video-wallpaper

Run a video as an animated live wallpaper on your Ubuntu/Debian-based Linux desktop with dual/multiple monitor support.

You can either run the application through its GUI or via the command line.

CLI usage: video-wallpaper.sh [--start] [--stop] [--startup true|false] "video_path.mp4"

--start Start playback of video wallpaper. 

--stop  Stop active playback.

--startup  Start/disable playback of video file on system startup."

Installation

git clone https://github.com/ghostlexly/gpu-video-wallpaper.git
cd gpu-video*
./install.sh

These commands will download the repository and will set up all the required dependencies, install the necessary files to your system and optionally create an app menu entry. Now you can either use the CLI or open the 'Video Wallpaper' app from your application menu.

If want to run the installer on a distribution that is not based on Debian, you may want to run the installer in distro-agnostic mode: ./install.sh --distro-agnostic. This will disable automatic dependency-checking and installing, which will not work on non-Debian distributions that don't use apt as their package manager.

Dependencies

All dependencies will be installed when running install.sh.

• python3
• python3-pyqt5
• xrandr
• pcregrep
• mpv
• xwinwrap

Uninstall

Run install.sh --uninstall to remove all files associated with video-wallpaper.

Changelog

2022/02/22

• Updated and corrected readme.md instructions.
• installer.sh now has a --distro-agnostic flag (see "Installation" section of this readme).
• Bugfixes to installer

2021/08/19

• Bugfixes to installer and autostart functionality

2021/08/17

• Bugfixes to installer and autostart functionality

2021/06/05

• Changed name to "video-wallpaper"
• Added an uninstall functionality
• Bugfixes to installer

2021/06/03:

• Added GUI front-end that handles video file selection and shell parameters and runs everything through to the shell script.
• Created installer to handle dependency checking and menu entry creation.
• Removed the xwinwrap binary from the files and added it as a dependency. The installer will download it from this repository as part of the installation process.
• Added configuration file that stores last used video file and process ID of currently active video wallpaper. That way, stopping video playback will only kill the mpv instance used by the video wallpaper, not all other instances of mpv (including ones that are possibly used for other types of video playback that the user does not want to close).
• Fixed an undesired behaviour where it was possible to start multiple video wallpapers after one another, leading to increased CPU load.
• General clean-up inside video-wallpaper.sh

Known errors:

• When sourcing settings.conf, video-wallpaper.sh will throw an error because it stumbles over the "[video-wallpaper settings]" section. This section, however, is needed by the python script. Since the shell script does not crash, this error message is tolerated for the moment until I get around to find a more elegant way than just sourcing settings.conf.