The command open bla.avi -a vlc
works because OS X is using its Launch Services database to open the application VLC. This doesn't have anything to do with a command line binary of the same name, which isn't installed by default.
The binary you search for is in the VLC.app
package, so you can type that into a terminal:
/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -I rc
This will open the interactive command line VLC. Or, execute the following in order to have the above line registered as an alias to vlc
:
echo "alias vlc='/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -I rc'" >> ~/.bash_profile
Once you've added this, you need to restart your Terminal. Now type vlc
and you'll get to the command line.
If you don't like the interactive interface or would like to use VLC
with other options, you need to edit your ~/.bash_profile
accordingly, e.g. through open -e ~/.bash_profile
.
1What is your question here? Are you just looking for the command? What have you tried? – Baarn – 2012-12-19T16:21:01.203
Under linux when I issue
vlc
in terminal it tells me to usecvlc
I guess it would be the same under OSX. – Baarn – 2012-12-19T16:22:27.440So I'm assuming that you downloaded VLC... it should ship the needed command line tools with the program... it can do transcoding, streaming, "etc", but you need to provide a specific use case in order for us to provide any detailed information. – allquixotic – 2012-12-19T16:22:44.390
please don't write it doesn't work because I am pretty sure that it works, just not in the way you expect it to. So please tell what you want and what you get instead. – Baarn – 2012-12-19T16:31:19.970
And by the way
man vlc
– Baarn – 2012-12-19T16:33:11.933@Informaficker have you actually used vlc cli on OSX? Looking at "I guess" it looks like you haven't. Please please stop giving false information unless you're sure what you're saying. ps. man vlc on OSX doesn't work either. – lang2 – 2012-12-19T16:40:49.390
@lang2 I am trying to help you here, but you seem not willing or able to explain what you are expecting from vlc, what you tried and what you want to do. – Baarn – 2012-12-19T16:50:19.123
Eg how did you install vlc, from where are you trying to execute, have you added vlc to your path? – Baarn – 2012-12-19T16:52:05.240
3@allquixotic Unfortunately, on OS X, VLC doesn't install the command line version. – slhck – 2012-12-19T17:34:09.390