What's the quickest way to start playing a movie after attaching power?

Question

I want my Raspberry Pi to start looping a predefined .mp4 movie (/home/oliver/awesome.mp4) as soon as possible after attaching power to the device.

This has to happen without any user interaction and I would prefer it if no OSD is distracting the playback. I want to use this next to a POS for entertainment purposes.

Would you be trying to set it up as a Splash page? also how long? — Kaminara, Jun 13 '12 at 00:51
The best way to do this varies depending on the distro. Which are you using? — Jivings, Jun 13 '12 at 00:56
"I want to use this next to a POS for entertainment purposes." Sorry, I couldn't help but laugh! ;) — berry120, Jul 03 '12 at 21:12

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:56

7

Firstly make sure you boot straight into X. For details on this, please see this question: Auto-start X-windows / gdm on the standard Debian build

Then edit your ~/.xinitrc file. It needs to contain the command that starts your media player:

vim ~/.xinitrc
omxplayer -p -o hdmi /home/oliver/awesome.mp4

This will make the video begin as soon as X does.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:56

Community

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answered Jun 13 '12 at 01:22

Jivings

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If you're going down this route for the answer, could you provide details on how to make your Pi go straight into X? – recantha Feb 20 '13 at 09:08
@recantha I think that would be out of the scope of this question. But you should be able to find it somewhere on this site. – Jivings Feb 20 '13 at 17:57
I know how to do it, it would just be a more complete answer if you provided the details. – recantha Feb 25 '13 at 13:53
@recantha See this question – Jivings Feb 25 '13 at 17:48
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omxplayer works also from the command line, so it's not necessary to start X at all. How about starting omxplayer from /etc/rc.local ? – Frepa Feb 26 '13 at 08:15
@Frepa Hm. Yes you're right. I forgot omxplayer just hijacks the GPU. – Jivings Feb 26 '13 at 19:12

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 06 '13 at 08:57

1

As proposed by Frepa, there is a faster way.

Here a way to auto login and start a script: http://www.akeric.com/blog/?p=1976

Sust make the script to start omxplayer with the video you want.

answered Sep 06 '13 at 08:57

DrakaSAN

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What's the quickest way to start playing a movie after attaching power?

2 Answers2