The VideoLAN Forums

The transport control keyboard commands don't work if the controller window is the top window on the Mac version of VLC. I'd call this a UI bug.

"transport keys" ????

I mean transport keyboard shortcuts such as command-shift-right arrow to skip ahead 1 minute, those type of key commands. I don't known if it's different in the video world, but in the audio world the term transport means the functions related to time position such as fast forward, rewind, play and stop. So in VLC when the video window is on top then you can use the skip forward 1 minute or skip back 1 minute keyboard commands, but when the controller window is on top these keyboard commands no longer work, at least in the Mac version of VLC, but I imagine it would be the same in the other platform versions as well. In the menu system the functions I'm talking about are under Playback > Step Forward or Step back.

Ah, this is because those hotkeys are not part of the menu.
Only key commands that are shown in the Apple menu work troughout the entire application. The others require a video window to be at the top.

Is there a way to change that behavior? I've never heard of a program that worked like that before, it seems very illogical and inconsistent.

Unfortunately not. The problem is that normally in OSX, to use a hotkey globally, it NEEDS to be in the menu, and it seems unlogical to me to add all 50 hotkeys without menu entries into the menu. It would become bloated as hell. I agree it's not as you might expect, but other video players like xine and mplayer have similiar behaviour, and at the moment I just don't see another solution programmatically

The skip forward / back 10 second key commands (command-option-arrow keys) work no matter which window is on top, so couldn't the skip forward / back 1 minute command be implemented the same way? Also, I don't really know what you mean when you say "in the menu." Whether the video or controller is on top I still see Playback > Step Forward / back in the toolbar menu.

P.S. While looking for a way to solve this problem I just discovered that there's a skip forward / back by 5 minute key command also. VLC is so cool.

There must be a way to add a keyboard shortcut without it having to be a menu option because there are lots of other programs that do it. Even the Finder does it. For instance in the finder if you do command-shift-3 it takes a screenshot, but there is no corresponding menu command for it. So there must be a simple way to do it. I'm not a programmer, so I don't know how, but perhaps there is a mac programing forum where you could ask and find out. Thanks.