Using iRed Lite for Fast Forward/Rewind with VLC

Found a way to use iRed Lite to activate Forward/Reverse jumps in VLC, e.g. for controlling video playback.

Can't use Applescript because VLC only supports a very limited range of Applescript commands, equivalent to the functions of the Apple Remote, i.e. there are no Applescript commands equivalent to the short/medium/long forward/reverse jumps available from the VLC menus.

Solution requires configuring of iRed Lite to use keyboard commands instead, and some minor preferences changes in VLC.

The default VLC keyboard shortcuts for Step Forwards/Backwards are Alt-Command-Left/Right - but these didn't work very well in iRed Lite. It seemed to (sometimes) interpret the remote operation as a Next command which jumps right back to the start when playing a video file.

A workaround was to change VLC Preferences to redefine the required Hotkeys to a simple character. I used "a" for step forward and "b" for step backward. As "a" is already in used, it is first necessary to clear the associated hotkey to free "a" up for reuse. "b" was not used by default, as are quite a few others so it is not essential to free up "a". Once the hotkey changes are saved, it is necessary to restart VLC for them to take effect.

Then, it is a matter of using the editor function in iRed Lite to create new actions using the "a" and "b" hotkeys and assign these to the left and right arrows on the remote. Thereafter, the remote left and right keys will activate a "short forwards jump" and "short backwards jump" in VLC which equates to a 10 seconds jump.

Holding the remote keys down will effectively fast forward/rewind as it sends the jump command repeatedly until released.

(Subsequently found an alternate and probably better way to generate multiple key presses with Applescript, so it may not be necessary to change the VLC preferences at all. Details available if anyone is interested.)

As a further variation, if desired, these or other hotkeys can also be assigned to medium or long jumps. Medium is 1 min - haven't tested long yet. I reassigned the "a" key to a "medium forward jump" and left the "b" as a short jump, so the behaviour is similar to Elgato Eye TV software in that the forward jump is longer to allow "skipping over unwanted content".

Another option, which I haven't tried yet, would be to assign double clicks in iRed Lite to "long" jumps in VLC. This would involve defining additional hotkeys in VLC corresponding to the "long" jumps.

When I later tried to program "long" jumps, I found these had been omitted from the Hotkey list in VLC preferences. So, medium jumps are the best that can be achieved.

I have deliberately avoided going into detail. Further details can be posted on request.