The VideoLAN Forums

Hiya,

Just a quick question about foot pedal support for VLC Player: do you anticipate adding this function in? If so, do you know when?

My reasons for asking are:

(1) I personally use a footpedal to transcribe and content analyse audio, and currently do so with Express Scribe software. This software allows for a USB footpedal to be mapped to what would otherwise be hot-key commands allowing for more efficient and faster transcribing. From time to time I also have to work with video and would greatly appreciate this function on a video player (yours to be precise).

(2) There appears to be demand for such a function, although it is hard to say how much:

- this issue has been raised in your forums as long ago as October 2004
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5198&p=16332&hilit= ... dal#p16287
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=102713

- there is third-party software (including malware distributers) which offer plug-ins for footpedal support
http://www.pcdictate.com/VLC_Media_Play ... /vlcfp.htm

I actually tried installing this programme and, after installing the plug-in, also wanted to instal VLC player version 1.something - i.e.a version that was far from new. I suspect this is malware and there are other sites offering foot pedal support which Chrome blocks for this reason. The PC Dictate site, if we just assume that it is actually legit, is selling this plugin for US$50 (reduced from $100!).

I don't know about other people but I would use a VLC foot pedal plugin very useful and would happily pay a reasonable price for it - after all there is no other means that I can find of controlling video playback with other "human interface devices" (as Windows puts it) other than the usual keyboard and mouse.

Yes, I have looked for Girder, however I cannot seem to find the plugin for VLC and a lot of the sites that come up in searches look pretty dodgy.

Overall, if I'm prepared to pay $30 to the makers of Express Scribe to get the foot pedal functionality, I'd happily pay something up to this price for the same functionality to make VLC a video transcribing platform for when I need this. Personally I use video transcribing a lot less than audio transcribing so wouldn't want to pay more than this amount.

Feedback / comments much appreciated.

Many thanks,

Stephen

The issue about footpedal is that there are no standard for those. If you can program yours, then it is easy to setup. Else, I don't know that to do.

Hi Jean-Baptiste,

Thanks for your reply.

There may be no standard but it can be done otherwise Express Scribe wouldn't have had a selling point for their Pro versions all these years (foot pedals can only be used in the Pro version).

They even invite pedal manufacturers to write their own drivers in support of the manufacturer's own pedals. Given VLC's status as probably the video player of choice on the net is this something that you could do in collaboration with pedal manufacturers?
http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/pedals.html

Also, what do you mean by 'if you can program yours, it is easy to set up''? Is there a way of setting up USB controllers on Windows to substitute controller function for hotkeys, like in VLC? Or more of a hint that I should take up the programming game (I've only just scratched the surface of Python, so it will be decades before my own foot pedal patch gets its stable release)

Many thanks,

Stephen

Hi again,

I've been looking again and have found some software which can map foot pedal use to key commands. Such programmes include Pedalware (http://www.altoedge.com/pedalware/index.html) and Pedable which are both freeware by the makers of Express Scribe, who seem to be in foot pedal nirvana.

The one important problem is that this maps keystrokes for use in all programmes running on the system rather to a specific programme - so I still have to fiddle with switching programmes to and from the video player to operate basic features. Having foot pedal command 'exclusivity' is a neat feature of Express Scribe which uses exactly the same programme as a component but only for control of recording playback in ES.

Would it be possible to take something like Pedalware and adapt it to function only in VLC, rather than system-wide?

Thanks,

Stephen

I have posted a working solution here:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=117627