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videos:

This is a config file reference. Click for instructions.

This page is reference material which explains every setting and option for this section of an MPF yaml config file. See the instructions for config files for formatting and other details. See our guide to config file examples for more examples of real configs in action.

Valid in
machine config files YES ✅
mode config files YES ✅

The videos: section of your config is where you configure non-default parameter values for any video assets you want to use in your game. Note: You do not have to have an entry for every single video you want to use, rather, you only need to add individual assets to your config file that have settings which different from other assets in that asset's folder. (This section is part of the MPF media controller and only available if you're using MPF-MC for your media controller.)

More information on working with assets is in the Assets section of the documentation.

Each sub-entry in your videos: section is the name that MPF will use to refer to that asset. (In other words it's how you specify that asset in other areas of your config files.) The asset manager works by first scanning the file system to build up a list of asset files it finds. Then it looks at the config to see if there are any additional settings specified for each asset.

For example:

videos:
  intro_video:
    width: 100
    height: 70
    file: mpf_video_small.mpg

So in the example above, if the asset manager found a file called mpf_video_small.mpg on disk, then it will also see the intro_video entry in the config file and know that those two match. (The "match" is just based on the part of the file name without the extension, so the settings entry for intro_video: would match mpf_video_small.mpg and mpf_video_small.m4v. In other words, don't name two files with the same name if you want to keep them straight.)

Optional settings

The following sections are optional in the videos: section of your config. (If you don't include them, the default will be used).

events_when_played:

List of one (or more) events. Those will be posted by the device. Defaults to empty.

A list of one or more names of events that MPF will post when this video is played. Enter the list in the MPF config list format. These events are posted exactly as they're entered.

events_when_stopped:

List of one (or more) events. Those will be posted by the device. Defaults to empty.

A list of one or more names of events that MPF will post when this video stops playing. Enter the list in the MPF config list format. These events are posted exactly as they're entered. These events can be useful to trigger some action when a video has finished playing (like remove a slide).

file:

Single value, type: string. Defaults to empty.

Sometimes you might want to name a file one thing on disk but refer to it as another thing in your game and config files. In this case, you can create an file: setting in an asset entry. (Note the file: hello_face_300.jpg setting in the example above, and note that it includes the file extension.) In this example, you would refer to that image asset as hello_face even though the file is hello_face_300.

You might be wondering why this exists? Why not just change the file name to be whatever you want and/or who cares what the name is? The reason this function exists is because it allows for the separation of the actual file on disk from the way it's called in the game. For example, you could use this to create two sets of assets---one for a traditional DMD and one for a color DMD---and then you could refer to the asset by its generic name throughout your configs. (In other words, you could swap out assets for different physical machine types without having to update your display code.) That said, we expect that 99% of people won't use this file: setting, which is fine.

height:

Single value, type: number (can be integer or floating point). Defaults to empty.

The height of this video, in pixels.

load:

Single value, type: string. Default: preload

Videos are always streamed from disk (rather than preloaded into memory), so this setting has no effect with video assets.

priority:

Single value, type: integer. Default: 0

Loading priority of this asset.

width:

Single value, type: number (can be integer or floating point). Defaults to empty.

The width of this video, in pixels.

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