Animated Gif wallpaper

[rufwoof]

I would like my Puppy to have an animated gif as it's desktop wallpaper. Is this possible? If not can anyone suggest a way it could be attempted?

ps: If it isn't possible to have the whole wallpaper as an animated gif I would probably settle for having a portion of the desktop displaying an animated gif if it could be displayed without borders or title bar - eg: I could have a black desktop with an animated gif in the centre.
(Probably the gif portion would be incapable of supporting icons - but I could live with that if theres no other way).

This works ...

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mplayer -loop 0 -rootwin some-animated.gif

But eats resources, and you have to have the desktop (rox) off ... so no desktop icons (I use pcmanfm --desktop for desktop icon management and ran killall pcmanfm).

Attached image shows giffy.gif (a largish animated gif I downloaded) with that mplayer command running and with pcmanfm --desktop (i.e. rox pin) off.

[rufwoof]

Needs mplayer and rtmpdump and desktop turned off (just xorg and jwm, no rox pinboard or other desktop)

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mplayer -vf scale -zoom -xy 1280 -loop 0 -rootwin mms://media4.abc.net.au/broadbandkids/20070521_1500/story1hi.wmv

[rufwoof]

I use .jwmrc as the single control file (settings and startup), messy at present, but I've swapped out the desktop icons manager (pcmanfm --desktop) and instead call a script (that I've called wallpaper)

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   <StartupCommand>setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp</StartupCommand>

<!--   <StartupCommand>sleep 8s && pcmanfm --desktop</StartupCommand>  -->
   <StartupCommand>sleep 8s &&exec /home/user/Desktop/Docs/scripts/wallpaper</StartupCommand>
 
   <StartupCommand>numlockx</StartupCommand>
   <StartupCommand>sleep 8s && osmo</StartupCommand>
   <StartupCommand>sleep 4s && xrandr --output DVI-I-2 --mode 1280x768 --output DVI-I-1 --off;sleep 2s &&xrandr --output DVI-I-2 --mode 1280x720_60.00 --output DVI-I-1 --off</StartupCommand>
   <StartupCommand>sleep 8s && radiotray</StartupCommand>
   <StartupCommand>sleep 4s && libreoffice --quickstart</StartupCommand>
   <StartupCommand>sleep 4s && wicd-client --tray</StartupCommand>
   <StartupCommand>sleep 4s && volumeicon</StartupCommand>

that wallpaper script contains

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#!/bin/bash

cd /home/user/Desktop/Docs/scripts
echo lady-gaga-poker-face.mp4 >playlist
echo lady-gaga-judas1.mp4 >>playlist
echo lady-gaga-bad-romance.mp4 >>playlist
echo gossip-heavy-cross.mp4 >>playlist
mplayer -vf scale -zoom -xy 1280 -loop 0 -rootwin -playlist playlist

which just loops through the playlist indefinitely (loop 0) using the root window as the display (I scaled it to my screen resolution level of 1280x720 (720p)).

i.e. the wallpaper is animated in the sense that its a mplayer playlist of vids.

A neat thing is you can just add the desktop icons back in, in my case by running pcmanfm --desktop and the normal icon type desktop appears (and the vids still keep playing, but are sound only). Then stop the desktop ... and the vids appear again. i.e. toggle the desktop (icons) on and off as desired.

I think in rox you could do similar by setting

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rox --pinboard=xxxx

and unsetting (assign a empty value

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rox --pinboard=

Pulseaudio and pavucontrol is quite handy as a single frame shows all of the different channels that are playing and you can dial-up/down the individual channels (maybe turn down the 'wallpaper' to turn up the radio ... or a currently playing youtube ...etc.).

[rufwoof]

For ROX (tested under tahr 6.0.6 32 bit pae built from WoofCE with mplayer added in)

Turn the pinboard off with

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rox --pinboard=

And back on again with

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rox -p=$HOME/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPin

So if you've set a animation or video to play on the 'desktop', such as

echo $HOME/LadyGagaJudas.mp4 >$HOME/playlist
mplayer -vf scale -zoom -xy 1280 -loop 0 -rootwin -playlist $HOME/playlist

You can toggle between seeing the normal (rox pin) desktop icons, or the video/animation that's playing

Could be useful for a Puppy News type setup, perhaps where a weekly/monthly/whatever news video is downloaded and set to loop play on the normally hidden desktop, but where a toggle button/icon displays/hides that.

[greengeek]

Edited first post to also link to the following similar thread:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=113495

see also http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 184#954184

[Puppyt]

Ditto to what greengeek has noted - the two threads showing synchronicity and that great minds are evidently thinking alike - even as different approaches are used for the same aim.
It's all well above my ken, but I was wondering whether the approach outlined in this thread could be similarly used as a screensaver, calling up whatever the mediaplayer might be using in the background? I am using Wary5.5 on an old P3 laptop for the invalided live-in mother-in-law, and have deadbeef etc playing internet country music stations for her. It would be handy to have a large-text crawler of the track details etc. I can't find a mediaplayer that has such a function - perhaps I haven't looked hard enough. Just a thought. Feel free to ignore - cheers