Play only audio with VLC

Question

Is there any way to launch VLC from the command line such that it will not play the video, only the audio, of an MP4 file?

Answer 1

You can start vlc from the command line by:

vlc --vout none /path/to/file.mp4

So vlc uses no video output module and the video will not be played, only the audio.

See chapter 2 of the user guide for all input and output modules of vlc.

You can bring vlc to nearly everything. I thought there was also a option to make me a sandwich.

Answer 2

Although vlc --vout none /my/video.mp4 accomplishes sound without video, it still opens vlc's GUI. The command I use runs it entirely in the command line:

cvlc --no-video /my/video.mp4

No video, only sound, and no GUI. You can still express it in terms of a vlc video output module:

cvlc --vout none /my/video.mp4

Just as an example, you can randomly play a directory of music right from the command line with:

cvlc --random /my/music/directory

You can delve pretty fair into this program by reading vlc -H. The number of different things vlc can do is quite mind-bending!