Download the image here!!
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
- Copy this image to an SD card following these directions
- Put your video files in the /home/pi/videos directory
- 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
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