Subtitle Skin

[Magicjax]

Hello everyone.

This is my first post here. I found this forum because I've been using the VLC player for some time now. Mainly because I'm deaf and this player is great for watching videos with subtitles.

Please bare with me a moment while I explain why I found this forum and making this post.

As I said, I'm deaf. I was annoyed at seeing friends and family able to watch movies and TV shows on line but I couldn't because not many have subtitles. So instead of whining about it I decided to do something about it. I can now pretty much watch any online video with subtitles thanks to VLC player and some other programs and methods. I have an idea for a way to make it possible to watch even more online video with subtitles and help out others who need them for a variety of reasons (Deaf, different languages, bad sound in video, broken speakers, etc...). So that's why I'm here.

I've never made a skin for the VLC player before. I am a graphic designer so I have experience on that end. But I'm just now looking into the possibility of this VLC player along with the Skin editor as a possible solution to my project.

My goal is to create or find a VLC skin that's specifically designed for watching online video with subtitles. So I'm here for two reasons. First, to see if any already exist. Secondly to see if any of you have any advice or suggestions as to how to go about accomplishing what I'm hoping to be able to do.

Now before anyone mentions the fact that you can just download videos and open them in VLC player and open the subtitles with them. That's true and I do that a lot. But it's not always possible to do that. Sometimes you can't download the video (I'm sure serious hackers could but not everyone who needs subtitles has that knowledge and my goal for this is to help those who need it).

OK, here's the project. I created a 4 hour long video of nothing but a thin black image. The reason for this is that the VLC player will not play subtitles by themselves. There must first be a video playing for it to play a subtitles file. So this video of a thin black image is the background video for the subtitles to play on.

Now imagine you are watching a video that's streaming on a web page. I can open the VLC player with the thin black image video and play subtitles on that video. Then position the "Subtitle player" under the streaming video.

What I need is a blank, or rather a transparent skin. Is this possible?

This is the purpose I'm hoping to find or create a skin to be made for.

I also noticed that you can create a "Play list" skin. Is it possible to "Subtitle play list" as well? In other words I have a folder on my desk top full of subtitle files and the "Subtitle play list" will list all these subtitles.

It would also be great if it was possible to do what the Nalsoft player can do about showing the subtitles through a video. Watch the below video to see what I mean by that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1OUz5CgK1E

I haven't started on this project yet. I just downloaded the skin editor a few hours ago and I'm reading about how to use it. So I thought I'd come here and see if anyone has any advice or tips that might be helpful on this project.

Thanks for any help you can provide. This will help a lot of people. There are a lot of issues today among the deaf about the lack of close captioning on the internet. So I'm just trying to find solutions.

Ron