A small tool that can play videos on your desktop. Only for Microsoft Windows 7 ~ 10(with GUI desktop). It may have some limitations because it's just a media player, putting it's window under your desktop icons. Maybe Wallpaper Engine's principle is totally different with this tool.

I created this tool only to play my favorite animation clips on my desktop, so I will never make it just like Wallpaper Engine. This tool will stay simple and will only play videos. It doesn't have as many functions as Wallpaper Engine has, but that's indeed what I want. Although this tool has the ability to show executables and web pages on your desktop, I don't want to add this kind of functions. However, if you really need it, you can fork this repository and do it yourself.

Suggestions and pull requests are both welcome.

My native language is Chinese and I'm not good at English. I use Google Translate to translate Chinese into English. I'm not sure about the accuracy of the translated texts. So if there is anything wrong in English translation, please inform me using GitHub Issues. Thanks a lot.

• Relatively small
• Multilingual support(translators needed)
• Supports almost all kinds of media files
• Supports play online media streams
• Hardware Accelerated Decoding support: CUDA, D3D11 and DXVA
• Low CPU and memory usage
• High performance
• High video quality
• HiDPI support
• Multiscreen support
• Support automatically run when the system starts
• Support auto update
• Various beautiful skins
• Abundant options
• Pure green: no need to install, no write to registry and no files left in your system
• No ads, free of charge, open source, etc...

Microsoft Windows 7 ~ 10(with GUI desktop), both 32 bit and 64 bit systems.

For official builds and third-party packages please see https://sourceforge.net/p/dynamic-desktop/ .

• Windows Vista and XP are not supported.
• This tool won't run if Windows Aero is disabled.
• Win7 users only: make sure you have installed XAudio2(Win 8/8.1/10 have installed it already by default).
• To experience Hardware Accelerated Decoding better, make sure this tool runs with your high performance GPU(on Optimus).
• The CPU and memory usage will increase enormously if you are using software decoding and that's normal, all media players will, don't worry.
• It would be very nice if you update your graphics card driver to the latest version.
• It's not recommended to run this tool in virtual machines, because the graphics card drivers of virtual machines are usually out-dated and even not completed.
• If there is no picture but sound, please switch the hardware decoding algorithm or just use software decoding. Because hardware decoding has many limitations while software decoding has not. In one word, IF YOU ENCOUNTER WITH ANY STRANGE PHENOMENA, TURN OFF HARDWARE DECODING.
• It's not recommended to change rendering engine again and again while it is playing videos, otherwise this tool is very likely to crash and I'm not able to help you in this kind of situation.
• Currently, hardware decoding only supports traditional video formats such as AVC/H.264, so please do not attempt to play HEVC videos if you are using hardware decoding.

• Clone or download(remember to download all the submodules together!) this repository:
  • First of all, download Git from https://git-for-windows.github.io/ and install it.
  • Run:

    git clone --recursive https://github.com/wangwenx190/dynamic-desktop.git

    or:

    git clone https://github.com/wangwenx190/dynamic-desktop.git
    git submodule update --init --recursive

    If a submodule update fails, try running:

    git submodule foreach --recursive git fetch --tags

    then run the update again:

    git submodule update --init --recursive

    Note that you can add -b master to the git clone command if you want to get the latest stable version instead of the latest development version
• Download Qt at least 5.6.3 from http://download.qt.io/archive/qt/ and install it. Using the latest version is highly recommended.
• Download FFmpeg SDK and extract to ffmpeg. Of course, you can extract to anywhere you want, just add ffmpeg_dir = your own FFmpeg dir path to user.conf.

  • Zeranoe builds (recommended): https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/

    Git and stable versions, shared libs only, full builds only

  • QtAV builds: https://sourceforge.net/projects/avbuild/files/windows-desktop/

    Git and stable versions, shared and static libs, full and lite builds

  • Shift Media Project builds: https://github.com/ShiftMediaProject/FFmpeg/releases/latest

    Git and stable versions, shared and static libs, full builds only

• Open "dynamic-desktop.pro" and start compiling or call "build.bat". But remember to call "vcvarsall.bat" and add Qt's directories to your path variables before calling "build.bat".

• You can also use Intel C++ Compiler(ICC), Clang or MinGW to compile it, just remember to set up environment variables. Cross compile on other platforms may also work, but it will never run on platforms other than MS Windows.
• You will need to build the static version of Qt by yourself if you want to get rid of the Qt dlls. Currently, this project only needs 3 repositories: qtbase(Qt modules needed: core, gui, widgets, network and opengl), qtsvg(SVG support) and qtwinextras(Taskbar Progress support). You can skip all other repositories to speed up the compiling process.

• Wallpaper: some code is copied from https://github.com/NoisyWinds/Wallpaper , Apache License 2.0, thanks to NoisyWind!
• FFmpeg: LGPLv3/GPLv3, thanks to the FFmpeg project!
• QtAV: LGPLv3/GPLv3, thanks to wang bin!
• Qt Nice Frameless Window: some code is copied from https://github.com/Bringer-of-Light/Qt-Nice-Frameless-Window , MIT, thanks to Bringer of Light!
• Qt and QtSingleApplication: some code is copied from https://github.com/qtproject/qt-solutions , LGPLv3/GPLv3, thanks to the Qt Company!
• src/resources/stylesheets/Default.css: copied from https://github.com/u8sand/Baka-MPlayer , GPLv2, thanks to Daniel Clarke!
• src/resources/stylesheets/Greenery.css, src/resources/stylesheets/Marsala.css, src/resources/stylesheets/Rose Quartz & Serenity.css, src/resources/stylesheets/Ultra Violet.css: created by Yuriko, thanks a lot!
• src/resources/icons/color_palette.ico, src/resources/icons/color_palette.svg: downloaded from https://www.easyicon.net/
• src/resources/icons/minimize.svg, src/resources/icons/close.svg, src/resources/icons/circle-light.svg, src/resources/icons/exit-light.svg, src/resources/icons/info.svg, src/resources/icons/mute-light.svg, src/resources/icons/next-light.svg, src/resources/icons/options-light.svg, src/resources/icons/pause-light.svg, src/resources/icons/play-light.svg, src/resources/icons/playlist-light.svg, src/resources/icons/previous-light.svg, src/resources/icons/sound-light.svg: downloaded from http://www.iconfont.cn/
• src/resources/icons/checked.svg, src/resources/icons/down-arrow.svg, src/resources/icons/selected.svg: copied from https://github.com/u8sand/Baka-MPlayer