Raspberry Pi Video Looper for Trade Shows

This is a short tutorial on how to setup a Raspberry Pi to play video on a loop. My use case was for an HDMI projector at a trade show, but this could be used for any type of fixed display.

Even the $5 Pi Zero is capable of smooth 1080p!

Working a trade show, with Pi’s driving the monitors and video projector

Of course the $15 Pi Zero 2 works great as well. At the time of writing, the Zero 2’s can be difficult to find but most vendors get stock once per week and allow backordering. Digi-Key has been great for me.

Pi Zero & Pi Zero 2

Preparing the SD Card

1. Download and install the Raspberry Pi Imager
2. Download the pre-built custom video looper OS image from videolooper.de which is still being actively maintained
3. Run the Raspberry Pi Imager, click “Choose OS”, select “Use custom”, and pick the video_looper_v2.4.zip or whatever version you downloaded. You do not need to unzip this file.
4. Click “Choose Storage” and select the MicroSD card you are going to use
5. Click “Write” and wait for the operation to complete, then eject the card and put it into the Pi

Using Raspberry Pi Imager to select the custom OS from videolooper.de and write it to the SD Card

Configuration and Loading Videos

1. Access the SD card’s rootlfs partition, e.g. using Paragon Linux File System
2. Copy your H264-encoded videos into /home/pi/video
3. Edit /boot/video_looper.ini in any text editor and change the usb_drive option into file_reader

Power Consumption

When playing H264 video, the Pi Zero 1 consumes ~1.1W of power, and the Pi Zero 2 W consumes ~1.2W. It may be possible to reduce the Pi Zero 2 W’s power consumption by disabling certain background services.

Troubleshooting

• If the videos are not playing correctly, then try re-encoding them using Handbrake into H264 MP4 format.
• If the videos are choppy, try reducing the bitrate using options inside Handbrake.
• If the Pi doesn’t boot up correctly, try a different SD Card. I’ve had a lot of luck with Sandisk Extreme Pro, SP brand, and Samsung.

Other Resources

Raspberry Pi Imager: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-imager-imaging-utility/

Raspberry Pi Video Looper pre-built OS images: https://videolooper.de/

Pi Video Looper Github, which the pre-built images use: https://github.com/adafruit/pi_video_looper

A tutorial from Adafruit on this process: https://learn.adafruit.com/raspberry-pi-video-looper/overview