View source for Old Python bindings

= Python binding documentation =

For a while, there has been a basic python binding for libvlc, that was used for streaming. A more complete (with a hopefully generic API that can be reused by other players) has been developped, based on the MediaControlAPI.

Sources are browsable from [http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/browser/trunk/bindings/python python binding] and a code sample can be found in [http://liris.cnrs.fr/advene/download/].

= Basics =

The vlc python module provides 2 main classes : MediaControl and Object.

vlc.Object provides a binding to the vlc object architecture. It allows to manipulate variables and configuration options, and explore the object hierrarchy. The vlcdebug.py script, located in the python bindings directory, wraps around the vlc.Object to provide an easier access to variables and objects (as illustrated in the code sample in [http://liris.cnrs.fr/advene/download/]).

vlc.MediaControl implements the MediaControlAPI.

= Tips and tricks =

== Snapshot support ==

In order to get snapshot support, you have to activate the snapshot vout module through a clone video filter.  The following code gives a way to achieve this :

  mc=vlc.MediaControl([ "--vout-filter", "clone" ])
  o=VLC.Object(0)
  o.config_set("clone-vout-list", "default,snapshot")
  o.config_set("snapshot-width", 320)
  o.config_set("snapshot-height", 200)

Note that all config options could have been given on the command line, but this illustrates the use of the vlc.Object API.

== Win32 initialization ==

If the vlc module was not compiled with the exact same prefix as the VLC installation (e.g. c:\\Program Files\\Videolan), then it cannot find itself the installation directory (stored in the registry Software\VideoLAN\VLC\Path), and the MediaControl instanciation will fail with a message like "Cannot find interface plugins". 

The workaround consists in changing directory to the VLC installation directory before instanciating the MediaControl object. 

    def get_registry_value (self, subkey, name):
        import _winreg
        value = None
        for hkey in _winreg.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, _winreg.HKEY_CURRENT_USER:
            try:
                reg = _winreg.OpenKey(hkey, subkey)
                value, type_id = _winreg.QueryValueEx(reg, name)
                _winreg.CloseKey(reg)
            except _winreg.error:
                pass
        return value
    
    vlcpath=get_registry_value('Software\\VideoLAN\\VLC','InstallDir')
    if vlcpath is None:
        print "Cannot locate VLC installation directory"
    else:
        os.chdir(vlcpath)
        mc=vlc.MediaControl()