[Tutorial] - Configure VLC to play (NO HD) videos with X11 and SDL outputs

[aworan]

This is a very basic tutorial to configure vlc for playing no hd videos.

Install vlc

Open a terminal then type :

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install vlc

If you try to play some video with vlc you will have only sound and black window.
You need to change the video output in vlc, it don't work automaticly.

Configure vlc with X11 output

• Go to menu : Tools -> Settings
• Click on Video on top of panel
• Change output from automatic to X11 (XCB)
  Save

So after you can play videos but no hd ones because it's only software decoding.
Fullscreen or resizing window slows the video a lot.

There is another basic better mode SDL output !

Configure vlc with SDL output
Open a terminal and type :

sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-sdl

Then launch vlc and :

• Go to menu : Tools -> Settings
• Click on Video on top of panel
• Change output from Simple DirectMedia Layer

Save

So after you can play videos but no hd ones because it's only software decoding.
It open a new window but you can use the first one for the controls.
Fullscreen or resizing window works.

If you want to play some HD Videos in fullscreen you can look at my tutorial there :

[Tutorial] - Build (or download) VLC with hardware acceleration video decoding [OPENMAX-IL]

Post updated to build a package instead of basic compile. So you can save the package somewhere if you want to install it later. I uploaded the package I build, if you don’t want to build it, you can download it I have some experiments with MMAL, I manage to have a package for it too, it plays some videos but anothers not … I will publish a tutorial too for it for advanced users who want to play with it I work on some new great tutorials too, stay tune ! Aworan

There is not windowed and fullscreen solution for now, we need to wait the raspberry pi fondation release the the opengl driver for the pi first.