SHORTCUTS FOR VLC MEDIA PLAYER

VLC Media Player

This is an excellent all purpose media player, available from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html. I
recommend it to all students working with animation as it is an improvement on the standard players
installed on Windows or Mac operating systems. It’s also open sourced and free.
As with most open source software it works on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, and Unix. It was start-
ed as an academic project in 1996 and was intended to consist of a client and server to stream videos
across a campus network. VLC was the client for the VideoLAN project. Originally developed by students
at the École Centrale Paris, it is now developed by contributors worldwide, coordinated by the VideoLAN
non-profit organization. Its history is recorded at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player, one odd
detail of which is that the traffic cone used as its avatar represents the traffic cones collected by École
Centrale’s Networking Students’ Association.
Key shortcuts are not emphasized but they exist and these are the most useful. The keys are
shown capitalized for clarity; you don’t need the Shift key pressed unless specifically mentioned.

FFullscreen
Spacebar Pause or play movie
V Subtitles on or off
B Audio track cycle (for videos with multiple language tracks)
Ctrl+ArrowUp or Ctrl+ArrowDown  Adjust volume
 (however see below to change this)

Mouse double click  Fullscreen

Mouse wheel scroll  Volume
Mouse right click  Local menu

E  Next frame (when paused)

Shift+LeftArrow/RightArrow Jump back or forward 3 seconds
 (see below to change this)
Alt+ LeftArrow/RightArrow  Jump back or forward 10 seconds
Ctrl+LeftArrow/RightArrow  Jump back or forward 1 minute
Ctrl+Alt+ LeftArrow/RightArrow  Jump back or forward 5 minutes
Shift-N Next chapter
Shift-P Previous chapter

Ctrl+O  Open single file

M  Mute and unmute audio
 P  Play movie from start
S  Stop movie
Esc  Exit full screen mode
A  Cycle through aspect ratios
Z  Change zoom mode (in non full screen mode)
T  Show time
Ctrl+Q  Quit VLC

Customization

If you want to have several instances of VLC open and you regularly open video files by double clicking
on them in a folder view, then uncheck Use only one instance when started from the file manager in the
Interface tab of Tools – Preferences.
You may also want to make four changes to the default shortcut keys. Do this by again going to
Tools – Preferences, this time selecting Hotkeys at the foot of the left hand list.
Double left click on Very short backwards jump and press the left arrow key. By default this is
used for Navigate left, but a three second jump back is more useful. Do the same with the Very short for-
wards jump, this time overriding the default with the right arrow key. Finally override the Volume up and
Volume down hotkeys with the up and down arrow keys.

Chris Yonge - 20170716