Videolooper based on VLC for the Raspberry Pi - Debian10 (Buster)
This Videolooper is designed to use the commandline interface of the VLC Player, which is included in the standard installation of Raspberry Pi OS, Debian 10 (Buster). In the past VLC did not support hardware acceleratinon on the Raspberry Pi, which is why older Videolooper Projects for the Raspberry Pi use the OMXplayer instead. However this has changed. Harware acceleration and VLC is not an issue anmore, which is why we decided to develop a Videolooper based on VLC for the Raspberry Pi.
This Videolooper has been tested on the Raspberry Pi 2B, 3B, 3B+ and 4B. To setup this Videolooper, follow these instuctions step by step. Feel free to make your own adjustments according to your own needs.
In future we might write a script that does the whole setup automatically. However we think it is fun to learn, which is why we decided to write a detailed guide instead. ;-)
After the successful implementation of these instruction, when you boot your Raspberry Pi, it will look for all video files stored in an autoplay folder, add them to a playlist and loop this playlist indefinitely. Furthermore it will look for attached USB drives, search them for video files and add them to the playlist. The USB drive can either already be attached to the Raspberry Pi when it boots up, or be plugged in while the first video (or no video at all) is already playing. In any case the Videolooper will add all video files found on the USB drive to the playlist and play loop. The autoplay script can easily be tweaked to accomodate a wide variety of VLC command line options.
- 01 - Prerequisite
- 02 - Setup unprivileged Workstation User
- 03 - Prepare Desktop Environment
- 04 - Prepare Folders and Locations
- 05 - Setup USB Device Handler and Service
- 06 - VLC Autoplay Script
- 07 - VLC Autoplay Service
- 08 - Links and Resources
We recommend you work with a clean install of Raspberry Pi OS with desktop (without recommended software, unless you intend to use it). You could also start with a minimal installation of Raspberry Pi OS Lite. However, some additional packages that are not covered in this guide will have to be installed for this Videolooper to work on Raspberry Pi OS Lite.
Before you start doing anything else, you should log in (we prefer ssh) and update your installation:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
Often we have been using this Videolooper on a Raspberry Pi that had to be reachable via SSH over the internet, which is why we set up an unprivileged user account. For this guide we use a user account called workstation to run our autoplay script. But first we grant our new user also admin rights. This makes it easy to change all required settings, so in future our Raspberry Pi will automatically log in as workstation. We will revoke admin rights later.
SIDE NOTE: Running the Videolooper in an unprivileged user account is a security related precaution and we strongly recommend you follow this setup if your Raspberry Pi is exposed to the internet. Then you should also consider to set up a firewall and to harden your SSH configuration (i.e. disable root login).
To create the user workstation with all privileges, log into your Raspberry Pi via SSH and execute the following commands (you will be asked to create a password for your new user):
sudo adduser workstation
sudo usermod -a -G adm,tty,pi,dialout,cdrom,audio,video,plugdev,games,users,input,netdev,gpio,i2c,spi,sudo workstation
Then log into your new user account:
su - workstation
Once you are logged in, change the autologin settings in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf:
sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
Find the line that says autologin-user=pi and change it to autologin-user=workstation
Also change pi to workstation in /etc/systemd/system/autologin@.service:
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/autologin@.service
Finally, to make absolutely sure your new user will be logged in on boot, run:
sudo raspi-config
Navigate to 1 System Options and select Boot / Auto login. Make sure you select user workstation to automatically log into desktop. Please note that raspi-config is constantly being developed. The location of the required menu item might change! Then, reboot your Raspberry Pi. You should now be logged into your desktop environment as workstation.
Finally, either log again into your Raspberry Pi via SSH (or use a terminal window in your Raspberry Pi desktop environment) to log into the pi user account:
su - pi
To revoke admin rights for workstation execute the following command:
sudo usermod -a -G adm,tty,pi,dialout,cdrom,audio,video,plugdev,games,users,input,netdev,gpio,i2c,spi workstation
Reboot your Raspberry Pi. You should now still be logged into your desktop environment as workstation.
To douple-check that the group sudo is missing from the list of groups run this command in a terminal window:
groups workstation
SIDE NOTE: Eventually we recommend to create a separate admin user and delete the standard user pi. In this quide we will run all sudo commands as user pi. At least you should change the default password of user pi.
VLC briefly shows the desktop when it reloads the playlist loop, which is why we want to hide all elements that are present on the desktop. There are several settings that you can change:
- Right-click on the top menubar and change the settings to autohide the menubar. Also change its size to 0px (2px is set as default, which will be visible as a thin line on top of your screen)
- Right-click on the desktop to change the desktop settings. Select no background as desktop background and change the background color to black. Also hide all items that are visible on your desktop (i.e. untick the option that shows the Wastebasket, USB Drives, etc.)
- Open the file manager and in its advanced settings disable all popup notifications for when a USB drive is inserted
- To automatically hide the mouse cursor log into you admin account pi and install unclutter:
su - pi
sudo apt install unclutter
Most steps during the following setup require admin rights, which is why you should remain logged in as an admin user. Some folders locations that are used by our VLC Videolooper not exist after a fresh installation of Raspberry Pi OS. We need to create them:
mkdir /home/workstation/Videos/autoplay
mkdir /home/workstation/Script
sudo mkdir /media/workstation
The last folder will be generated automatically once you insert a USB-drive while you are logged in as workstation. We only create this folder manually to avoid an error in case you don't insert a USB-drive before the Videolooper is started for the first time.
We need to enable our Videolooper to know when a USB-drive is inserted. To do so, we first define a new udev rule:
sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/usb_hook.rules
Insert:
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sd[a-z][0-9]", TAG+="systemd", ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS}="usbstick-handler@%k"
Now we create a systemd service, that monitors when a USB device is plugged in and that defines what happens, once a USB drive is inserted.
sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/usbstick-handler@.service
Insert:
[Unit]
Description=Mount USB sticks
BindsTo=dev-%i.device
After=dev-%i.device
[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/automount /dev/%I
The executed script has to be very short, because in this configuration udev does kill longer running scripts that have been started by systemd using this udev rule. If we executed our autoplay script directly via this systemd service, it would not work. Thus we came up with this workaround: we use the automount script started by systemd (when a USB drive is inserted) to modify a file on our harddisk. Further we watch this file with inotify (a monitoring tool), that will notify our VLC-Videolooper whenever this file has been modified.
First we install inotify:
sudo apt install inotify-tools
Then we create our short script:
sudo nano /usr/local/bin/automount
Insert:
#!/bin/bash
export mnt=/home/workstation/Script/.mnt
find /dev/sd* | sed -n '1~2!p' | sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g' > "$mnt"
The automount script simply writes the SCSI disk identifier of the inserted USB devices to a temporary log file (.mnt). Each time a USB device is inserted this file is overwritten. It does not matter what exactly the automount script does with this file, as long as it modifies it so that inotify notices the modification.
Finally we need to make this script executable:
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/automount
Now we create the actual script that uses inotify as a trigger, creates a playlist and launches VLC to play the loop. In this script you can define all paramaters and all options that the VLC command line has to offer. For example: we only want to play MP4, MOV and MKV files. What if you want to play an AVI? Just edit this script and add it to the list of filetypes that you want to play. Perhaps you want to rotate the video in your screen, mute the video or play a slideshow of images instead? Here you can add the required parameters. There are a lot of possibilities:
sudo nano /home/workstation/Script/autoplay.sh
Insert:
#!/bin/sh
# VLC OPTIONS:
# View all possible options: vlc -H
# Specify file paths and playlist location to be used for playback
export USB=/media/workstation
export AUTOPLAY=/home/workstation/Videos/autoplay
export PLAYLIST=/home/workstation/Videos/autoplay/playlist.m3u
export mnt=/home/workstation/Script/.mnt
FILETYPES="-name *.mp4 -o -name *.mov -o -name *.mkv"
# Playlist Options
Playlist_Options="-L --started-from-file --one-instance --playlist-enqueue"
#Additional Playlist Options
# --one-instance, --no-one-instance
# Allow only one running instance
# (default disabled)
# Allowing only one running instance of VLC can sometimes be useful,
# for example if you associated VLC with some media types and you don't
# want a new instance of VLC to be opened each time you open a file in
# your file manager. This option will allow you to play the file with
# the already running instance or enqueue it.
# --playlist-enqueue, --no-playlist-enqueue
# Enqueue items into playlist in one instance
# mode
# (default disabled)
# When using the one instance only option, enqueue items to playlist
# and keep playing current item.
# --random
# Play files randomly
# Output Modules
Video_Output="--gles2 egl_x11 --glconv mmal_converter --mmal-opaque"
Audio_Output="--stereo-mode 1"
# Interface Options
# Fullscreen, hide title display, decorations, window borders, etc.
Interface_Options="-f --no-video-title-show"
# Some useful Video Filters for Special Occacions:
# Mirror video filter (mirror)
# Splits video in two same parts, like in a mirror
# --mirror-split {0 (Vertical), 1 (Horizontal)}
# Mirror orientation
# Defines orientation of the mirror splitting. Can be vertical or horizontal.
# --mirror-direction {0 (Left to right/Top to bottom), 1 (Right to left/Bottom to top)}
#VLC AUTOMATIC FULLSCREEN LOOP:
# When a USB is plugged in at startup or before the Raspberry Pi is booted, Inotify is not yet ready to notice
# filechanges in the watchfile, which is why we run an see if there are playable files once at boot and start
# the watch script afterwards:
sleep 10;
echo "#EXTM3U" > "$PLAYLIST";
find "$USB" -type f \( $FILETYPES \) >> "$PLAYLIST";
find "$AUTOPLAY" -type f \( $FILETYPES \) >> "$PLAYLIST";
sed -i '/\/\./d' "$PLAYLIST";
sed -i '2,$s/^/file:\/\//' "$PLAYLIST";
sleep 0.1;
if [ "$(wc -l < /home/workstation/Videos/autoplay/playlist.m3u )" != "1" ]; then
/usr/bin/cvlc -q $Video_Output $Audio_Output $Interface_Options $Playlist_Options "$PLAYLIST"
fi
# Start WatchScript:
while /usr/bin/inotifywait -e modify "$mnt"; do
sleep 10;
echo "#EXTM3U" > "$PLAYLIST";
find "$USB" -type f \( $FILETYPES \) >> "$PLAYLIST";
find "$AUTOPLAY" -type f \( $FILETYPES \) >> "$PLAYLIST";
sed -i '/\/\./d' "$PLAYLIST";
sed -i '2,$s/^/file:\/\//' "$PLAYLIST";
sleep 0.1;
if [ "$(wc -l < /home/workstation/Videos/autoplay/playlist.m3u )" != "1" ]; then
/usr/bin/cvlc -q $Video_Output $Audio_Output $Interface_Options $Playlist_Options "$PLAYLIST"
fi
done
Also this script needs to be executable:
sudo chmod +x /home/workstation/Script/autoplay.sh
Finally we need to create another systemd service that runs our VLC Autoplay Script at boot:
sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/autoplay.service
Insert:
[Unit]
Description=Autoplay
After=multi-user.target
[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/home/workstation
User=workstation
Group=workstation
Environment="DISPLAY=:0"
Environment="XAUTHORITY=/home/workstation/.Xauthority"
Environment="XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1001"
ExecStart=/bin/sh /home/workstation/Script/autoplay.sh
[Install]
WantedBy=graphical.target
Doublecheck if the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is correct (if it is not correct, the script will exit with an error). It should be 1001. However, if for example it turns out to be 1002 while you are logged in as workstation, change your systemd service accordingly. Log in as workstation:
su workstation
Then doublecheck:
id -u
Finally, we enable and start the VLC autoplay service with the following commands (you need to be logged in as an administrator to execute these commands):
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable autoplay.service
sudo systemctl start autoplay.service
If you get an error, you can try:
sudo systemctl reset-failed
Now, all you have to do is to transfer one or more video files to /home/workstation/Videos/autoplay and/or insert a USB-drive that contains your files and watch the VLC Videolooper start the loop.
Download and install Raspberry Pi OS:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/operating-systems/
https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/
Raspberry Pi Security:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/security.md
https://raspberrytips.com/security-tips-raspberry-pi/
VLC Command Line:
https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_command-line_help/
https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Command_line/
Copyright (c) 2021 term7
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