How to make my desktop background a video

[m420]

i want to make my desktop background a video. any help would be great.
thanks

[dagon]

Hi!

It's been a while since I did something like that but it went something like this old post:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/hoanga/200 ... on-ubuntu/

However things could have changed since.


Good luck!

[BostonPeng]

Just an FYI but it's pretty easy to do in KDE, in fact I believe they even have a package to help set things up for you. After quite a bit of searching and rummaging through my brain I found Animated Video Wallpaper on KDE-Look.

I know that probably won't help you but it may help fellow KDE users. I did find a topic on the Linux Questions forum that may help with some information from just last November. Again it's for KDE but the info should translate fairly easily to your DE.

[MattersNot]

I would use an animated gif. using the new ffmpeg

1st way using the older ffmpeg:

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ffmpeg -t 18 -ss 00:03:52 -i video.avi out%04d.gif

(for separate gifs)
the -t = duration of the gif which is 18 seconds. --ss = at what point in the video you want ffmpeg to start copying frames to gifs. out%04d.gif = so each gif is numbered sequentially.

then use imagemagick at the command line to merge all .gifs:

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convert -layers Optimize *.gif new_small.gif

or the easier way:

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./ffmpeg -i /home/user/Downloads/video.avi -vf scale=480:-1 -t 18 -ss 00:03:53 -r 30 -pix_fmt rgb8 /home/user/Downloads/your.gif

This has to be done in the directory your video is in.

Ive made 20 second duration gifs that run smoothly and with great quality - try and use hd video versions or higher quality videos to convert to gif.
This is one way to add animation to your theme. Just edit the theme.css file and replace the background jpg or logo png or whatever.

[highwind]

almost same question here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 1&t=170628