VLC

Did you know: You can launch VLC in a CLI mode with cvlc, and an ncurses interface with nvlc.

To capture video from my webcam I:

1. Use alsamixer to make sure the mic volume's on/up :)
2. Media > Open Capture Device (or Ctrl+c)
3. Make sure things are setup in Capture Mode, Video Device Name and Audio Device Name.
4. Instead of Play you want Capture

MIDI support is not included in the regular VLC package in Arch Linux. Supposedly it's included in the git version of the package in the AUR, but that's not currently building for me because of a Lua problem.

By default VLC will play the next thing in a playlist automatically. I needed to temporarily disable this when listening to a bunch of sound effects, so the next one would only play when you either double-clicked it, or pressed next.

Tools > Preferences > Playlist > Play and pause

☞ If you can't find 'Playlist' you're probably in the 'Simple' view. Check the radio buttons in the bottom left.

VLC doesn't have built-in support for Pipewire yet, but you can add it with vlc-plugin-pipewire (vlc-plugin-pipewire). After installing you just need to go into the audio tab in preferences and set Pipewire as your output device.

You can customise the file names screen shots are given with variables:

https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Format_String/

Some useful ones:

• $N - Name, as in the one you see in the VLC playlist, so depends on metadata and fallsback to file name.
• $F - Full name with path.
• $A - Date.