer sample.mov". complete with the spaces. VLC had no problem, launched when I double-clicked the file.

(well, it did have 1 problem -- the audio was encoded with a QDM CODEC, not supported, so there was good video but no audio)

[Wilie Coyote]

Drat Drat Drat Drat Drat

Yea I guess what I am looking for is a plugin. So how to make VLC a plugin as well.

Wonder if any developers have an insight on how to do this.

That would be something useful if it can replace quicktime annd realmedia.

Thanks

[The DJ]

VLC does support QDM2. Search the forums on how to enable it on windows....

[markfm]

The QDM2 ability has perhaps gone away?

I do have the latest Quicktime installed. I've got the dll file that is mentioned in the threads on QDM2. I dropped the DLL in the VLC plugins directory, where the various lib DLLs are located. At least on fairly recent builds of 0.7.2, I just get:

"main error: no suitable decoder module for fourcc `QDM2'.
VLC probably does not support this sound or video format."

I also tried dropping in the full set of "npqt" plugins, from my c:\Program Files\Quicktime directory -- no luck.

No problem for me, since I don't watch Quicktime movies, just curious as to how to hook Quicktime in.

Thanks much, as always.

[Gibalou]

If Quicktime player is installed on your computer, all that's needed is to find/download the qtmlclient.dll file and drop it into the same directory as the vlc.exe executable file.

[markfm]

I put copies of qtmlclient.DLL in both the vlc root directory and the plugin directory. No audio.

I have the very latest Quicktime, installed yesterday, which does play .mov fine (with audio).

(I've verified that I have Track 1 selected for Audio, and opened a test MPEG, with sound that's fine, to make sure I haven't got bad audio HW settings).

Is there something down in Settings -- Preferences to turn on additional CODECs?

Thanks.

[The DJ]

Did you compile yourself?

[markfm]

Yes, it was built by me, with the Quicktime dll file then added to both VLC's root and plugins directories after the build was done.

The compile is the one documented in install.win32 and the step-by-step that I put together -- the only thing that I do differently from install.win32 is that I use --enable-release instead of --enable-debug

I'll try again tonight -- I haven't downloaded the trunk in 3 days -- and see if it's OK.

[Gibalou]

Ah, you need to add --enable-quicktime to have the quicktime plugin which makes use of the qtmlclient.dll file.
It isn't documented in the INSTALL.win32 file because it isn't actually useful unless you know the qtmlclient.dll trick (although it is enabled in the release packages).
Instead of doing a full ./configure again, you can simply add "quicktime" to the list of plugins in the vlc-config file.

[Wilie Coyote]

I too tried and having issues.

But when will the next version be realeased? I think that will take the problem away. Also in the next release it says it will suport Real formats. But when you click on the link you see support for quicktime format only, *.mov.?

so lets see.....

I really hope that VLC can handle both Quicktime and Real both on stand alone files and as a plugin for IE or for that matter any app that requests a player. I want VLC to deal with it.

Thanks

[The DJ]

The same posting also claims support for streaming to Mars. When you look at the posting date you will see that it was posted on April 1st (April Fools).

[markfm]

It worked fine when I recompiled with --enable-quicktime and parked the dll in the vlc root directory (same dir as vlc.exe itself).

It didn't work when I put the dll in the plugins directory. (No problem, as long as you know what does work, something else not working is a don't-care.)

Thanks.