[PLUG] Play a video from the command line?

Bill Barry bill at billbarry.org
Thu Dec 13 02:54:07 UTC 2018


On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 2:47 AM Dick Steffens <dick at dicksteffens.com> wrote:

> Searching tells me that Mplayer is supposed to be able to play a video
> from the command line. (I haven't had time to learn more.)
>
> What I want to do is to be able to initiate the playing of a video on
> computer A from computer B, but have the video output stay on computer
> A. I have a computer with HDMI out connected to the TV. For watching
> videos, that's fine, except the controls for starting and stopping are
> hard to see from across the room. Years ago I wrote a web based program
> to play audio on a computer connected to the living room stereo that let
> me do that from any other computer in the house. I used the command play
> to do that. It worked fine. I'm hoping I can do something similar with
> video.
>
> I suppose another approach would be to use one of the tools that can
> take over one computer from another, where the video would show up on
> both computers. That would meet the requirements, too.
>
> Anyway, has anyone done anything like this with Linux?
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Dick Steffens
>
> __________________


It has to do with setting the DISPLAY environment variable correctly

Here is an explanation
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/76751/playing-a-remote-movie-on-the-remote-computer


the short answer is that you could try

export DISPLAY=:0
mplayer /path/to/movie.mpg

assuming :0 is the right local display.

Bill



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