Monday, September 30, 2013

Raspberry Pi Automatic Video Looper


Download the image here:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=e0f17bd2b1ffe81!411&authkey=!AGW37ozZuaeyjDw&ithint=file%2czip

MIRROR: https://mega.co.nz/#!JBcDxLhQ!z41lixcpCS0-zvF2X9SkX-T98Gj5I4m3QIFjXKiZ5p4

Recently I helped out with an Architecture exhibition where they needed 8 projectors looping videos all at the same time. Deciding they didn't want to pay for 8 computers and pay for the electricity for 8 computers, they contacted me to see if I could help (Pictures to come soon!). They got 8 Raspberry Pis, which together cost less than one PC and use less an energy than one PC. That's over 16 times the cost savings and energy savings.

I found a link that did this here. However, it has a couple big issues. It only supports certain file types, doesn't allow spaces in the files and a couple of other things, the escape key stops the whole loop, and their is a longer delay than I want. It also doesn't have the newest version of omxplayer, which plays subtitles and has other new fixes.

So I started creating my own and my version fixes these problems. So I now have decided to publish my image here.

How to set up the looper

  1. Copy this image to an SD card following these directions
  2. Put your video files in the /home/pi/videos directory
  3. Plug it in

Features

  • Supports all raspberry pi video types (mp4,avi,mkv,mp3,mov,mpg,flv,m4v)
  • Supports subtitles (just put the srt file in the same directory as the videos)
  • Reduces time between videos
  • Allows spaces and special characters in the filename
  • Allows pausing and skipping
  • Full screen with a black background and no flicker
  • SSH automatically enabled with user:pi and password:raspberry
  • Allows easy video conversion using ffmpeg (ffmpeg INFILE -sameq OUTFILE)
  • Has a default of HDMI audio output with one quick file change (replace -o hdmi with -o local in startvideos.sh).
  • Can support external HDDs and other directories easily with one quick file change (Change FILES=/home/pi/videos/ to FILES=/YOUR DIRECTORY/ in startvideos.sh)

Source code

The source code can be found on github here. There are a couple main files listed below:
startvideos.sh
startfullscreen.sh
videoloop

This is perfect if you are working on a museum or school exhibit. Don't spend a lot of money and energy on a PC running windows and have problems like below (courtesy of the Atlanta Aquarium).

If you are a museum or other educationally based program and need help, you can contact me by e-mail at help@stevenhickson.com

Consider donating to further my tinkering since I do all this and help people out for free.

Places you can find me
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