VideoLan Preferences for Color Me Video

The VideoLan player receives the best Color Me Video rating because of its theater like color. It is also receives the highest rating as a player. It’s completely free. It can play most video file formats. It’s lightweight and is basically just as easy to use as any other media player.

Immature Usability

In the Color Me Video Review, it was stated that the player usability is immature because it takes some tinkering with the preferences to personalize the player. One limitation while using with VideoLan player is that the most preferences do not use terms that are easy to understand. This guide will not explain the VideoLan player’s terminology. Visit the VideoLan.org for more information about VideoLan's terminology. This guide was prepared for Color Me Video Techniques and will instruct you to the best ways to use the VideoLan player using Color Me Video Techniques. Learn more about what VLC can do at wiki.videolan.org.

VideoLan Overlay Preferences

In order for the Color Me Video techniques to work, video overlay options must be active.

Procedure

• Go to Settings
• Choose Preferences
• Select Video
• Check the Overlay video output box

VideoLan Controls

The VideoLan player has a feature similar to the Windows Media Toolbar feature. Finding it wasn’t as easy as finding the Windows Media Player toolbar feature. This is one way the VideoLan suffers for immature usability. It took a while of using the VLC player to find this neat little feature. Once finding it, it was quickly seen that it was far more inobtrusive in comparison to the WMP toolbar.

Procedure

• Go to Settings
• Choose Preferences
• Open Interfaces drop-down
• Open Main Interfaces drop-down
• Choose wxWidgets
  Check the following:
  • Embed Video in Interface (optional)
  • Taskbar
  • System Tray Icon

To use the player controls, right mouse click on the VideoLan icon in the system tray. From there, you can play, pause, move to the next or previous entry in the playlist, etc. The player will also hide or appear when the icon is double clicked.

VideoLan Wallpaper Feature

When using Color Me Video techniques, this feature will allow you play the video fullscreen while escaping the player’s full screen feature. The video will play full screen regardless of the size of the media player window or screen as your desktop wallpaper. The wallpaper feature must be activated.

Procedure: Activating the wallpaper feature

• Go to Settings
• Choose Preferences
• Open Video drop-down
• Open Output Modules drop-down
• Select DirectX
• Check the Advanced options box
• Check the Enable wallpaper mode
• Play DVD disc or Video File
• Right-mouse click on the video
• Choose Wallpaper

Hotkeys or Keyboard Shortcuts

Again, it took using the VideoLan player a while and accidentally tapping keys to find this useful feature. VideoLan has a series of keyboard shortcuts called “hotkeys” other than the space-bar play/pause feature. VLC has more hotkeys than most media players and the hotkeys are customizable. The hotkeys feature can only be used with the player application or window is active and so the hotkeys cannot but use if the player is minimized and/or using the system tray feature. If you are using the system tray feature, you must double-click on the Videolan icon to make the player active. Below are a few of the hotkey preferences you can use to optimizing the the video display size, mute, fastforwarding, etc during video playback.

VideoLan Default Preferences

• A – Changes the video screen aspect ratio
• C- Crops the video
• M – Mutes
• T – Displays video playback time
• N – Moves to the next track
• P – Moves to the previous track
• Alt + left arrow – Rewinds short
• One keystroke is about 10 seconds. The longer you hold these keys the faster the video rewinds.
• Alt + right arrow – Fast forwards short
• One keystroke is about 10 seconds. The longer you hold these keys the faster the video forwards.
• Ctrl + left arrow – Rewinds long
• One keystroke is about 60 seconds. The longer you hold these keys the faster the video rewinds.
• Ctrl + right arrow – Fast forwards long
• One keystroke is about 60 seconds. The longer you hold these keys the faster the video forwards.

To customize the VideoLan hotkeys:

Procedure

• Go to Settings
• Choose Preferences
• Open Interfaces drop-down
• Choose Hotkey settings

Play a DVD disc without selecting "Play" from the menu

This technique will allow you to bypass the DVD menu.

Procedure

• Insert DVD in drive, and do not allow it to play automatically. If it does, stop the movie manually using the stop button.
Select the "Open" button on the player.
• Select the DVD tab
• Choose the DVD option

Alternative Procedure

• Insert DVD in drive, and do not allow it to play automatically. If it does, stop the movie manually using the stop button.
• Go to File on the menu bar or click the "Open" button on the player.
• Select the DVD tab
• Choose the DVD option