HOWTO: Play Videos as Screensaver

[theonlytruth]

Hey,
I tried your HowTo, but the new Screensaver doesn't appear in the screensaver menu.

I tested the movie.sh script like you told and this runs.

Do you know my problem?

OS: Ubuntu 10.04

I think I found my mistake: Now I entered the whole path and now its listed. (I also added some other lines So now it lokks so:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Movie
Comment=Plays Videos
TryExec=movie.sh
Exec=/usr/lib/gnome-screensaver/gnome-screensaver/movie.sh
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Screensaver;
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-screensaver

[davitodd]

I wrote out the scripts, and it didn't let my load the video. Mplayer keeps saying that it could not open the video out device. I already tried to change it, to things in the /dev/ folder that looked like it would be for the video. I am running on Ubuntu 9.10, and I also have an ATI graphics card. If you could point me in the right direction, and show me what I'm doing wrong, any help would be greatly appreciated.

[brendanpiater]

Thanks for a great post, this is really useful. Just a small point, the list of screensavers is not updated automatically when you open screensaver prefs. it only updates apparently when running "dpkg" in 10.04 (not sure on previous).

I just ran a pending update and the list was refreshed to include the new screensaver. I guess installing something from the repos if you don't have an update pending would do the same.

Hope that helps someone.

Cheers
B

[M4he]

Many many thanks for this brilliant HowTo!
I'm just pointing the script to a special directory in my Videos folder and it plays everything I throw in there as screensaver. It works like a charm.

[...] the list of screensavers is not updated automatically when you open screensaver prefs. it only updates apparently when running "dpkg" in 10.04

Hmm strange... I'm also running 10.04 but the screensaver was in the list soon after I added the .desktop file into the according directory.

Thanks a bunch for this awesome tutorial!

[MattBlack]

Hi

Using 10.10 - I have tried the above and all works fine except....

The videos reset after 10mins.

Can anyone shine some light on why this is so.

Many thanks.
Me

[MattBlack]

Hi

Using 10.10 - I have tried the above and all works fine except....

The videos reset after 10mins.

Can anyone shine some light on why this is so.

Many thanks.
Me

Hi

This can be aleviated by changing the value of cycle_delay. (gconf-editor -> apps-> gnome-screensaver ) By default this is 10 (mins) changing to 3600 seems to have the desired effect. Setting this to 0 actually sets cycle to 1 min.

Therefore it seems that even though mode is single it still cycles according to cycle delay.

Hope this helps other people experiencing this.

Matt

[CyberCod]

Great thread! Much thanks! Will be using this for a video box at work for company vids. Figured I'd share my modifications in case they help someone else down the line.

This is how I ended up doing it:

#! /bin/bash

## delete previous playlist
rm -f /home/tv/playlist.pls

## setup MPlayer aruments, remove -nosound if you want the video
## to play sound. If you have to specify the video driver to use
## then add that to the list
MPLAYERARGS="-nolirc -wid $XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW -nostop-xscreensaver -fs"


## find all files in the chosen directory add to playlist 
find /Storage/Media/Videos/PlayAsScreensaver/* > /home/tv/playlist.pls

## child pid, no need to modify
CPID=0

#play freshly generated playlist
exec mplayer $MPLAYERARGS -loop 0 -shuffle -playlist /home/tv/playlist.pls

[CyberCod]

Hi

This can be aleviated by changing the value of cycle_delay. (gconf-editor -> apps-> gnome-screensaver ) By default this is 10 (mins) changing to 3600 seems to have the desired effect. Setting this to 0 actually sets cycle to 1 min.

Therefore it seems that even though mode is single it still cycles according to cycle delay.

Hope this helps other people experiencing this.

Matt

Actually, I'm still having this problem. Ubuntu 10.04. Any Help? I already set the cycle delay to 3600.

[Toost Inc.]

I'm having a hard time with

MPLAYERARGS="-nosound -nolirc -wid $XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW -nostop-xscreensaver -fs -really-quiet"




The part that is giving me errors is:

-wid $XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW


the "$XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW" is doing it.

I am using CentOS 5 and would have posted in the CentOS forums, but I used to use ubuntu so I decided to post here, since you created the script, I figured you'd know the script better than anyone else.


So, how exactly do I define the variable $XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW


Thanks,

SSVegito888

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 and I seem to be having the same problem.
The error message I keep getting when running gnome-screensaver-preferences is:
"Terminal type `unknown' is not defined."

And indeed when I put $XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW in quotes, it doesn't give me this error anymore, but also just a black screen to look at. If I completely remove the -wid argument however the same error is back.

Has anyone had any progress with this?

Thanks,
Toost Inc.

[clauguia]

Thank you Kazza and bootch!

Works like charm in ubuntu 10.10