43

Sometimes you kill a movie player before the movie ends, and when you reopen the movie on a later stage, instead of starting from the beginning, you want things to continue from where you left. Can VLC do the same?

6
  • No, VLC can't do that sadly. Have you tried to check the preferences? Dec 28, 2010 at 8:01
  • I made a quick check, and there's way too many to look through each one.
    – tshepang
    Dec 28, 2010 at 13:27
  • I know this isn't an answer, but I think the most valuable plugin for VLC would be one where you can enable a hot key to log a specific moment in a video/audio file so you could time stamp things for annotation or later editing. It would be a godsend for a lot of us who use VLC religiously and want to remember specific points in videos later.
    – tomcat23
    Feb 2, 2011 at 22:48
  • @tomcat23 This should be a bug report. You wanna take some time and go check their bug tracker? Who knows, maybe this specific bug has already been reported.
    – tshepang
    Feb 2, 2011 at 22:48
  • videolan.org/press/vlc-2.2.0.html "Resume playback where you left off. Supported on all the mobile versions of VLC for quite some time, it is now available on the desktop." Mar 1, 2015 at 23:38

8 Answers 8

17

No, it cannot.

This is currently tracked as an enhancement here: http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/5315

[edit] As of April 2015, this has been implemented and released in v2.2, but may still be buggy and/or not available in all OSes. See https://superuser.com/a/884693/109137

3
  • 3
    +1 for the enhancement ticket, which led me to a workaround (the vlc-srpos-plugin). -1 for the answer that was true last year but is (happily) partially incorrect now. Jan 22, 2013 at 21:14
  • 1
    FYI This has been implemented and could/should be in v2.2.0 -- trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/5315#comment:18 Sep 29, 2014 at 16:16
  • @G-Man - This is an invalid edit. Reg Edit is attempting to reply to previous comments. A new answer was already submitted with the new information.
    – Ramhound
    Apr 6, 2015 at 11:18
11

As of VLC version 2.2.0, released Feb 27, 2015, resume functionality is built in. Proof:

VLC automatic resume

I had to prod VLC a bunch before I started getting the resume prompt reliably. What seemed to get it showing was opening VLC by double clicking a media file, quitting, and repeating. YMMV.

For VLC prior to 2.2.0, the Resume Media extension reportedly offered this feature.

Credit to Colonel Panic and Jason Hanley for giving this answer in comments already.

2
  • It works on Mac OS but not on Linux (yet) Mar 29, 2015 at 1:12
  • 1
    Does this currently work on Linux? I found it was already on "Ask" yet I have never been asked (Ubuntu 20.04, VLC 3.0.16 Vetinari).
    – Kvothe
    Feb 17, 2022 at 18:08
10

There are two methods I've discovered for remembering play position in VLC (works for any media, not just movies):

(A) The vlc-srpos-plugin (was hosted on Google Code, now in Sourceforge, but doesn't seem to be using any of the SF features(code, issues, forum, etc.)).

Windows installing consists of putting files libsrpos*_plugin.dll into {VLC installation folder}\plugins.

For Linux install libvlc-dev and then build plugin module ./configure && make && make install. (Use configure options to specify VLC include/library/output paths, e.g. --with-vlc-*-path.

Enable the plugin with:

  • Start VLC player; Open preferences window (menu Tools->Preferences);
  • Select 'All' in 'Show settings';
  • Open Control interfaces panel (Interface->Control interfaces);
  • Check 'Save/restore position of the last played files' checkbox;
  • Click 'Save' button;
  • Restart VLC player.

Position markers are saved in %APPDATA%\vlc\srpos.ini (on Windows, adjust accordingly for 'nix) and consist of seconds url_path:

35.648476 file:///P:/Music/Incoming/Various%20African/Ngangiboshiwe.mp3
10.370394 file:///P:/Music/Incoming/Taiko-Drumming.mp3

(B) If you don't like installing binaries blindly, there is also a lua extension called Remember position. Unlike the plugin which automatically remembers the stopping point in whatever you play, this functions more like a bookmark, in that you manually set the resume point for each file.

Installation:

Save the script as mempos.lua and:

For a single Windows user or without admin privileges: place in %APPDATA%\vlc\lua\extensions (might have to create the lua and extensions folder).

For all Windows users, place in %ProgramFiles(x86)%\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\extensions (might have to create extensions folder).

For Ubuntu put in: ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/extensions

Usage:

Mark your place in the media file with View >> Remember position menu item, then exit VLC.

To resume: open the same media file, hit Remember position, and playback will jump to the marker. (Or activate the menu toggle when first opening vlc, and then when opening the file playback will resume immediately; see here.)

Position markers are saved in %APPDATA%\vlc\pos.txt and consist of filename.ext = seconds:

filelist={
  ["IMG_0104.mp4"] = 27.6482130,
  ["1-Feb 21 2013 Right View.mp3"] = 1057.5074390,
}
3
  • Just wrote a german blog about this: kwoxer.de/2016/03/23/… (many pictures for a step by step tutorial)
    – kwoxer
    Mar 23, 2016 at 20:33
  • 1
    @kwoxer that's a very nice companion piece for people using VLC less than v2.2 , I can follow it easily even though I don't read german. Note that as of v2.2 continue playback is a core feature (ref), though reportedly it may not be reliable yet. Mar 24, 2016 at 15:33
  • Well it's so easy to disable by just deleting all the files. But thanks for your hint. :)
    – kwoxer
    Mar 29, 2016 at 6:49
3

2019 Response - For VLC 2.3+, you can do this with recent versions of VLC - preferences -> show all settings -> Interface -> Main interfaces -> QT -> Continue playback -> drop down settings. I use the always setting and it works great. You'll also need to check the "continue playback?" box in the simple settings interface tab near the bottom. Note that implementation on Windows is slightly different than on mac/linux - this response applies to Windows machines.

3

It was implemented after 9 years.., on vlc v.3.0.11:

Go to tools - Preferences and check in the interface section "Do you want to continue playing?"

My interface is in a different language so it could be a bit different.

1
  • this is a built-in solution! great! I just changed 'Continue playback' to 'always' and that's it. this should be the accepted answer
    – fuser
    Dec 18, 2021 at 15:43
0

You can add bookmarks , but I believe they are also lost once you have closed the application . Currently there is no way of doing what you are trying to do .

Update

There is a solution for this issue now , you need to download the addon Remember position When enabled, this extensions remembers the last position for all video files played, automatically resuming playback where you finished last time.

0

For VLC version 3.0.12 upon exit it updates the following file:
C:\Users\name\AppData\Roaming\vlc\vlc-qt-interface.ini
I don't know what version began this.

Look at the bottom of the file for the [RecentsMRL] section. The item "list" contains the name of the file most recently closed. The item "times" contains two values separated by a comma. The first value indicates the number of seconds into the movie when closed, or zero if played to completion. The value denotes milliseconds so divide by 1000.

To use this information invoke VLC with one space --start-time=xxxxx, one space, and the path to the movie in quotations. Use two dashes in front of start time. Other information in vlc-qt-interface.ini will allow positioning of the window to the same place when closed.

For my movie application I inspect vlc-qt-interface.ini when VLC closes, and if the time has a non zero value I persist that in the database, to use as a command line option the next time I open the same movie.

--EDIT--

I made the following VBScript file to make a desktop shortcut, invoking VLC for the last movie viewed and start time. It saves me time since I record sessions with users and I can stop the video, run the script, then rename the shortcut to what we're talking about at the time.

const ToRead = 1
const ToWrite = 2
const ToAppend = 8
video_file = ""
video_position = 0
set ws = createobject("WScript.Shell")
ini_file = ws.expandenvironmentstrings("%APPDATA%") & "\vlc\vlc-qt-interface.ini"
set fso = createobject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
if not fso.fileexists(ini_file) then
  msgbox ini_file & " not found"
  wscript.quit
  end if
with fso.opentextfile(ini_file,ToRead)
  sw = false
  while not .atendofstream
    a = .readline
    if left(a,1) = "[" then sw = false
    if ucase(a) = "[RECENTSMRL]" then sw = true
    if sw then
      if ucase(left(a, 6)) = "TIMES=" then video_position = clng(split(mid(a, 7), ",")(0)) \ 1000
      if ucase(left(a, 5)) = "LIST=" then video_file = split(mid(a, 6), ",")(0)
      end if
    wend
  .close
  end with
shortcut_file = ws.expandenvironmentstrings("%USERPROFILE%") & "\desktop\vlc_last_vid.lnk"
if fso.fileexists(shortcut_file) then fso.deletefile shortcut_file
with ws.createshortcut(shortcut_file)
  .arguments = "--start-time=" & video_position & " " & video_file
  .targetpath = """C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe"""
  .windowstyle = 1
  .save
  end with
j = video_position \ 60
msgbox video_file & vbcrlf & _
       "time " & right("0" & j,2) & ":" & right("0" & (video_position - (j * 60)),2) & vbcrlf & vbcrlf & _
       shortcut_file
-4

Nope you can't I've checked everything and everywhere.

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