Using Linux and libvlc I’ve finally got what I was aiming for. A full screen video playlist player. And it was quite easy.
The steps to get here:
- Monday: Play a media file. A few lines of code did this. And with the addition of one extra line of code made it full screen.
- Play a playlist of videos full screen. This is where things went wrong. After one video had finished, the vlc player would quit fullscreen, flash the desktop and then play the next video in full screen. This was not acceptable.
- Tuesday: Using the stock Linux libraries to go full screen. This took all of about 20 minutes from start to end. And again, in just a few lines of code. It was a chaotic night at home so I just finished up there.
- Wednesday: Just chilled out and watched TV after work instead.
- Thursday: I now needed to use the full screen window and attach the videos to it so that the desktop doesn’t appear. By just passing the window ID to the vlc media player, this was done.
Now all I need to work on the managing the playlists over the internet. And order myself and Odroid C2 with a few other gadgets. So far, this is going 100% perfectly.
By my reckoning, I should have a media player that boots up in less than 10 seconds and playing. How awesome…
The hefty part of the coding is about to start…