Zionworx

I saw this post on OpenSongs forum and thought it worth a shot. I am not at a ZionWorx install now, but will let you know if it works (If someone else hasn't tried it already)


Video background with VLC (http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=4219291)
By: Ryan B (uryan) - 2007-03-21 14:37
Since there are so many requests for video backgrounds on here I decided to give it a shot using VLC media player (http://www.videolan.org). I used Opensong RC 1-14 and VLC 0.86a on Windows XP. Other versions should work but may need a slightly different procedure.

1. In OpenSong, edit the slide style to have no image. Set the background colour to Red:0 Green:0 Blue:1. Also, disable transitions as they won't work properly.

2. Open VLC. Goto Setting->Preferences. Click on Video and make sure 'Overlay video output' is selected. Now goto 'Output modules' (expand 'Video' in the tree to find it) and select 'Advanced settings.' Select 'DirectX video output' as the output module. Now goto 'DirectX' in the tree (expand 'Output modules) and select 'Wallpaper mode.' If you are using a secondary display for your presentations you should select that here too. Save and close preferences.

3. Open and play a video. It should be showing over the desktop of the monitor selected. If you have a video capture card you can also open that in VLC to show live video.

4. Start your OpenSong presetation. If all goes well the video should be shining through. If the video plays but doesn't show through the presentation then you probably need to select a different colour for the slide background (use a colour-grabbing program such as Colorpix - http://www.colorschemer.com/colorpix_info.php to find out what colour)

Note that some video cards/drivers may not support this properly. Others might only work on the primary display. You might have to play round with 'video mirroring', 'theatre mode' or 'overlay' settings in the display settings.




Watch this space

That works really well.

A couple of notes.
1. Turn off anti-alias (or you get a thin black edge to each word)
2. Set the aspect-ratio correctly in VLC if you have a widescreen monitor or projector
3. Depending upon the video, you might want to slow down the play speed of the video. I have an abstract AVI with floating colours (http://www.reid.co.uk/zwbg.zip - 19Mb) that was given to me for this purpose which works well at 1/4 speed.
4. You need to set the background of the default style and info bar to the above values, or edit settings.ini to show:
Back Colour=65536
Info Back Colour=65536

Additional notes:
1. I tested this on v2.6 and not the current released version.
2. I am running Vista, and this turns off the Aero interface

Also see http://vistarewired.com/2007/03/08/dreamscene-on-any-computer/ for more info.

If you are running Windows Vista Ultimate, try Dreamscene instead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_DreamScene).

Tried this at home with 2.5.06 and xp. After a little trial and error, got it to work. I had to start the video on the secondary display and then drag the control window back to the primary one, which I didn't expect.
I tried setting up a playlist, but could not get this to work properly though.

We are now looking for a pan and tilt clip which wil make people in the front row fall over!!