Autolaunch Fullscreen VLC Player in OSX
I had a need to set up a computer (running OSX 10.8.3 Mountain Lion) as an automated fullscreen video player for an art exhibition. I made a simple AppleScript application to automatically launch VLC fullscreen and run a looping video. Here’s the code:
Devices and Mac OS X version. VLC media player requires Mac OS X 10.7.5 or later. It runs on any Mac with a 64-bit Intel processor or an Apple Silicon chip. Previous devices are supported by older releases. Note that the first generation of Intel-based Macs equipped with Core Solo or Core Duo processors is no longer supported. Load VLC with a skin. (Linux and Windows only) macosx: Default Mac OS X interface. Minimalmacosx: Minimal Mac OS X interface. Beos: Default BeOS interface. Http: Web Interface, used for controlling VLC from over a network. Gestures: Mouse Gestures, where you can control VLC by moving the mouse rc, ncurses, telnet: Console Interfaces, non. About VLC Player for Mac VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, avi) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. Right click or ctrl+click on the media file Open with VLC The file opened just fine. To open ALL files by that type: Use the Get Info option. (in the picture) From there you can select. Change all to use VLC with all files of this type. I hope this is useful to you in solving your issue. VLC media player is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays most multimedia files as well as discs, devices, and network streaming.
2 | #this runs at startup via the Login Items on the default acct, which should be set to auto-login. Use Energy Saver's scheduling option to set a start/wake time doshell script'/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC /path/to/your/video-file.mov --fullscreen' |
Open a new doc in AppleScript Editor, and paste in the code above. Note:
- your copy of the VLC app may be in a place other than /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC
- change /path/to/your/video-file.mov to the actual file path of the video you’d like to autolaunch.
To export as an application, choose File->Export and set the File Format to Application. Save to wherever you like. To autolaunch on startup, go to System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Login Items and add your app.
BONUS You may also want to have the machine automatically shut down (at night for instance), then reboot in the morning. Evernote bullet journal template. You can usually set this up by using a simple cron command that will shut down the machine at a given time, and/or OSX’s built-in Energy Saver Schedule (under System Prefs -> Energy Saver -> Schedule… ).
Trouble is, VLC seems to override the automatic shutdown methods, so in order to shut down properly, we need to tell VLC to stop playing and quit before shutting down/rebooting. Here’s how to do that:
2 4 6 8 10 12 | tell application'VLC'toquit #quit all running apps, VLC included tell application'System Events'toset quitapps toname of every application process whose visible istrueandname isnot'Finder' repeat with closeall inquitapps endrepeat #now it should be easy to shut down the machine #do shell script '/sbin/shutdown -h now' |
Save out as an Applescript, and you’re good. In my setup I used the system’s cron schedule to run the above VLC shutoff script, then one minute later shutdown the machine. To do this, in Terminal issue the command:
Then set the timing of your script & shutoff command like so:
Full list
Besides the above main interfaces, VLC contains many more:
| qt | Current (>=0.9.0) default Qt4 interface on Linux and Windows. |
| wx | Previous (<0.9.0) default wxWidgets interface on Linux and Windows. |
| skins2 | Load VLC with a skin. (Linux and Windows only) |
| macosx | Default Mac OS X interface. |
| minimal_macosx | Minimal Mac OS X interface. |
| beos | Default BeOS interface. |
| http | Web Interface, used for controlling VLC from over a network. |
| gestures | Mouse Gestures, where you can control VLC by moving the mouse |
| rc, ncurses, telnet | Console Interfaces, non-graphical interfaces. |
| showintf | Show interfaces module. |
| hotkeys and joystick | Control VLC with the keyboard/joystick (see HotKeys). |
| dummy | Don't use an interface (HotKeys still available). |
Listing the available interfaces
To get a list of available interfaces, running VLC with the -l option:
This also displays the muxers and encoders/decoders and puts it in a file called vlc-help.txt. On Linux, run
to display the interfaces.
Using an interface
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To run VLC with a different primary interface, use the following command:
You can also use
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You can also change the default in the Preferences.
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However, you can also launch more than one interface:
This will launch VLC with the default Qt interface, but will also launch the SAP, telnet and web interface in addition to the Qt one. The default for this can also be changed in the preferences.
Note that if you only use the dummy interface, you won't be able to tell vlc to quit (except watching a video). You may have to break it manually with Ctrl+C; or use vlc://quit as the last item on the playlist.
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