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