Remember position

[ziporpor]

Here's my method to overcome this issue:

When arriving to the point were you want to pause, click "Playback -> Custom Bookmarks -> Manage" in the top menu row
In the "Edit Bookmarks" window, press on "Create" and then on "Close".
Now, click on "Media" in the top menu row and then on "Save Playlist To File..."
In the "Save Playlist As..." window, choose a location and a name to your file and press "Save".

Now you can close the player and go to your business.

Whenever you want to continue from the spot you left, just open the playlist file with the player, go to "Playback -> Custom Bookmarks" in the top menu row and choose the spot from which you want to continue...


Hope I helped...

[Shambler0]

Bookmarks are great, but they are pretty much inconvenient: how many times have you forgotten to bookmark the position?
So a dedicated feature would really be appreciated.


I suggest a quick way to do this:

Remember last URL and last position on exiting.
If player is started with empty command line (or by opening same file), open that last played file and restore the position.
Whenever user opens any other file, forget the position.
A user is responsible for modifying the video themself. Not many sane people would do that anyway.

For DVDs it is best to just remember DVD-label this way, 95% that it will be enough. A hash of that + file-date + file-size is a 99.99% file identification.
or you may just disable the feature for DVDs by default and warn users of possible confusion when they try to enable it.

As for playlists, you probably should store a playlist URL also; if user tries to play last playlist, set its current position to match saved song's URL; forget everything otherwise.


The other way is harder, but nicer:

A bookmark would be added to a file being played whenever the player is closed (and playback position is not zero), and such a bookmark is deleted when affected file finishes playing. Such bookmark would be auto-used when its file is loaded (except when a playlist is being played AND last file in that playlist has just finished playing -- to prevent confusion).

DVDs should probably be bookmarked based on dvd-labels and track# instead of file URLs. This includes normal bookmarks, if it is not done this way already.

I am not sure, how VLC handles bookmarks in playlists, if any; you should just decide how to implement it based on how would it be easier to do so.


But anyway, at least ANY support of this feature would be nice.

[darthclide]

I don't know if there is a request already for this, but I have been waiting for a long time for this feature to be implemented. I keep holding out hope that they will do this because like a few others said, even the most simplest form would be a line of code that says "put time-position" into a txt file or some other location. When you open up the file it automatically goes to that position.. I guess I am just confused on why it isn't a popular enough feature to be implemented... I for one, listen to whole sets of classical music that have 100+ tracks, and it is frustrating to "lose" my position on exit... It is nearly impossible to find out where I left off.

[scientificswede]

I wrote a plugin that does exactly this. The one annoying thing with it is that you have to manually activate it from the menu every time you start VLC. I also couldn't login to the Extensions site for some reason so here's the link to my blog where it's posted:

http://scientificswede.blogspot.se/2012 ... h-lua.html

[mederi]

Amazing extension! Thank you very much.
Scientificswede, could you please start a new topic, for example "VLC Extension: Remember position", in Scripting VLC in lua section, so we can discuss the script there? Thanks.

[Dirkk]

Do you have each time to activate the option to let VLC automatically remember the position? After activating the option and closing VLC "Remember Position" is unchecked.

So VLC does not automatically jump to the position automatically when starting it? You have to check "Remember Position" each time?

[blyst]

Maybe the author himself will advise on this but my observation is that 'remember position' must be checked PRIOR to closing a file (or VLC). Then, later, when the file is re-opened, checking 'remember position' will make the file jump to its previous closing position.

- forgot to say a big 'thank you' to scientificswede for this. Apart from the minor inconvenience that the option has to be rechecked each time, it works really well!

[Dirkk]

OK, many thanks.

Do you mean to say "thank you" or not to say it?

[captivedev]

Here's my method to overcome this issue:

When arriving to the point were you want to pause, click "Playback -> Custom Bookmarks -> Manage" in the top menu row
In the "Edit Bookmarks" window, press on "Create" and then on "Close".
Now, click on "Media" in the top menu row and then on "Save Playlist To File..."
In the "Save Playlist As..." window, choose a location and a name to your file and press "Save".

Now you can close the player and go to your business.

Whenever you want to continue from the spot you left, just open the playlist file with the player, go to "Playback -> Custom Bookmarks" in the top menu row and choose the spot from which you want to continue...


Hope I helped...

I have version 2.01 installed on my Mac and I cannot seem to find the menu of "Custom Bookmarks" underneath "Playback". Where would I find this feature?

[captivedev]

I wrote a plugin that does exactly this. The one annoying thing with it is that you have to manually activate it from the menu every time you start VLC. I also couldn't login to the Extensions site for some reason so here's the link to my blog where it's posted:

http://scientificswede.blogspot.se/2012 ... h-lua.html

How would this be installed on the Mac version of VLC?

[mederi]

Installation: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=101881#p343775
Usage:

... The one annoying thing with it is that you have to manually activate it from the menu every time you start VLC. ...

If you activate this extension, it will start to remember filenames and actual time positions of played multimedia files in "pos.txt" file. If you play the remembered multimedia file next time, it will jump to remembered time position.

[johncage]

hey, i am not sure why an extension is necessary for this.
except for the management of bookmarks, the internal system works fine... the only annoying thing is that you can only create one bookmark, the second overwrites first one (sometimes ) i already managed to have even three bookmarks for one file after restarting vlc, but i think that was by accident actually... i have not been able to reproduce this case since then.

by the way:
thank you vlc team: with v2.0.2 direct x audio output for me is controllable again!
donation is on its way!

[Magalaan]

This feature should be implemented by default. How hard can it be? We do not want it to be perfect. Just automatically remember last play position and jump to it on start. If it remembers full path and time that should be enough, Never mind relocated files or same path files on external media.

I think VLC is great program, but this is a show stopper for me. Having such extensive settings, I could not believe this feature was missing, so I searched Internet and came here. Alas.

But no offense the program is great for what it does do, sadly it does not do enough for practical purposes. But thanks for the effort.

[negativeions]

I totally agree. Here's a clue: Just do it! MplayerX does it? How hard is it? Have a god damn check box in the options or whatever for remember last playing position or whatever you want to call it and that's it... a monkey could program it in 5 minutes. Jesus God Damn Christ.

[vanderson]

A while ago I found the lua plugin by Scientificswede. The annoyance of how lua scripts have to be activated (by checkbox every time you open VLC) inspired me to make a bash script (linux only) to add this functionality to VLC.

I added it to the the "contribute & help VLC" forum here:
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=103066

link to script on github: (linux only, includes setup instructions for ubuntu/linux mint users)
https://github.com/vaughnanderson/VLC-R ... _resume.sh

Maybe the core VLC team will add this feature some day?

Scientificswede's lua code is much cleaner than mine (I pretty much slapped it together) but it works seemlessly... Maybe the ideal situation is for VLC to auto start Lua plugins?

[calande]

DVBViewer has this functionality. I'd love to see this in VLC too! Thanks.

[cygnusx-1]

Not implemented yet?
I want this feature too!

[PesoMemo]

In addition to remembering the file and position in the file, it should also remember all of the other pertinent settings that were changed whilst watching - like window size and position, volume, subtitle files, subtitle and audio delay settings, etc. - so you don't have to repeat them all again on restart. Not sure if all of these settings are in one easy to access spot or not, but should or could be made to be.

[PesoMemo]

In addition to remembering the file and position in the file, it should also remember all of the other pertinent settings that were changed whilst watching - like window size and position, volume, subtitle files, subtitle and audio delay settings, etc. - so you don't have to repeat them all again on restart. Not sure if all of these settings are in one easy to access spot or not, but should or could be made to be.

I would do it like most programs that have a media history. Say the last 8 (or more) items that you watch will all have their settings remembered and then cycle off the list when new stuff is added/watched that exceeds your max history. Each time you hit stop or exit VLC, the settings would get saved for this video. Maybe use an .ini file similar to the vlcrc file to store the history settings.

[file/url]
time/position
any settings that have changed from default: sub-delay, audio-delay, brightness, contrast, window pos, fullscreen, etc
...

If the file/url isn't in the history, then play as normal, else make the changes specified in this history file.
This way you get the exact environment you left off from from your previous viewing - much nicer than
having to set it all back up again.

[meathook]

Please add this simple feature.

[ZeroZero]

Could someone please walk me thruogh how to set up this script in Win 7 64 please. I have no idea at all but the Swede states it is possible (but does not explain how

[tate1]

Come on people at VLC! This is an important feature on a media player.
The only reason why I don't use regularly anymore is because it's missing in it!

[blyst]

Zerozero, here's a rough guide. I'm not sure if there's enough detail here for you.

Navigate your way to

C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\lua

In the lua folder make a new folder (shift-ctrl N) and name it 'extensions'

Open a new text file and copy Swede's text into it. Save the text file in your newly established 'extensions' folder naming it 'mempos.lua' (in other words, the file must be saved with the .lua extension, NOT the .txt extension)

Let me know if/where you get stuck and I'll try and add more detail.

[ZeroZero]

Hello blyst thanks for trying, unfortunately does not work here WIn 7 64 bit. I saved the file as a mempos.lua extension, restarted the player - nothing in the view menu expcept the regular stuff. File is in C/program files x86/VideoLan/extensions folder. I also put a copy of this folder in .....VideoLan/VLC to see if this would work - no joy.

[blyst]

ok - well, I won't give up on you just yet! And by the way, I'm using this myself on win7-64.

If what you've written above is, in fact, what you've done then you've put the extensions folder in the wrong place - you need to go 2 levels deeper to:-

C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\lua

(you could copy the above and paste it directly into explorer's address bar - that'll take you straight there)

try that and report back