Overlay Video Player on Hotkey for Windows

Question

I need to play short video clips (with sound) as a fullscreen overlay in Windows; this needs some kind of playback trigger - hotkey or midi.

Explanation: I'm doing classes in University, a screencap from my PC goes to projector, all students watch the projection and try to follow, usual stuff. The class can get a bit boring and from time to time I wanted to play something to wake people up (probably screaming goats, but suggestions are welcome). So the idea is to have few videos mapped to midi or numpad and trigger them at any point.

(This can be done with hardware video mixer, or using virtual camera and vj software, but that's not my question.)

Answer 1

You can do this by creating a shortcut on your machine to Windows Media Player and pass the "fullscreen" flag. The format looks like this:

"%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" "path\filename" /fullscreen

So this worked for me on my machine:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" "D:\junk folder\Bear.wmv" /fullscreen

To create the hotkey:

• Create a shortcut to a file
• Open the file properties for the shorcut
• In the middle to lower half, you should see the label "Shortcut key". Click on this textbox with your mouse cursor

• Press the key you want to be the hotkey.

  Ex: F5 key

  Do not press 'f' + '5'. Press the 'F5' key.

• Click Apply and Ok

Since this is for Software Recommendations, you can try out the freeware WinHotKey for an application that can help you with this. I have not tried out this software, so caveat emptor.