insin / remote_control_for_vlc

A VLC remote control written with Flutter

Remote Control for VLC

A VLC remote control written with Flutter.

Initial Setup Guides

The first time you start Remote Control for VLC, it will provide a guide to setting up VLC's web interface for remote control and will give you the option to try to discover the IP of the host VLC is running on automatically.

The app's guides for initial VLC configuration and finding your host IP if it can't be found automatically are also available here if you need to reference them on a computer:

Remote Control for VLC Configuration Guides

Demo

Screenshots

Initial setup screens

Setup screen	Choose OS for setup guide	Setup guide	Connected

Browsing for and playing media

Open media	File browser	Playlist	Playlist Menu

Settings

Settings screen	Host IP guide	Equalizer	Playback Speed

remote_control_for_vlc's Issues

Scan the network for available computers

Allow computers on the same network to be selected instead of manually entering an IP address

Hooking up native code: https://flutter.io/docs/development/platform-integration/platform-channels

Native code for getting a list of peers: https://www.developerlibs.com/2017/03/at-top-speed-share-files-with-wi-fi.html

Add a controls-only screen

Add a screen where the controls are the main content and make it adjust its layout appropriately when used in landscape - you should be able to flip between this and the playlist view.

Request: Adjust Subtitle Time/Delay

For when subtitles inevitably and unexplainably go out of sync.

Setup wizard(s)

• Setup for VLC
  • Choose your OS
  • OS-specific instructions and screenshots
• Connection setup
  • Scan network for port 8080 once VLC is configured #2

Equalizer

Status response item with equalizer disabled:

<equalizer/>

status.xml?command=enableeq?val=1 enables the equalizer, or 0 to disable it

Response with equalizer enabled:

<equalizer>
  <presets>
    <preset id="0">Flat</preset>
    <preset id="1">Classical</preset>
    <preset id="10">Party</preset>
    <preset id="11">Pop</preset>
    <preset id="12">Reggae</preset>
    <preset id="13">Rock</preset>
    <preset id="14">Ska</preset>
    <preset id="15">Soft</preset>
    <preset id="16">Soft rock</preset>
    <preset id="17">Techno</preset>
    <preset id="2">Club</preset>
    <preset id="3">Dance</preset>
    <preset id="4">Full bass</preset>
    <preset id="5">Full bass and treble</preset>
    <preset id="6">Full treble</preset>
    <preset id="7">Headphones</preset>
    <preset id="8">Large Hall</preset>
    <preset id="9">Live</preset>
  </presets>
  <bands>
    <band id="0">0</band>
    <band id="5">0</band>
    <band id="6">0</band>
    <band id="9">0</band>
    <band id="1">0</band>
    <band id="3">0</band>
    <band id="8">0</band>
    <band id="2">0</band>
    <band id="7">0</band>
    <band id="4">0</band>
  </bands>
  <preamp>12</preamp>
</equalizer>

• status.xml?command=setpreset&val=${id} sets a preset
• status.xml?command=preamp&val=${val} sets the preamp value (-20 dB to 20 dB in steps of 0.1)
• status.xml?command=equalizer&band=${id}&val=${val} sets an eq band value (-20 dB to 20 dB in steps of 0.1)

Band ids (starting from 0) correspond to the following frequencies:

• 60 Hz
• 170 Hz
• 310 Hz
• 600 Hz
• 1 KHz
• 3 KHz
• 6 KHz
• 12 KHz
• 14 KHz
• 16 KHz

Unable to change audio or subtitle track

The buttons for selecting audio track and subtitle track are greyed out and do not function even if the video has multiple tracks for both.

App not found in playstore anymore

Has this project been abandoned?

Add Stream to Chromecast

Submit app to F-Droid

Sample metadata file for a Flutter app: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/blob/master/metadata/com.nikhiljha.lobstersapp.yml

"Unhandled error" when scanning network for VLC

control speed playback

should give same fine control (increments of 0.1) just as pressing { and } on player,
most other apps don't allow for fine control, just x1.5
This would be great, thanks

control volume with phone volume keys

while watching something it's much more convenient and easy to control volume (for loud explosion scenes) using your phone keys than requiring to look at screen and carefully touch controls.

Show file type icons in the playlist view instead of the stop icon

[Feature] Shutdown Button

Hi, can you put a button to shutdown Windows?

Subtitle support

• Selecting a subtitle file for the currently playing media

Start browsing in same directory as current playing file.

?command=addsubtitle&val=<uri>

• Selection of an available subtitle track.

Should be returned as part of the status listing - store in BrowseItem for later use.

?command=subtitle_track&val=<val>

Feature Request: dark mode

Please add the Dark Mode.

When watching a movie and controlling it with this app, normally the lights are off and the White mode here is much too bright.

Thank s
Frank

Add ability to take a screenshot

snapshot command in the API

Feature Request: long jump etc.

Hello
Please add all jumps not only the short jump.
Long jump, very long jump, very short etc.
Thanks
Frank

Can't set different connection at "Trying to connect to VLC.." in v1.4.1

In the new version it's now impossible to change the connection to a different IP address (no button), when the app is unsuccessfuly trying to connect to a previously set connection:

Play/pause controls on the lock screen

Show password (eye icon). Nonintuitive functionality.

It shows the password when you hold the touch on the icon.
It would be more convenient that the icon switches the password visibility. So it would be easier to enter a password.

Add VLC volume control

set volume level to (can be absolute integer, percent or +/- relative value):

 ?command=volume&val=<val>
 Allowed values are of the form:
   +<int>, -<int>, <int> or <int>%

Implement commands for use when watching VLC on your computer

As requested in this review: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jbscript.vlcremote&reviewId=gp%3AAOqpTOH-PaOHgwWZD7xKvOmYhQ-raQcJ9H-wSZj___3DSDDesPi6GZlq8PQZnEoTCrvwSxWCLpINCUcTTmoGBA

Fullscreen is definitely possible: https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_HTTP_requests#Full_command_list

Grey screen after successful login

After updating to 1.10, the phone graphic comes up with the 'connecting' animation, and then immediately jumps to a blank grey screen. If I can hit the settings gear icon, it verifies connection, but when exiting back to the main screen, it is just blank grey. It appears that there is a problem with the 'display menu only on successful connection' conditional.

Fake play time instead of sending a request every second

Can we figure out the player's real time using the whole-second times returned from the API?

Reset when performing any operations which return the current time.

Use occasional calls to reset.

F-Droid/Izzydroid Release

Alternative to playstore release, great for devices without google services

Add option to open network stream on VLC

Would be useful to start VLC playback for NAS files, youtube videos, etc...
This capability can potentially be expanded to play content from URLs shared via other applications.

Non-latin characters shown incorrectly in file browser

Error when connecting VLC

Hello,
I just installed VLC Remote (1.4.2) on my Smartphone (Samsung A41 Android V11).
I have configured VLC (3.0.9.2) on my Linux PC (Mint 20.3) as indicated in the App.
I get this error when I try to connect to VLC (tested with ports 4212 and 8080):

Unhandled Error
Bad state: No element
#0 Iterable.first (dart:core/iterable.dart:520)
#1 VlcStatusResponse.state (package:vlc_remote/models.dart:273)
#2 _RemoteControlState._statusRequest. (package:vlc_remote/remote_control.dart:313)
#3 State.setState (package:flutter/src/widgets/framework.dart:1233)
#4 _RemoteControlState._statusRequest (package:vlc_remote/remote_control.dart:311)

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Support for multiple VLC connection profiles

For multiple computers

Volume control has no effect

App version 1.1.1 installed from Google Play.

The volume slider has no effect on VLC volume. The issue seems to come from a wrong command sent to VLC. Requested URI is: /requests/status.xml?command=volume&val=<float> when VLC wiki states:

 Allowed values are of the form:
   +<int>, -<int>, <int> or <int>% 

See the screenshot of wireshark capture:

Feature Request: Local URL Playlists

It would be a huge convenience to be able to save local playlists populated with urls for web content.

Some for loop with --enqueue for each item in the playlist, as vlc does not have functionality to do this remotely.

Also grab metadata and display for urls in playlist.

Bad state: No element error in VlcStatusResponse.state when a password hasn't been set for VLC's HTTP interface

When a password isn't set, VLC returns this for /requests/status.xml:

Password for Web interface has not been set.

Please use --http-password, or set a password in

Preferences > All > Main interfaces > Lua > Lua HTTP > Password.

This message is localised, so if the response isn't valid XML and contains --http-password we can prompt the user to enter a password and restart VLC, with a link to the guide docs if they need it.

Add previous/next title/chapter buttons

JSON vs XML

I didn't realise the VLC HTTP API also supports JSON responses (just switch the extension from .xml to .json in request URLs) 🤦‍♂️ - is there any performance benefit to switching from XML to JSON?

Being able to drop the xml dependency should also slightly reduce the size of the app.

iPhone version

There's no iPhone version as I don't have an Apple Developer account (I can't justify $99 USD per year to build hobbyist apps for a device I don't even own) - I'll happily have a go at building and publishing an iPhone version if somebody wants to sponsor the account cost.

[Feature Request] Search Playlist

Description

With big playlist is hard to find any items, like in VLC filtering playlist items using the search.