I saw a demo of Vista's "DreamScene" which (amongst other things) allows you to have an animated background (ie. a video file) playing as the background picture.

It occurred to me that there should be some way of getting mplayer/xine/vlc/flash etc to play a video file/flash animation as the background in KDE through the "Background Program" function of the advanced options under the "Configue - Desktop" screen, but being the relative newbie that I am, I'm not really sure on where to start.

Can smarter minds than mine please help out! I can't believe that Windows could have something that hasn't already been figured out in linux!

Cheers....

<I really need a signature>


[moved from Software by spinynorman - welcome aboard ]

The animated backgroud is not a 'new' feature. Certain players i.e. VLC have always had the ability to play videos as wallpapers since win98, and possibly before that. This feature is missing in the VLC version under Linux (i don't know why), I too have been looking for a way to do exactly that. The closest I've got is getting a video file to play as my screensaver.

I think it has less to do with figuring it out, and more to do with exactly how useful and resource intensive it is. Note that E17 allows for animated backgrounds, but not videos. There is also a way to get screensavers and other things to play as or on top of your background, the only instructions i could find are here.

Thanks for that, although the instructions only relate to having xscreensaver run as the background to the GDM/KDM/XDM login screens, not as the regular background in KDE.

It was seeing the "play as background" option in VLC under XP that got me thinking that it might be able to be done in KDE, but as the previous poster said, this option is missing from the linux version!

Anyone else have any pointers/web pages that I can read to get this going? (esp. if I can turn it on/off at will, and easily change video files!)

Cheers!

Actually, it's to run the screensaver as background both in GDM/KDM/XDM and on your desktop after you login.

Beryl have a pluging that allow you to run movies/movie clips etc. in the background via mplayer.

Ssome TV player has option backgound. also great...Lex

The only thing that I have seen is a media player for M$ called BS Player. If you run a movie, press letter D and the is displayed on the desktop.

This is easily possible if you have xwinwrap and mplayer installed. Try running "xwinwrap -ni -o 0.3 -fs -s -st -sp -b -nf -- mplayer -wid WID -quiet -vo gl2 -ao alsa '/path/to/mpeg.mpg' -loop 0"