Hey VLC dev people,
I keep on running into the same problem while traveling... I can't watch enough avi's as my battery power runs out far to quickly. I am pretty sure from watching the hard disk activity that most of the power loss is due to the disk being permantly in use (or a flick of activity every second).
I propose that VLC comes with a travel mode option that will automaticly perform the following when run on a machine that is not connected directly to mains power.
1. Creates a ram drive
2. Copies entire file into the Ram Drive
3. Only when a new item is played or the system goes to sleep/hibernate does the Ram Drive get cleaned.
I expect by doing this that I will only have 1 app running and it will only need to have power to memory when playback is active. Thus my laptop can turn off the hard disk entirly. I would expect to get at least 15% more life out of my battery when traveling (ball park estimentation).