The VideoLAN Forums

I'm trying to find a script or get help writing a script that will play random parts of movies in 5 minute clips on rotation. I presently have the command line opening a playlist in full screen on startup. Can I do the random clips directly in the command line? Or so I need to extend VLC to do so? I can't find any good beginner documentation or examples of LUA so I don't know if it's even possible. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Can I do the random clips directly in the command line?

It should work if you add files to playlist and use random

What I'm going for is the ability to set the start point to a random position in the timeline and play 5 minutes of video from there, then move on to the next file repeating the same behavior. It's kind of like creating a slideshow of movie clips. I don't want to show whole movies in the playlist, just random clips.

You have to get the random time from somewhere, VLC cannot provide one. After that

--start-time=<float> Start time
The stream will start at this position (in seconds).
--stop-time=<float> Stop time
The stream will stop at this position (in seconds).
--run-time=<float> Run time
The stream will run this duration (in seconds).

those should do the trick.

Very cool indeed. Thanks! I'm not sure how to get variables in the command line to make the start time random though. Any suggestions? Should I use LUA (and if so how do I learn LUA)?

You can use some kind of .bat magic http://www.jameskoopmann.com/?p=16