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Is it possible to open VLC to play certain video files when I click on specific links? For instance, is there a protocol I could use, like vlc://, which VLC would recognize?

Specifically, I've got some HTML pages that I've created to organize some videos I have, and I'd like to be able to click on a link to a video and have it open in VLC. Therefore, this also means that the videos are local, so it should be pretty easy for VLC to find the files and open them.

I'm on a Mac, by the way, and use Firefox.

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You could try setting up the site to force the file to be downloaded instead of displayed. Then just choose "Open" instead of "Save", and it will open in your default application; in your operating system set VLC as the default for that file type. HTML5 has support for downloading instead of viewing in page.

Something like this:

<a href="file:///C:/website/example.mp4" download="example">Example Video</a>

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    That's perhaps one way to do it. The problem with this, however, is that the file will still be downloaded rather than obtained locally. Even though the download will be instant since it's local, it will duplicate the file in a temporary directory, which is usually cleared on browser exit or system restart. So it's not the worse problem, but ideally I'd like a way to open the file directly if possible.
    – Gary
    Oct 6, 2014 at 4:24
  • @Gary If you're a Firefox user, running Windows 8, and don't mind a lingering command prompt, you may find this helpful: superuser.com/questions/821352/…
    – Robin Hood
    Oct 7, 2014 at 5:50
  • Sorry but I'm a Mac user using Firefox. I've updated my OP to reflect this.
    – Gary
    Oct 7, 2014 at 18:05

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