vlc always opens a second command prompt window

[johnpank]

I am a newbie who just installed the 2.1.2 version a week ago. I have not made any configuration changes. I have windows 8.
If I open a command prompt window and run VLC, it always opens a second command prompt window to run the command. The command runs in that window and when the command completes the second window closes. I am not able to even see any output that the command wrote to the console window before it quickly disappears. How do I have the VLC command execute in the command prompt window that I am running it in?

[johnpank]

I feel that I must be doing something obviously wrong, because I can't believe the ability to run VLC on the command line on Windows is this broken. I will describe better what I am doing:

I open a Command Prompt window by choosing "Command Prompt" from the Windows 8 desktop Power User's menu. I CD to where the VLC.EXE is located in the installation folder. If I then type "vlc --help", a second window opens that has "VLC media player version 2.1.2" in the title. The last hundred or so lines of the "vlc --help" command is displayed in the window, but all the beginning of output of the command is lost. At the bottom it says "Press the RETURN key to continue....." If I press RETURN, this window closes and thus I can never even see the complete output of "vlc --help".

If the command ran in the first window that I opened, I could change the size of the output buffer before running the command so that I would see the entire output. But the buffer size of the second window can not be changed before It opens. It just doesn't make sense the VLC is supposed to create a new window for every VLC command that runs.

I have searched the forums and the VLC Wiki for many hours and have found nothing to help me.

[johnpank]

Would someone please tell me if you have this same behavior on Windows 8? It would help a lot to know if this is my problem or a VLC bug.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Reset preferences...

[johnpank]

I reset preferences. I still have the same behavior.
I never even changed any preferences since I first installed VLC.
Is it SUPPOSED to open a second command window to run the command?

[AndyMeToo]

Mine does the same. 2.0.8 does it too. No idea if it is meant to though. It looks to me as though it's displaying the output of the command in the second window. It's not actually opening a second "command window".

[johnpank]

Thanks for the info. I call it a "command prompt window", because it behaves like one. It has the same context menu that command windows have, when you right-click on the title bar. And you are able to type commands, the same as when you open a window using "vlc --intf rc". If you type "help" you get:

+----[ Remote control commands ]
|
| add XYZ . . . . . . . . . . . . add XYZ to playlist
| enqueue XYZ . . . . . . . . . queue XYZ to playlist
| playlist . . . . . show items currently in playlist
| play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . play stream
| stop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . stop stream
| next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . next playlist item
| prev . . . . . . . . . . . . previous playlist item
| goto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . goto item at index
| repeat [on|off] . . . . toggle playlist item repeat
| loop [on|off] . . . . . . . . . toggle playlist loop
. . . . . . . . .

[mederi]

"vlc.exe -h" or "vlc.exe -H" should dump short or long help in "vlc-help.txt" file created in the same directory as "vlc.exe".

[johnpank]

I tried that and it did not do that. There was no file of that name in my "C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC" directory, where vlc.exe resides.

I seem to be hearing that VLC is SUPPOSED to execute these commands in a separate window. Is that correct? Is there any way to have them execute in the first command prompt window that was opened?

[mederi]

VLC-2.1.3 > vlc-help.txt:
> short: http://pastebin.com/rPv0mfuZ
> long: http://pastebin.com/wp4f17Ei

[johnpank]

Thanks, but I was already able to find the contents of the help file.
My question is: Why doesn't "vlc -H" work properly? Why does it open another window where most of the output gets scrolled off the top before you are able to read it? Can't you change VLC's behavior to display the output in the window that you are in?

[johnpank]

Since I first made this post, I've been trying to get the answer to one question:

Is it NORMAL BEHAVIOR for the VLC command to open another window to execute the command? Or am I just doing something wrong?

Does anyone know the answer to this?

[vahit.hanoglu]

You should read the help document more carefully =)

Because I don't understand which interface you try to start vlc with, I write down the 2 possibilities:

The magic is --rc-quiet or --quiet

vlc.exe -I rc --rc-quiet

vlc.exe --quiet

[Gregorius]

You should read the help document more carefully =)

Because I don't understand which interface you try to start vlc with, I write down the 2 possibilities:

The magic is --rc-quiet or --quiet

vlc.exe -I rc --rc-quiet

vlc.exe --quiet

Sorry, I have been wrestling for a couple of hours but I can't get it to work.

I have written a program with Qt and I use the class QProcess to start and control vlc.

I use the command: vlc -I rc

On Linux, this works great. Vlc does not create any windows untill I send a command like add some_movie.mkv.

When I run the same code on windows XP, it is not working because vlc opens a console window and somehow my program can not communicate with vlc.

It is true that with the command --rc-quiet no new console window appears. However, vlc does not listen to any commands in the original console window.

The million dollar question is, how can I start vlc quiet in a (without creating any new windows) and get the vlc prompt in that same window on windows?

Here is the code I'm using in my program, it works perfect on Linux:

Code: Select all

video_process = new QProcess(this); QStringList arguments; arguments << "--video-on-top" << "-I" << "rc"; video_process->start("vlc", arguments); if(video_process->waitForStarted(5000) == false) { QMessageBox messagewindow(QMessageBox::Critical, "Error", "Unable to start VLC mediaplayer.\n" "Check your installation of VLC.\n" "Also, check if VLC is present in the PATH evironment variable."); messagewindow.exec(); return; } .... video_process->write("add my_movie.mkv\n");

Thank you for your help, I'm really stuck here.

[cbk486]

Hello, has anyone solved this issue? I'm trying to write a program that uses vlc and it fails on windows because of this issue. It works fine on the other platforms that I have tested it on.

This is the command I am trying to run:

Code: Select all

vlc.exe -I dummy —---network-caching <5000> —-playandexit --no-sout-video --sout-audio --sout '#standard{access=http,mux=asf,vcodec=h264,acodec=mp4a,dst=10.0.9.27:9999}'

[vahit.hanoglu]

Hello, has anyone solved this issue? I'm trying to write a program that uses vlc and it fails on windows because of this issue. It works fine on the other platforms that I have tested it on.

This is the command I am trying to run:

Code: Select all

vlc.exe -I dummy —---network-caching <5000> —-playandexit --no-sout-video --sout-audio --sout '#standard{access=http,mux=asf,vcodec=h264,acodec=mp4a,dst=10.0.9.27:9999}'

I think adding --quiet parameter to your command will kill all your pain.

[vahit.hanoglu]

Gregorius,

Do you mean that your program does not send "add some_movie.mkv" command to vlc?