Styling the VLC Video Embed

[VidjaMind]

Is it possible to style around the video screen in a web embed?

Like overlay web objects (images) over the video embed, or make the video screen a circle instead of the default square?

I'm also wondering if there's a way to detect whether the user has vlc installed or not, and if not show a flash video or something. I know it's possible with javascript - but just not exactly what variable to poll for.

[ams.fwd]

I am not certain if you can overlay HTML on the embed in a cross-browser compatible way. I believe it has to do with how the embedded object renders the content. You could set the embed to a negative z-index in css and see if it works. I am quite certain it will not work on IE.

Re: detecting vlc being installed or not, here's some javascript that I use:

Code: Select all

isVLCInstalled: function() { var name = "VLC"; if (navigator.plugins && (navigator.plugins.length > 0)) { for(var i=0;i<navigator.plugins.length;++i) if (navigator.plugins[i].name.indexOf(name) != -1) return true; } else { try { new ActiveXObject("VideoLAN.VLCPlugin.2"); return true; } catch (err) {} } return false; }

HTH
AM

[Ilasir]

It is possible to overlay html in FF, but not IE or GC.

[cctvcam]

Can you give an example of doing this in FF, as I could not get this to work using the z-Index.

[holophrastic]

Do yourself a favour, stop trying. About three weeks ago, I was building a beautiful kiosk application. It's video-centric, and plays 15 videos at once in an interactive manner. I, of course, turned to my trusted VLC to do the job. I found the fullscreen bug, then the fact that it didn't do windowless mode as you are. I accepted these as limitations, and altered my design to account for them. But I continued to find bug after bug along the way. A week later, I decided to switch to another video player. It's not as good in terms of video support, but installing 50 codecs solved that problem. The documentation is way better and the bugs are far fewer.

I guess all Im saying is that you should continue to test the other parts of your application with VLC, to ensure that it can handle the other things you intend for it to do. My bet is that it cannot -- which I find unfortunate.

But hey, I rewrote my application to be able to use vlc again, the day it actually works. We'll see how long that is.

[Ilasir]

You give the vlc object a negative z-index, and firefox will display divs and other html elements over it. However, since this is not compatible with other browsers, I recommend against it.