{"id":894,"date":"2016-12-20T09:24:02","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T09:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/?p=894"},"modified":"2019-04-30T15:58:38","modified_gmt":"2019-04-30T15:58:38","slug":"vlc-remote-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/vlc-remote-control\/","title":{"rendered":"VLC remote control"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I was using VLC<\/a> to listen to music, as I often do, and I wanted to pause without getting out of bed.<\/p>\n

Lazy? Yes!<\/p>\n

I learned that VLC includes a slew of remote control interfaces, including a built-in web interface as well as a raw socket interface.<\/p>\n

In VLC Advanced Preferences, go to “Interface”, and then “Main interfaces” for a list of options. I selected “Remote control” which is now known as “oldrc”, and I configured a simple file based socket “vlc.sock” in my home directory as an experiment.<\/p>\n

You can use netcat to send commands, for example,<\/p>\n

twarnock@laptop:~ :) nc -U ~\/vlc.sock <<< \"pause\"\n<\/pre>\n
Best of all VLC cleans up after itself and removes the socket file when it closes. The “remote control” interface is pretty intuitive and comes with a “help” command. I wrapped all of this in a shell function (in a .bashrc).<\/p>\n
function vlcrc() {\n SOCK=~\/vlc.sock\n CMD=\"pause\"\n if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then\n  CMD=$1\n fi\n if [ -S $SOCK ]; then\n  nc -U $SOCK <<< \"$CMD\"\n else\n  (>&2 echo \"I can't find VLC socket $SOCK\")\n fi\n}<\/pre>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
I like this approach because I can now use “vlc command<\/em>” in a scripted environment. I can build playlists, control the volume, adjust the playback speed, pretty much anything VLC lets me do. I could even use a crontab and make a scripted alarm clock!<\/p>\n
And of course I can “pause” my music from my phone while laying in bed. Granted, there’s apps for more user friendly VLC smartphone remotes, but I like the granular control provided by a command line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently I was using VLC to listen to music, as I often do, and I wanted to pause without getting out of bed. Lazy? Yes! I learned that VLC includes a slew of remote control interfaces, including a built-in web interface as well as a raw socket interface. In VLC Advanced Preferences, go to “Interface”, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":951,"href":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894\/revisions\/951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.avant.net\/q\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}