How To disable specific decoders/demuxers in VLC

Question

I am looking to have playlists of mixed media(GIF, MP4, etc) for an artistic showcase of different animations from several collaborators and VLC is the clear first choice since it supports ordered playlists and we would like to be able to order these animations.

Unfortunately by default VLC does not play GIF format, however it does have the capability according to this post:

https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/6697#comment:5

As an end user of VLC, Is there a way that I can

"Comment out the GIF89a entry in the formats table in modules/demux/image.c"

Or will i need to modify source code and compile an altered libvlc? This would be very unideal.

As an aside, if anyone knows of an alternative media player which can handle gif and mp4 in the same playlist in a user ordered fashion, that would also be great. My current fallback is windows photos app with renaming items in a folder to play in a certain order, but this requires a person to be present to advance to the next item

Answer 1

mpv

mpv supports animated GIF and playlists:

mpv --playlist=<filename>

Or point it to a directory:

mpv /path/to/files

See man mpv, mpv --help, and the online documentation for more info on playlists.

VLC

You can get VLC to play an animated GIF:

vlc --demux=avformat input.gif

Or as playlist:

vlc --demux=avformat,any <playlist file or a directory>