The VideoLAN Forums

Hello,

I want VLC to run a 21:9 demo in my shop, fullscreen, looping, autostarting when Windows boots. Read the FAQs, manuals, etc. I got almost everything up and running. Computer auto wakes at 9:55 AM, shuts down at 6:15 PM, boots Windows and VLC happily and then starts playing the demo fullscreen in all it's glory. So far, so good. However, after 1 run the beautiful fullscreen is dropped, and every next run I get a **windowed fullscreen** version of the demo.

I'm using a batch file with the --fullscreen and --loop options, called from Windows Task Scheduler. I've also tried using a shortcut to the video in windows startup folder, with the repeat and fullscreen options enabled in the VLC interface. I've seen some thread about using a playlist, but I haven't tried anything that direction so far. The windows decorations option is off. Everything that I can think of, I tried. Checked. Whatever. Yes, i'll say it again, the fullscreen option in the video settings is enabled.

What am I missing? What can I do force it to stay fullscreen? Perhaps even seamless, tho that's not too important, as long as it STAYS fullscreen. I've also looked at alternatives like KMPlayer and BSPlayer, but I'm a VLC fan for life.

Thanks in advance for any attempts and suggestions to help me out.

What parameters are you using for the 21:9 part? are you accommodating for that, or does it matter?

It should easily do exactly what you describe.

example batch file: that's assuming you've set environment variables to call vlc and that the .bat is in the directory with the video otherwise you'd have fully quoted path names.

post your batch file.

Why not make a test batch with a very short video and make sure that works properly first, then you see if there's possibly some other issue going on.

Of course window decorations or anything else isn't relevant, because you can get it to be fullscreen.

contents of batch file are
"C:\program files (x86)\videolan\vlc\vlc.exe" --fullscreen --loop C:\users\promo\Videos\promo\promo.avi

It's a 2560x1080 avi, the native resolution of the monitor I'm using. And I figured it should be really easy to do what I want, and I thought I had managed it the easy way as the first run of the Promo video is in FS. It's just that all consecutive runs have that damn ugly border, even tho the Fullscreen switch is on.

It should do it.

The only thing I can think is that maybe other previously saved settings in vlc are coming into play. I would reset preferences to put everything back to default. Or otherwise you have to find out what might be affecting it and add more parameters to clear those for during the promo instance.

I'd grab a short video for testing, then open a command prompt to call the .bat. If it works, good, but otherwise you'll likely see some terminal output after it goes to a window(move the video off to the side).

And if resetting doesn't get it, and you don't have any meaningful command prompt output then you need to get a full verbose log.

btw --loop is to loop the playlist items, but in this case that should do exactly as expected.
but --repeat is a direct command to repeat the current item. Although in this case I supposed both should act exactly the same, but just clarifying.

I've tried w/ the repeat switch as well. Same result. Now using old Windows Media Player and converted the avi to mpg. It now finally does what I want. Thanks for your help, zcot.

Oh, well great.

Just out of curiousity did you happen to try the mpg with vlc?

Earlier when you said "seamless" it struck me, because that should not even need to be a point. So I would say now, especially after seeing the batch file command, there's something happening at the end of the demo media and it is causing it to do that... -however the file was made or something. There's something weird about the frames or specifiers there. A verbose log would probably have shown the culprit.

Anyway, if you ever did work it out, you could also add the --no-video-title-show parameter so it doesn't show the filename on the screen at the start.

I have not tried MPG/VLC combo, maybe i''ll give it a try and post back, the machine has remote desktop anyway.