amol9/vlc-ctrl

A command line utility to control a running vlc player instance.

vlc-ctrl

Lets you control a running instance of vlc player, start a new instance, get track information, etc.

Supported platforms

• python 2.7 / 3.4
• Linux

Features

• Controls vlc player over dbus.
• Play, pause, shuffle, toggle, prev, next, stop commands.
• Play all files in a directory (recursively added).
• Add files / directories based on inclusion and exclusion patterns.
• Change volume / fade volume.
• Print current track info.
• Quit vlc.
• Quit based on return code of another command.
• Can be used as a cron job.

Dependencies

• vlc player, of course.

• python-dbus or python3-dbus

  On Ubuntu: >apt-get install python-dbus or >apt-get install python3-dbus

Usage

• Pause:

  vlc-ctrl pause

• Play a directory:

  vlc-ctrl play -p /home/user/music

• Increase volume 10%:

  vlc-ctrl volume +10%
  vlc-ctrl volume +0.1

• Quit when return code of "command" is 0, retrying the command at most 5 times at 30s intervals and fade out in 10s:

  vlc-ctrl quit -c command -r 5,30 -f 10

• Get info on currently playing track:

  vlc-ctrl info

• For more commands, see:

  vlc-ctrl -h

Download

• PyPI: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/vlc-ctrl
• Source: https://github.com/amol9/vlc-ctrl

vlc-ctrl's Issues

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2]

I get the following error, what can I do? thanks;
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/mydesktop/.redcmd/scripts'
on kubuntu16.10, python3.5

Not working playlist playback if file name contains spaces

Not working playlist playback if file name contains spaces:

$ vlc-ctrl play -p /home/aleksei/_video
no such path: /home/aleksei/_video/Big

File name: Big Buck Bunny 512kb.mp4

[Request] Mac OS X support

Any idea if this could also work on OS X (it doesn't right now)? I am not familiar with dbus or the other requirements used, so my question is more conceptual.

I did try it on Mac OS X, but got the error below:
(I am using VLC 2.2.2 - should that technically be working?)

Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoMemory: Not enough memory
Dynamic session lookup supported but failed: launchd did not provide a socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded!
org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoMemory: Not enough memory
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "~/Library/Python/2.7/bin/vlc-ctrl", line 11, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "~/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/vlc_ctrl/main.py", line 19, in main
    commandline.execute()
  File "~/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/redcmd/commandline.py", line 50, in execute
    self._command_collection.execute(args, namespace)
  File "~/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/redcmd/command_collection.py", line 465, in execute
    cmd_func.execute(args)
  File "~/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/redcmd/cmdfunc.py", line 21, in execute
    return self.func(*self.get_arg_list(self.func, args))
  File "~/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/vlc_ctrl/client.py", line 35, in play
    self._players.play(path, filter)
  File "~/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/vlc_ctrl/player_list.py", line 38, in wrapped
    self._list[0].get_dbus_interface()
  File "~/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/vlc_ctrl/player.py", line 54, in get_bus_interface
    raise PlayerError('vlc is not running')
vlc_ctrl.player.PlayerError: vlc is not running

Time

Hi, when i use the command vlc-ctrl info, i cant receive the time of the media ( hour:min:sec ) and also that would be great to get the data of its status ( playing or paused ).
Thanks

On first launch glitches out due to delay

Sometimes on first launch, I guess the dbus stuff isn't up yet, and vlc-ctrl tries to play a file, and it opens in an interface free video output window.