Automating VLC - Multiple instances in separate windows

[antonylord]

Goal :

An XP box that runs 3 instances of VLC fullscreen, one in each of 3 windows (quad head machine with a 4th for control) each using a different playlist but sharing the same media pool.

I've learnt a lot about VLC lately but there's a few tricks I'm yet to trawl out of the forums / Google.

How can I set things up so that I can make 3 shortcuts (or command line settings or something) that will make VLC play a particular playlist (say Foo1) on a particular screen (say Screen1) in full screen?

I've been manually running three instances (same playlists / media for testing). Each instance ends up generating a MS Error after a while. Maybe because of the short length of the clips and the shared access? I'm trying now with different media pools.

Any help appreciated!

Cheers, Antony.

[jasonphos]

Antony,

Your multiple monitors project sounds very similar to what I am trying to do: Display vlc media player in full-screen mode on three different monitors. Btw, one possible solution to your question about how to launch each player to a targeted screen is to use the ultramon program from realtimesoft. I think this might achieve what you want.

Anyways, you posted over a month and a half ago, so you may have made a lot of progress since then. How did it go?

I'm currently in the research stage for my project, and I haven't even bought any extra monitors nor the proper video cards.

I'm very interested to hear your experience. You can email me at jasyromy [(at the address of)] pobox (dot) com.


What I want to do: Start 3 instances of vlc media player programatically, and have them appear on three monitors. Then, once they are going, adjust the playlist as needed using the ActiveX APIs. This documentation is found here:

http://wiki.videolan.org/ActiveX_Controls
http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/browser/tr ... README.TXT

Depending upon my application's need, I may need to stop play, skip ahead to another item in the playlist, or even cause vlc media player to quit. I'll use the Activex controls to do this.

Now, the only problem facing me right now concerns the viability of three full-screen instances of vlc media player on three different monitors. I have to find out if vlc will even work like this, or will their be some problem, perhaps graphics card or otherwise? Also, I have to figure out the problem you were asking - how to cause the 3 instances to load on three different monitors, but I'm hopeful that if I can't figure out a way to do it, that ultramon will do it. As far as I can tell, it will do it, the only question I have right now is whether it can do it in conjunction with the activex controls....