VLC show file in folder

Question

I sometimes browse my short-length videos collection. Then I i.e. find some funny one and I want to copy it somewhere else or send it to a friend. The problem is, that the collection is really big, so I don't want to scroll it just looking on thumbnails.

The best option would be to open this file in a folder, so I would get explorer.exe with collection directory and the current video selected. But I cannot quite find that option in VLC. Do you guys know if there's one like this? Or maybe in a form of lua extension?

Answer 1

You can right click the video and choose information, then copy the path to the file, then press win+r and enter explorer.exe /select,c:\path\to\file.wmv

Edit:

I made a primitive lua extension that uses this command. Tested with vlc 3.0.4 on windows 10 x64.

usage:

• Save the script in the extensions folder.
• Play the desired video to make it the current playlist item(just selecting in the playlist is not enough.)
• Open the extension view->select_in_explorer
• Click the button "select in explorer" in the dialog window.
• The explorer should open with the file selected.

select_in_explorer.lua

-- "select_in_explorer.lua" -- VLC Extension

function descriptor()
    return {
        title = "Select in explorer",
        version = "0.1",
        author = "mb",
        url = "",
        shortdesc = "Select in explorer",
        description = [[opens Windows explorer and select the currently played file]],
        capabilities = {}
    }
end

function activate()
    dlg = vlc.dialog("Select in explorer")
    update_dialog()
end

function deactivate()
end

function close()
        vlc.deactivate()
end

function meta_changed()
    return false
end

function update_dialog()
    path = vlc.playlist.get(vlc.playlist.current()).path
    dlg:add_button("select in explorer",select_in_explorer, 1, 1, 1, 1)
    path_label = dlg:add_label(path, 2, 1, 1, 1)
    dlg:show()
end

function select_in_explorer()
    path = vlc.playlist.get(vlc.playlist.current()).path
    cmd = "explorer.exe /select,"..path
    io.popen(cmd)
end

Answer 2

Just for sake of completeness...

• on macOS you can right click > Reveal in Finder - which will highlight the file directly.
• on Windows, right click > Show containing folder [though in a large folder, that's going to be less useful]