Can I use a DAW hardware controller to steer VLC playback?

[texnic]

Hello everyone, I am new here. VLC has been my preferred media player for years, on Windows and now on Mac. Recently, I've found myself transcribing quite a few interviews recorded with smartphone, Skype etc. I love how I can control playback speed in VLC and jump back and forward with high precision. But I thought I could make it even more convenient if I used something like a Behringer X Touch One control surface. Basically, I first found myself looking for a device with a jog wheel plus a few buttons to control the speed. Then I've found this X-Touch and thought it would be really cool to have a chance to see the timing on the console itself. And the main thingy: currently, I need to switch between VLC and the text editor (a browswer, in my case) to go from typing to playback control and back. A physcial controller could allow me to stay at typing and still have the full control.

In short:
- Would a DAW controller be able to control VLC playback out of the box?
- If not out of the box, is it doable without weeks of programming (I am fine with Python, but not with system programming)?
- Is there maybe another way to keep control of VLC via keyboard without switching from another program into VLC? I doubt this, as the keys I need are space, left, right—the same as used in text editing. But perhaps I am missing something.

[justreality]

don't know if you can use DAW hardware but I'm doing the same thing using VLC for dictation AV and a Pages on the mac. Streamdeck works well enough to make it manageable, you can get the actual stream deck and a foot pedal that you can program to start and stop (it has 3 selections all programmable). There is a multimedia set of macros that mac sends to the default media player which is how you can program a foot pedal for start and stop. Unfortunately for the rest you have to have VLC as the active window, so, like you, i have to use my laptop to do the typing and it sits in front of the desktop. There is an SDK and someone has already written a program to connect to VLC via local net, but I haven't figured it out yet. VLC lets you program 4 different length to jump ahead and to jump back, and the stream deck gives you editable keys that light up so it's pretty quick to hit the right key--i find with foot control to start/stop you can be pretty productive before you miss some audio or need to check. I have it programmed to jump back 2sec, 5sec 10 sec and 1 min, and there are multimedia defaults for playback speed (1.0x, 1.5x etc...). Probably less expensive than a DAW hardware controller and way more modular, you can probably program the stream deck to control a lot of the DAW.