Using VLC for a Movie Theater

[techguy]

Hello everyone!

I've spent the last couple of hours searching and reading about vlc options and features, mostly here on this forum. I've been using vlc for several years on various platforms.

To save your time and mine here's what I'm trying to do. I'm using VLC with playlists to orchestrate a movie theater experience. I put together small clips for each movie trailer, short (< 10 second) clips to fade in and out "Upcoming Attractions", "...and now our Featured Presentation" clips, all in playlists.

I've got the whole thing well automated, but can't figure out how to keep the full screen (I use minimize and full screen modes) blank / black between clips or as vlc switches from one playlist item to the next. I either get a flash of the playlist or the desktop or progress bar (actually I think I have eliminated that with a couple of recent interface option tweaks) or something, though it's only a "flash" it looks bad and detracts from the movie theater experience. It just doesn't look smooth and professional.

Right now I'm using a Windows 7 system but may switch to a linux platform in the future, depending on if I can find an open source video editor (like Openshot) that meets my needs.

I use a few short CMD scripts and VLC to play music from a randomized playlist while a powerpoint slideshow runs to display pictures and advertisements before the lights drop. When I'm ready to stop the slideshow and start the previews I hit esc which kills the vlc playing the music and the powerpoint slideshow, then starts vlc with the series of previews (movie trailers) and the feature movie.

I'm not as concerned about the screen state as the slideshow / music stops and the previews begin as I am while the playlist items are being played. The issue is keeping the screen dark between playlist items.

If anyone has suggestions on how to do that, what settings / options to use or how a lua script could run a playlist while keeping the screen black between each video I'd love to hear from you.

I'm a pretty savvy tech guy / programer so all suggestions are welcomed. Easiest is often the most elegant tho, in my experience.

[mederi]

If you use videos of the same resolution then the interface is not reinitialised between playlist items in fullscreen mode. Lua script cannot help you.

[techguy]

I don't think that's correct. I get a flash (basically the video window seems to go away, thus revealing the playlist and desktop) between every video, and out of 30 transitions some of them are the same exact resolution.

Plus, if what you say is true it would be a pain to reformat all of the segments, many of them movie trailers, to be the same format when I just want an blank, full size video window between playlist items.

Shame the lua interface doesn't provide a means of forcing the display to a static default image.

I seem to recall in the preferences an option to change the default image, which is the orange cone. I wonder if that were set to a black screen of my native 1280 x 800 resolution if that would solve the problem?

[roland1]

Here, vlc 2.1.4 (Ubuntu 14.04), no flash occurs. Maybe sth like this works better:

Code: Select all

cvlc --fullscreen file1 file2 ...

However, I suggest You give xbmc a try.

[techguy]

roland1, Not sure what you mean by "Maybe sth...", and did you mistype vlc or does linu use cvlc for command line instead of vlc? Haven't used vlc from command line on linux yet. I just posted a similar thread in the xbmc forum, thanks for suggesting xbmc.

I already use the --fullscreen & --minimize options also, as I originally posted.

I read up on the Qt interface options and see you can't provide a default image, only enable or disable the cone.

[roland1]

"sth" == "something" and cvlc is sth like vlc without gui, there is no (playlist or similar) widget to flash. Afaik, cvlc lives in the same directory as vlc.

[techguy]

OK, got it.

I figured out how to eliminate the flash, and that's by selecting the prefs->all->video and checking the "Embedded video" option. If it's checked I don't get the flash and if not checked I do get it. It unfortunately has the side affect that when the script starts the last vlc instance to play the previews and feature, the taskbar unhides itself with the vlc cone to represent the running instance (even tho the prefs are set for minimal interface and hide in systray.

Also I had to remove all command line switches and save those options in the preferences as that seemed to also cause the flash to occur.