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Jan 10Using video as your background in Vista and doing it for free
Have you ever thought, man it would be cool to use a video as the background instead of a static picture like every other Joe in the world, I know you have and that’s why your here. Your probably telling yourself this is impossible, this is crazy man talk. Well its a feature I’ve always wished for and tried to do several times on previous operating systems with no luck but finally this feature comes in XP and vista and now W7 with their marvelous user XP(experience). Anyways you all know i can get long winded but I will use the KISS(Keep It Simple Stupid) principal and get to the point. So here we go: There are several commercially available apps out there that offer you the ability to use video as wallpaper but in this day and age who wants to pay for it, certainly not I, apparently Vista Ultimate has the ability to do this but you must download the add-on separately. This tutorial uses VLC 1.0 on Vista Business.
1) The first thing you need to do if you don’t already have it is to download VLC it’s a free video player that plays most video and audio files out there on the net and best of all its free.
2) After you install or update to the latest player run VLC and click Tools>Preferences. VLC will open in the interface screen on the right make sure there is a check in the ‘systray icon’ box (this will minimize VLC to the system try whem miimize thus clearing up the task bar.
3) Now lets set up the video desktop, click on the video icon on the left. The ‘Enable Video’ check box should be checked, for ‘Output’ select ‘DirectX video output’. Below the ‘Display’ section check the box under ‘DirectX’ that says ‘Enable wallpaper mode’. ‘Display device’ should be left at ‘Default’.
4)everything else should be left as is, click “Save”
5)Find the video that you wish to have playing as your new video background, I’m currently using a video I found online of a sunset/sunrise on a tropical beach with waves crashing in with no sound. It’s a low quality flash(swf) video but I hope to get my hands on a similar high quality video I can use during these cold winter months…yes I miss the beach.
6) Now that you have your video in VLC click VIEW(ctrl+L) to open “playlist” and add your video(s) to the list. At the bottom of the playlist window click on the repeat/loop icon, the reason for this is obvious…it will loop your videos.
7)Click play in VLC and BAM! Your video should be playing as your background.
The quick and Dirty option
Play the video in VLC player. Right click on VLC player and select Wallpaper
That should be it. The video should now play in your desktop background as a video wallpaper. If not you should follow the settings above.
Windows has released DreamScene which allows you to add video as wallpaper in Vista Ultimate but like all MS apps it has its limits and thus VLC is better because of its ability to play a wide variety of file types. But if you wish to use MS DreamScene you can get it at:
Windows DreamScene download via Windows Update.
Direct download link for Windows DreamScene (6.0.16455) to bypass WGA validation: windows6.0-kb929327-x86_b89227ba03f80f3571c48e970b667328b56731f3.cab
more detailed instruction on Dreamscape can be found here.