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85 Comments
- doddilus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+34http://vistarewired.com.nyud.net:8090/2007/03/08/dreamscene-on-any-computer/
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:http://vistarewired.com/2007/03/08/dreamscene-on-any-computer/
Have a video wallpaper for any version of Windows
08Mar07
vlclogo.jpg
Sure, you are not actually going to get Dreamscene for your PC but it doesn’t matter if you’re going to get the same effect right? This is exactly what VLC Player can do for you. You might or might not have heard of this program but it is a free video player that eliminates the need to download many different codecs as it already recognizes a large number of them. VLC has a built-in feature that allows you to play videos as your wallpaper.
Dreamscene is only available for Windows Vista Ultimate users, but with this method, it can be made available for anyone with a copy of windows and MAC OS X Tiger. If you have a Mac, click here.
1) Download the latest version of VLC Player here.
2) Open your video file, right click, and choose wallpaper. You can find some great videos to use here:
Winmatrix
SkyTimeLapse
Corbis Motion
Microsoft WMV HD
3) Next step
If you do not see the wallpaper option then proceed to:
Settings > Preferences > Video > Output Modules > Direct X.
Once you get here, check the Advanced Options box in the bottom right hand corner.
The advanced options will appear. Check Enable Wallpaper Mode. Now when you right click on your videos, you should be able to see a Wallpaper option.
If you want VideoLAN to behave like Dreamscene, you obviously do not want to see it in your taskbar since you will be running it for a long time. To get rid of its appearance in the taskbar:
4) Proceed to Settings > Preferences > Interface > Main Interfaces > wxWidgets
wxwidgets2.jpg
5) Then uncheck the box beside Taskbar
If you want to reach VLC, you can only get there by using Alt+Tab or Vista’s Flip3D. You can also choose to check the box beside systray so a VLC icon appears in your system tray.
6) Finally, you really wouldn’t want your background to disappear after a couple of seconds so we’d have to loop it. To do so, just click on Playlist in the navigation menu, and a list of settings will be provided. Thanks to Matt for reminding me that I have forgotten to include this.
vlc_loop.jpg
VLC works on many other operating systems, so if you’ve tried this on another OS, please let me know if it worked, thanks.
Update: Mac Users:
I have a found a way to obtain the exact same feature on a version of MAC OS X Tiger. All you have to do is proceed to the following:
VLC > Preferences > Interface > Main Interface > Use as Desktop Background
Hope you guys enjoy this tutorial. - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23No, it magically detects porn, by sampling the video for high pitched moans/screaming, and flesh tones.
- SteveMax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Sorry, Jim, there isn’t anything I can do. He's dead.
- Retuow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14"2) Open your video file, right click, and choose wallpaper. You can find some great videos to use here:
http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12200
http://www.skytimelapse.com/hidef.html
http://www.corbismotion.com/home_flash/Home.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx" - bfaulk04, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17VLC is amazing. I don't know why I'd use anything else.
- JCSaint, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13merreborn,
So Furry porn would get through? I could live with that. - crazlunatic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9really good alternative to dreamscene. Wonder if it works on Ubuntu
- dicerandom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7mplayer -rootwin file.avi
Welcome to the party. - TrueJournals, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I was just going to post that. It's a typo in the article itsself... Snoz just copied and pasted.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9"it can be made available for anyone with a copy of Windows and Mac OS X Tiger"
Snoz, the conjunction you were looking for is "or". See how using the wrong conjunction changes the meaning of the sentence? - Timmaay, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7goatse.
- poonaka, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Have video wallpaper for any version of Windows"
Doesn't seem to work on my copy of Windows 3.11... - MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Indeed. There are plans for backgrounds whose elements are based on external input, like time of day......weather.....
- firejones, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Great , I have been waiting to play my recorded waterfalls from my vacations.
- Shinnokxz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Can anyone post what this article was saying? *sigh* wordpress blogs...
- dacrowxc, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Problem with this method is that I can't seem to get the transparency to work correctly. I have yahoo widgets installed and when I enable Video wallpaper on VLC my widgets transparency effects and shadow turns black. Anybody know how to fix this?
- shinynew, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5mplayer is more responsive, and easier for me to use. Also extremely minimalistic.
- JimmyRyan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I don't understand! you get here and all you can do is speculate most of the time.. Damn sites down every time!! lol
- kmenzel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This only gives you video backgrounds, which, though it is the fundamental core of what DremeScene is about - DremeScene does give you the two extra background allignment settings (keep aspect ratio and fit to screen, or keep aspect ratio and crop to screen) which are a lot more convenient than photoshop or whatever... which VLC doesn't do for you...
But the big thing is the extensibility from DreamScene to Dreamscapes which can be Dynamic... which you CAN'T do from VLC... so though you can get video backgrounds - that's not what DreamScene is about in totality, it's just 75% of the story. - wallish, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3The Electric Sheep screensavers (called "sheep") seem MADE for this. Too bad a lot of them don't loop well.
http://www.electricsheep.org/
for anyone interested in going through some of their videos. Makes an amazing screen saver too. - Timmaay, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3nope
- Sp0rAdiC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2anywhere you could upload those? I'd love to have waterfalls but I can't find a decent video online.
- pipes27, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2VLC?
- inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4BTW, you don't need to download or install anything on OS X to do this. It can do it out of the box. It requires a trip to the terminal but it's painless.
You can read about how here:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20020824082233907 - nuts&bolts, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Hooked up some camera feeds into the program, very very nice.
- ChumpChief, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4For some reason it inserts a small break in between sequential FLAC files on my playlist. For that reason, I use foobar2000 for music, since it has no such problems.
- toyotaboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1works great, so long as you don't want to play any audio in the background.. On a sidenote though, it is a nice clean, lightweight video player, reminds me of linux.
- ActionableMango, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1OSX does both natively, you don't need a third party app to do it.
- ThePict, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2While looping video on your desktop is pretty cool, wouldn't you get bored of the same video over and over again? I'm going to try using a playlist so it plays a series of different videos.
Alternatively, try Drempels - I can't recommend this program enough. It's OSS now. It creates user-configurable plasma displays.
http://www.geisswerks.com/drempels/
Disclaimer: I'm not associated with the Drempels project at this time, but maybe I'll brush up on my skillz and try to make a Linux version. Someday. - spacenettnet, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3*sigh* wordpress blogs i'll second that those pos
- AirRaven, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ChumpChief
VLC's not really intended as a full music player- more a general all-round Media Player, with focus on Videos.
A dedicated music player (foobar and musikCube fit the bill) works better. Far superior playlist management, for starters. - mgadalsky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I can't believe it! I couldn't see any graphics in IE7 or FF. http://hobbyzoom.blogspot.com
- WWWWWWWWWWWWWii, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Ive seen this before with video and konfabulator or yahoo widgets. It's a yahoo widgets bug. I remember in Media player classic I had to change the rendering mode in the preferences (choice of DX7, DX9 and etc). Hopefuly VLC has some similar setting it preferneces
Stop digging this guy down. He is asking a good question - sonician, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Anyone get theirs to loop correctly? Mine always stops after the first run, no matter what option I select in the "Playlist" window.
- wedesoft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Here's another solution. However I have to kill the desktop-process for doing it:
killall kdesktop
mplayer -rootwin -vo xv:ck-method=auto -nosound -fs file.avi - crazlunatic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You can easily disable or enable muting
- brianez21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://preview.tinyurl.com/2ehhnr
Google cache it seems - LordBen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Alright i'm trying to do this problem is the video is only showing on the text boxes for my desktop icons no where else... i tried fooling around with settings and nothing fixed this. Anyone have any tips on how to fix it? I got a dual screen setup with nvidia nView running so i'm not sure that might be causing the problem.
- battleroyalex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I did this about 5 years ago using html.
- Timmaay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1dunno why ppl are digging me down, the tinyurl is of the google cache which works fine.
- ahawks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@dacrow:
That's because desktop video rendering is done using DirectDraw (I think that's what it's called). This is where it sets the wallpaper to an obscure off-black color, and DirectX draws the video to an offscreen buffer, then uses the off-black color as a mask to show the video. Screenshots, transparency tools, etc all view the screen's color as that off-black.
@uglybob:
What part of "any version of Windows" did you missunderstand? - porsche922, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Am I the only one concerned with CPU utilization but during continuous looping of HD video by vlc or other media player?
- wedesoft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm trying to have this run in KDE. But I cannot get the desktop symbols display on top of the video. Also the window comes into the foreground, when I click on it. "-rootwin" doesn't work because KDE displays on the root-window as well.
kstart --skippager --skiptaskbar --windowclass "MPlayer" --type Desktop --alldesktops --maximize --onbottom mplayer -vo xv -fs file.avi - brownb2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2*sigh* whatever was wrong with embedded video in a html page being used as the background image? This solution is much simpler and has been around for ages....
- crazlunatic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1it uses only around 3-5 mb of RAM. I will update the post with CPU usage. thanks for the comments
- crazlunatic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1does the website work now?
- PRocker267, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Why do people with 5 MB per month bandwidth submit ***** to digg?
- williebee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@jimmyryan system -> preferences -> screensaver
- deusdiabolus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Thanks for reminding me about Drempels. I actually have a machine that can run it comfortably in the background now! :)
- SerifTheRobot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Can anyone comment on how that effects performance? As in, will this destroy my frame rates if I play Half-Life 2 and don't disable the video wallpaper first?
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