Collaborative playlist creation with python, vlc, and a dash of bash

1. Dependencies
2. Setup
3. Saving the Playlist
4. Cleaning Up
5. Notes

There aren't many dependencies for this program, though there are a few

1. This project uses Python 2.7 (You're more than welcome to try it on other versions, I just won't help you if something goes wrong!)
2. You'll need flask, pafy, and youtube-dl
   • I'm going to recommend using a python virtual environment
     • pip install virtualenv
     • virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python2.7 ./venv
     • source ./venv/bin/activate
     • You can exit the virtual environment with deactivate
   • You can install them with pip install flash pafy youtube-dl
3. You'll need VLC
   • You can install it with sudo apt-get install vlc (assuming you're debian based, otherwise just install vlc)

Setup is really simple once you have all the dependencies in order,

1. Open up a terminal and type
   • python __main__.py
2. Open VLC and set it up to run on only one instance
   • Tools -> Preferences
   • Click on "Interface"
   • Click "Allow only one instance"
   • Click on "Enqueue items into playlist in one instance mode"
3. Configure the VLC plugin "Now Playing in Texts"
   • You can download the plugin here
   • Copy the file over to /usr/lib/vlc/lua/playlist/ or /usr/share/vlc/lua/extensions/
   • Restart VLC (or launch it if it wasn't already open), click "View", and then click the checkbox next to "Now Playing in texts"
     • You might need to check this box every time you open VLC, I haven't found a way to enable it by default

And that's really it, the server is running! You should be able to get to it from http://127.0.0.1:5000, make some requests and then press play in VLC and the server will handle the rest!

Whenever you want to use it again, just open VLC (ensure that "Now Playing in texts" is enabled, one instance mode should stay enabled persistently) and launch the server using the same command!

If you would like to save the playlist, I have provided a script to combine the temporary playlist files into one file titled playlist.txt, just run createplaylist.sh from the directory it is saved in by default and it should handle the rest.

Because this script works by downloading the songs from youtube, you may wish to clear these files out. I have included two simple bash scripts, clearplaylists.sh and clearsongs.sh which clear out their respective parts. Make sure to run them from the proper directory (that being the directory that they exist in)! I made them separate scripts because you may wish to keep the songs and/or playlists

The only thing that I should really point out is that the server works by downloading the requests as an audio file from youtube then queueing them into VLC, therefore it will take up space on your machine while the server is running. The queue is also generated via creating files on the machine, these also take up space (and will make things a little confusing between sessions). You can take care of both of these by deleting the files in notes and songs, but please do not delete addtovlc.sh in the songs directory, that will break the auto queue feature.

• Make it look somewhat decent
• Somehow fix unicode handling (it did NOT like when I tried to add an Alt-J song, due to the logo
• Make a script that filters out Rick Rolls (and maybe other things as well?)