The VideoLAN Forums

I am running version 0.9.4 on a windows xp machine.
I used to be able (in an older version of VLC ) to run video in fullscreen transparent mode. It may be wierd, but many times I really enjoyed watching videos fullscreen while I was reading the tesla motors blog or checking my e-mail. I just got the latest version of VLC and I cannot for the life of me find this function. I don't expect that it was an option that VLC simply dropped. Can anyone help me set up this feature or explain what happened to it? It used to be as simple as selecting it from a right-click menu on the video I was watching, now I can't seem to find that feature anywhere in the VLC player. To me it was really one of the best features a video player can have. That and being able to adjust the speed at which the video played while keeping the audio normalized. This feature seemed to only work with certain video types, and was also great.

Thanks,

Jeremy

You mean Wallpaper mode?

The mode I'm talking about is similar to wallpaper mode, except that when I open up another window, such as firefox, I can see both, as in the VLC video is running semi-transparent over whatever else I'm doing. Thus I can read blogs, check my e-mail, etc, while watching my favorite shows, in the same screen space.

Have you set transparency on VLC?

I'd very much like to be able to do that as well... very happy to see that VLC may be able to do it! I just grabbed the latest version and even tried an older version I had on my system, but wasn't able to find the Transparency function anywhere.

Wallpaper mode is nice in that it fills the whole screen and lets you view the icons on your desktop still, but when you have a window open, you see that and not what is behind the window. If Transparency worked with VLC, then you would be able to see the video sort of bleeding through your email program, web browser or whatever else you were working on. If VLC could do this, that would be awesome!

If not, I found this page that might help, but I'm not a programmer. "Transparent Desktop Video"
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-vid ... Video.aspx
Any help making this work in VLC or with the above code would be very welcome...
Thanks, John

Kick this thread up tomorrow. I try if I can add this.

I can't get this to work correctly. I tried with WS_EX_LAYERED, WS_EX_LAYERED+WS_EX_TRANSPARENT, WS_EX_LAYERED+WS_EX_TRANSPARENT+SetLayeredWindowAttributes, WS_EX_LAYERED+SetLayeredWindowAttributes and WS_EX_TRANSPARENT+SetLayeredWindowAttributes.

Perhaps this helps enabling transparency at least partial:

in tools->preferences:

- Show settings: All
- Interface->Main Interfaces->Qt->Windows opacity between 0.1 and 1 (set value smaller than 1)
- Video->Always on top (enable)

Save and restart VLC

It's working with Qt-Interface for video-output, as long as your are not in fullscreen-mode. Questions that remain open:
- how to enable opaqueness for fullscreen-mode (not working with above preferences, how can it be enabled?) and
- how to pass mouse-actions right through the vlc-window to other programs (mouse actions are always interpreted by vlc if on top is enabled and a video is playing)

In my case I cannot set the video as transparent. GUI and windows decoration I can get to transparent. Also there are some drawing glitches.

how to pass mouse-actions right through the vlc-window to other programs (mouse actions are always interpreted by vlc if on top is enabled and a video is playing)

WS_EX_LAYERED+WS_EX_TRANSPARENT should make it like that. But I don't know how the QT4 handles the transparency.