The VideoLAN Forums

I find that I transcribe many phone conversations I have recorded and play back with VLC media player. I am constantly having to reach to my mouse to pause to type, and then reach for my mouse again to play. Surely there is a better way to do this.

I am aware of the space bar hot key, but the problem with that is having to switch active windows between my text document and the VLC window (which I know I can do ALT+TAB, but I find that inconvenient and would prefer to eliminate that step).

Is there a way I could rig up a foot switch to control pause and play?

Or any other way?

You can configure a global hotkey in the preferences.

I carefully followed the instructions here: http://wiki.videolan.org/How_to_set_global_hotkeys and could not get it to work.

Actually, I got it to work once by assigning my desired key (backtick) to both the Hotkey and Global columns at the same time - but it only worked when the VLC window was active. And, after making a change then going back to what I did as explained in the previous sentence, I could not re-create that behaviour.

Any ideas as to what's wrong? I'm using v1.1.7

You need to save and restart VLC, and you should not assign the key as non-global (though I don't think it matters).

Note that you cannot assign a key that is already grabbed by another application (as media keys often are).

I did save and restart VLC after each change.

Note that you cannot assign a key that is already grabbed by another application (as media keys often are).

I'm not familiar with the term "media key." I attempted to look up the definition and could find none. Please tell me what a media key is. Is the backtick a media key?

Thank you.

I've just spent half a morning playing with this problem, and am so delighted to have found the answer that I've joined the forum just to add my two pennyworth.
It seems to me there are two steps you have to get right. One is that every single time you make a change to the settings you must restart VLC. If you are doing a lot of trial and error you can forget one time to restart it again - and maybe then miss the one time you actually ticked all the right boxes.
But you said you had done that. So had I. But what made the difference for me was the other bit of advice that the previous poster mentioned but thought " probably didn't make any difference". Actually it was ( for me anyway) what made all the difference. Simply, you have to assign your new shortcut key in the "global" column, but you must remove the corresponding entry under the "hotkey" column (immediately to the left). So now it looks like it is unassigned as a hotkey but assigned as a "global". What ever that means I don't know, but it works.
(Prior to making that change, I had precisely the problem that the new shortcut keys worked when the VLC window was active, but as soon as I clicked in to type some text in a document they were disactivated. Result - time consuming constant swapping and losing your place in the document if transcribing audio.)
For reference I am running OpenOffice writer and VLC on Linux( Uberstudent), and I can now listen to an audio recording with a text document open, and stop and start, back track and slow down by pressing short-cut keys, but without having to quit the active text window. This speeds up the process of transcribing audio unbelievably.
N.B. There are still keys that it won't let you assign as shortcuts, so you just have to opt for ones it will accept.
BTW, I think "media keys" means those extra keys on your keyboard that are labelled as if they are supposed to do all the stopping and starting, but actually don't work.

"but you must remove the corresponding entry under the "hotkey" column (immediately to the left)"

I cannot see how to remove a hotkey setting from lh (local) hotkey column, I can see how to change it, but to remove it.

i can trick the program by a circuitous route - assign a key that's in use elsewhere, then go to "elsewhrere" & assign that key back again - that generates an "unset " in the other field.

I'd much rather have a way of forcing VLC to retain focus when it is actyivelt playing an audio file , is there still no way to do that.

It gets focus initially, but if, say, I go into windows explorer - WHILE THAT FILE IS PLAYING - & click on a different audio file, VLC begins to play the new file but leaves focus in the explorer window

"but you must remove the corresponding entry under the "hotkey" column (immediately to the left)"

I cannot see how to remove a hotkey setting from lh (local) hotkey column, I can see how to change it, but to remove it.

i can trick the program by a circuitous route - assign a key that's in use elsewhere, then go to "elsewhrere" & assign that key back again - that generates an "unset " in the other field.

I had that problem too. Just figured out that trying to set it to num lock or something else it doesn't recognize works for setting it to "Unset".

Wish there was a way to get VLC to see the number pad numbers as distinct from the normal ones. I can't even remember whether keyboards themselves are capable of making that distinction, though.

quote"Wish there was a way to get VLC to see the number pad numbers as distinct from the normal ones. I can't even remember whether keyboards themselves are capable of making that distinction, though."

keyboards DO generate different codes for numbers entered via number pad , other apps can pick up on the differences & use terminology like pad1 pad2.... to help you configure

Ah! I THOUGHT I remembered something like that.

The question is how could you use that with VLC...

Because if you're using a keyboard with a numpad, that'd be prime place to put one-button hotkeys.

Hm, I assume AutoHotKey can see the difference between 'normal' 1 and numpad 1, so I guess you could set an awkward multi-key global hotkey in VLC's preferences, and then get AHK to output that key combination when you hit a certain single numpad key.

And then you could even set up a simple way to toggle that AHK script on and off.

i use vlc with a remote control + intelliremote software. the intelliremote program lets me assign any key to any button on my remote, & it distinguishes 1 2 3 .. from numpad numpad 2.. etc. then I tweak VLC hot keys to get the layout I want.

the most annoying feature of VLC is this scenario is that it has so many ways of losing focus yet continuing to play in background, so regaining control with the remote is a nightmare. I have to have windows next/prev task keys assigned & working for when VLC is not in focus & cycle thru them to get it back.

my cyberlink remotes have a numpad secion but the 0 thru 9 buttons can't be reprogrammed, so I make use of 0 thu 9 in various VLC hotkey settings

e.g. I mostly map the number pad to speed changes: 1 = slower (fine) i.e. 10% less, 2 = normal, 3 = faster, 5 = frame by frame & I map arrow keys to skip & to in/out of full screen.

but it is true that VLC does not distinguish numbers above querty keys from numpad numbers. both have same hot key effect.

I aint gonna be buying any extra hardware anytime soon myself, but that remote setup DOES sound neat.

Anyway, I got the AHK thing working. I'll put it here for the benefit of future me-like searchers.

Here's the AHK script code:
(! is alt, ^ is ctrl
the way it phrases things is:
[this thing]::send [causes this]
)

And unfortunately I can't find a way to export VLC hotkey preference settings, but that's global hotkeys:
So you end up with a setup where it's easy to remember what key does what, and easy for your fingers to find that key when you want it.

<<<____/p\____>>>

_<<___________>>_

__<____ \n/____>___

[pause/play]

Kind of mental spatial mnemonic grid thingy.

And if you got two keyboards or are using dictation software with headphones, you can put keyboard on the floor and hit the key with your toe as a foot pedal. XD