Omxplayer as background - working over the top

[NeoThermic]

Hi all,


As the title would suggest, I'm using a pi3 to create a fullscreen CCTV monitoring solution for a small site workshop, however i'd also like to be able to use the same display to work on - to pull up schematics, browse websites etc. The perfect solution in my head involves omxplayer instances in screens to watch the streams, but to have these somehow set up so they become the desktop background.

In other words, I'd be able to work as usual on the pi, but if i closed/minimized my windows i'd be able to see the CCTV camera feeds.

I have the streams working, multiple OMXplayer instances.Any advice would be helpful, im rather hoping there's a flag or modifier i can stick in my code to force these players into the background.

[jamesh]

The difficult is not in making the omxplayer instances appear on a different layer, but making the desktop transparent so you can see things through it. Not sure how possible that is.

[NeoThermic]

Even if i managed to do this, would I not still have to display my omxplayer instances on another layer anyway? (Ie, one behind the desktop?)

[dividuum]

Even if i managed to do this, would I not still have to display my omxplayer instances on another layer anyway? (Ie, one behind the desktop?)

Yes, but that's what the "-l" parameter of omxplayer is for. So that's not a problem. But if you place the video behind an opaque desktop, that won't help as the video is fully covered and thus invisible.

[NeoThermic]

Then I guess the real question is, how do I make my desktop transparent, without making the majority of the UI invisible in the process?

[RossDv8]

The difficult is not in making the omxplayer instances appear on a different layer, but making the desktop transparent so you can see things through it. Not sure how possible that is.

In x86 Linux I've been using 'shantz xwinwrap' (and still do) for video wallpaper on the desktop. If you google "xwinwrap devitt" you'll probably see lots of links about it and some images. The ones with ovals are videos playing inside and oval window on the desktop, others are playing full screen with windows, panels etc opening 'over' the video wallpaper.

Now this doesn't help us a lot, because xwinwrap is likely not available for ARM and definitely not in the Raspbian repo.
but I'm pretty sure the source code is still online, and Shantanu Goel modified existing code.
So porting xwinwrap to Raspbian might be a fun project for someone adventurous.

Most of my posts show it working on plasma 4 and 5, but I have had it running on most environments.

ChookChookWent Link to my posts about it:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=xwinwrap+devi ... a=software

Goggle Link:
https://www.google.com/search?newwindow ... CAg&uact=5

Shantanu's links:
https://www.google.com/search?newwindow ... CAs&uact=5

It is a totally unnecessary toy, but it is a lot of fun and doesn't use too much in overhead.
it works similarly to VLC set as Wallpaper, but 'properly'.
It is pretty.

Source should be here somewhere https://github.com/ujjwal96/xwinwrap if anyone is feeling adventurous. I have no idea if it can be made to work on the Pi, but with 4GB, if it can be compiled, and if the dependencies are available, it should run smoothly without too much overhead.
I don't know if a feed from omxplayer could be direected to it.