Making the arrow keys work in VLC

One of my big flaws with the VLC media player is that you can’t use the arrow keys to skip backwards and forwards in a video. It turns out that this is because the left and right arrow keys are already configured to mean “navigate around a DVD menu” and you can’t configure a key twice. So, if you need to use VLC for something, and you want the arrow keys to work, go into the settings and set the DVD navigate options to something other than Left and Right. Then configure “jump forwards” and “jump backwards” to Right and Left, and then it’ll work. God knows why it has to be this way, but at least if you do that it works.

6 Responses to “Making the arrow keys work in VLC”

  1. Good tip there Stuart.

    Also to note for those having trouble getting this to work:
    You have to enable ‘Advanced options’ in the bottom right corner of the preferences dialog if you want to ba able to change the DVD menu navigation keys.

    Karl Bowden
  2. Well, from a technical point view, VLC is one of the most advanced players.

    From a graphical interface view, VLC is one of the worst unpolished players. I also include hotkeys in the GUI category xD

    Dread Knight
  3. whatever

    Mårten
  4. any idea how to get the zoom setting to stick between tracks in the playlist ?

    sxpert
  5. Eh… I don’t know why my previous comment says Whatever… because that’s not what I wrote.

    I wrote: VLC uses ctrl-arrows and shift-arrows to move around in the stream, one moves further than the other. This is preferable to Totems jump forward far and backwards in smaller steps.

    Oh, and your link to VLC is wrong.

    Mårten
  6. Mårten: I actually quite like Totem’s approach, I must confess — I’ve configured VLC on my TV PC to work the same way.

    The “whatever” thing…there’s a bug somewhere in my commenting system that I can’t track down. Sorry about that. :)

    sil

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