Video Output

VideoLAN comes with a selection of Video Output modules. These can display output on almost any computer.

If you don't want any video, you can use the --no-video option.

Output Modules

To select one of these modules, use the -V (--vout) command line option, eg:

vlc my.avi -V caca

image

Save all the frames of a video as a sequence of images. You can select the output format using --image-out-format (currently you can only choose png), and the start of the file name with --image-out-prefix. Finally, to create an image once out of a number of frames, give that number to --image-out-ratio. For example,

vlc v4l:// --image-out-prefix=webcam --image-out-ratio=20

will create a series of images named

webcam000001.png
webcam000002.png
webcam000003.png
...

aa, caca

ASCII Art modules. aa displays output in black and white, caca in colour.

x11

Use Linux's X11 video output

xvideo

XVideo extension video output, a more advanced form of X11.

glx, opengl

Use OpenGL video output

snapshot

A pseudo video output that stores reduced-size snapshots of the video in a memory cache. The cache can thereafter be accessed through the MediaControlAPI. It is commonly used through the clone vout filter, in order to be able to watch the video and get snapshots on demand.

dummy

Don't show output

Cloning

To display output in more than one window, video cloning can be used. To use this, specify

--vout-filter=clone

on the command line: this tells vlc to use cloning. You also need to tell vlc what output modules you want with, for example,

--clone-vout-filter=caca,glx
--clone-count=2

Changing video ouput

If you wish to change your video output module without using the command line, here's how to proceed:

Qt Interface

• Go to tools -> preferences (or press Ctrl+P)
• Select the Video tab
• Select another video output module by changing the "Output" combo-box
• Stop any playback
• Launche the playback again