Autoplay video from USB Drive

Question

I have a client who makes DVDs of the work he does for his clients. Optical media was big in the 90s though has obviously been decreasing to the point where many of his clients don't own any DVD players of any kind even in their computers.

Is there any way that for his clients who are absolutely terrible with technology could have a USB thumb drive that when inserted automatically starts playing a video, possibly with a portable copy of VLC in example?

Answer 1

You can add autoplay information to the USB by creating an autoplay.inf file in the root of the USB drive and populate it like so:

[autorun]
;Open=PlayMe.exe
ShellExecute=PlayMe.exe
UseAutoPlay=1

Replace the PlayMe.exe parts with whatever program he chooses to use to launch his files. More info on configuring an autoplay.inf file can be found here.

Having said that, it is highly likely in this day and age that the computer will have disabled autoplay of portable devices. Most corporations and many home users have done this already for security purposes, to keep from spreading viruses and malware.

It might be best to have him save his work in a format that most computers can open by default, then add only that file to the USB drive and give simple instructions on finding the drive in Windows explorer and tell them to double click it. The autoplay.inf file can be used to give the USB drive a custom icon, which could help the less computer-savvy people to find the USB drive so they can click the file.