Python VLC MediaPlayer – Setting Play Rate

In this article we will see how we can set media play rate of the MediaPlayer object in the python vlc module. VLC media player is a free and open-source portable cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. MediaPlayer object is the basic object in vlc module for playing the video. We can create a MediaPlayer object with the help of MediaPlayer method. Media play rate is basically is the speed of the video, more the rate faster the video get played, default value is 1.0, in order to slow down the video set rate value less than 1.

In order to do this we will use set_rate method with the MediaPlayer object 

Syntax : media_player.set_rate(n) 

Argument : It takes float value as argument 

Return : It returns None

Below is the implementation 

Python3

# importing vlc module
import vlc

# importing time module
import time


# creating vlc media player object
media_player = vlc.MediaPlayer()

# media object
media = vlc.Media("death_note.mkv")

# setting media to the media player
media_player.set_media(media)

# setting play rate
# doubles the speed of the video
media_player.set_rate(2)


# start playing video
media_player.play()

# wait so the video can be played for 5 seconds
# irrespective for length of video
time.sleep(5)

Output : This media plays at the speed of 2x Another example Below is the implementation 

Python3

# importing vlc module
import vlc

# importing time module
import time

# creating vlc media player object
media_player = vlc.MediaPlayer()

# media object
media = vlc.Media("1mp4.mkv")

# setting media to the media player
media_player.set_media(media)

# setting play rate
# halves the speed of the video
media_player.set_rate(0.5)


# start playing video
media_player.play()

# wait so the video can be played for 5 seconds
# irrespective for length of video
time.sleep(5)

Output : This video slow down by 50%