Python Builds

VLC_NowPlaying 1.7.1

Author: Tipher88
Contributors: AbyssHunted, Etuldan
Date: 20190227

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This is a script that allows you to create a NowPlaying.txt file to display song information from VLC.

While developing this script I used VLC v2.2.4-v3.0.4 and Python v2.7/v3.4-7.

Link to script on OBS Forums

Console Output:

NowPlaying.txt, contains only the current song + separator::

NowPlaying_History.txt, contains all songs played with a timestamp for reference:

Updates

Version 1.7.0
    - Fixed UnicodeEncodeError caused by improper encoding

Version 1.6.0
    - Added handling for Unicode BOM as well as some minor optimizations

Version 1.5.0
    - Unicode characters should now be supported in the meta-data
    
Version 1.4.0
    - The script should now handle escaped characters (such as &)
    
Version 1.3.0
    - The script now generates another file: NowPlaying_History.txt
    
Version 1.2.0
    - Added support for the now_playing metadata tag
    
Version 1.1.0
    - Tweaked script in order to support Python v3.x

Usage

python NowPlaying.py

Dependencies

Python (https://www.python.org/)
    requests (http://www.python-requests.org/en/latest/)

Instructions for using the script:

The directions assume default VLC settings for the Web Interface before starting.

Extract the contents of the .zip to a location of your choosing

VLC:
    1. Open VLC
    2. Go to Tools -> Preferences
    3. On the bottom left select the All radio button in the Show Settings
        group
    4. Click Main Interfaces item in the list on the left
    5. Check the Web check-box
    6. Click the drop-down arrow next to the Main Interfaces item to expand
        the selection
    7. Click the Lua sub-item
    8. Set a password in the Lua HTTP group
    9. Make sure the Source Directory in the same group is set to something
        similar to: C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\lua\http
   10. Click the Save button
   11. Close and re-open VLC

Check to make sure Web Interface is active:
    1. Open an internet browser and go to:
        http://localhost:8080/requests/status.xml
    2. Leave the username blank and type in the password you set in VLC
        step 8
    3. If the resulting page is in the form of xml (a bunch of tags with
        names) then the Web Interface is working

Modify the script:
    1. Search the script for the term "CUSTOM" to look at the items you can
        change, they are currently as follows:
        a. The separator string
        b. The password to the Web Interface (needs to match VLC step 8)
        c. The name of the generated file (default is NowPlaying.txt)
        d. The amount of time to wait between checks

Run the script:
    1. Open up your preferred console/terminal used to run python scripts
    2. Change the directory to the location you extracted the .zip to
        initially
    3. Run the command: python NowPlaying.py
    4. Start playing songs in VLC media player
    5. You should see the song info show up in the console
    6. You should see a NowPlaying.txt file appear with the song
        information text and separator appended to the end
    7. You should see a NowPlaying_History.txt file appear with the song
        information as well as a timestamp for reference
    8. Keep the script running while you stream
    9. Enter ctrl + c to exit the script once you are done streaming

OBS (optional):
    1. Add a text source to OBS with the "Use Text From File" pointing to
        the file generated from the script