Perhaps the first thing we all learned about Windows operating system was how to change the desktop wallpaper (also called desktop background). I remember asking in school how I could set a picture of Michael Jackson as my desktop wallpaper in Windows 2000. After you have learned how to change the desktop wallpaper from one picture to another, some of you might have wondered if it is possible to set a video as your desktop background. Well, it is possible. You can use the popular and open-source VideoLan VLC media player to achieve this effect.
If you do not already have VLC Player on your computer, then you can download VLC Player from its website or from the link given at the end of this article. After installiing VLC media player on your computer, open any video file that is present on your hard disk. Fortunately, VLC media player can play almost any kind of media files. Now, select Video – Set as Wallpaper from the menubar in the VLC player. This would set the video being played as your desktop wallpaper. You don’t believe me? Press Windows logo key + D to minimize all the windows and see your Windows desktop. Alternatively, you can also click on the Aero Peek button in the bottom-right corner of your screen to show your desktop.
You might wonder what would happen if the video finishes playing. After the video has played to its full length, the video stops on your desktop and your usual desktop wallpaper appears back. To work around this, you can set a playlist with hours of different videos or you can set VLC media player to loop the video indefinitely. If in the middle of a video being played, you want to stop it and access your usual desktop, then you can right-click on the notification area icon of VLC media player and select Stop to stop the video.
VLC media player is an open-source and multi-platform media player. It is available for Linux, Windows and Mac as well. Interestingly, you can use VLC player to set a video as your desktop wallpaper in Mac and Linux too. You can download VLC Media Player from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/.