How to use a Video as a Wallpaper

Posted on 02. Mar, 2009 by Shawn Ramsey in Misc

This trick is a few years old, but surprisingly few people know about it. First off, if you’re not already using VLC Media Player for videos then get it now. It’s my primary media player because it recognizes all extension types allowing it to play any video. Okay, on with tutorial.

How to use Videos as Wallpaper:

1. Open VLC

2. Go to Tools>Preferences and click on “Video” on the left-hand side of the screen.

3. Within the “Video” screen, check mark the box for “Enable Wallpaper Mode” under DirectX. Then click “Save” at the bottom of the screen.

4. Now open any video in VLC player.

5. Right-click on the video and choose Video>DirectX Wallpaper

6. Minimize any windows including VLC and you will see the video playing in the background as a wallpaper.

NOTES: If the video appears to be square with black on the edges, then right-click on the video while in VLC and choose as Video>Aspect Ratio>(change to 16:9 or 16:10)

You will also want to put your video on a loop to keep it playing. Go to Tools>Playlist>make sure the video you want is in there and click the icon at the bottom until it says repeat all (refer to picture)

That’s all there is to it. Visit Dreamscene.org for a great place to download free videos made for this reason. They run on a short seamless loop so that your RAM is not taken advantage of.