Seeking Windows Random Image Viewer and Random File Opener?

April 15, 2011 2:45 PM

I'm looking for two free Windows applications: a full-screen randomized slideshow, and a random file opener. Slightly more detail inside the fold.

Random slideshow image viewer: I'd basically like to open the application, have it preset it to pull images from a particular folder and display them scaled to full screen, and when I hit the space bar, have it pick another random image from the same folder. The closest I've found is Irfanview, but its "next random image" is Ctrl-M.

Pick random file: A long while ago, I ripped all the DVDs I own to MP4 files and placed them in a movie folder. I'd like to click on this application and have it choose a random file from that folder and open it up. They're already configured to appropriately open up in VLC, etc., so all I need is for it to open it in whatever the file's natural application is.

Ideally, both of these applications would have very little GUI, aside maybe from folder selection -- they'd just fairly seamlessly perform their function.

I've been in Windows less than a year, so some things I'm really not quite clear as to how to do yet. On the Mac, GraphicConverter did the first one for me, and a Unix script did the second.

Thanks for your help.

posted by WCityMike to computers & internet (4 answers total)

Old versions of ACDSee used to do your random image viewer with spacebar advance. I'm not sure about the new versions, it got really bloaty when it went unfree. Luckily there's oldversions.com.
posted by sanka at 3:08 PM on April 15, 2011

For the random file chooser, you can use a little cmd script. Paste the following into Notepad and save it as choose-random.cmd:

setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set count=0
for /f %%a in ('dir /b *.mp4') do @(
	set filename[!count!]=%%a
	set /a count = count + 1
)
set /a choose = (%random% * 32768 + %random%) %% count
set chosen=!filename[%choose%]!
echo %chosen%
pause

If you copy that into a folder full of MP4 files and double-click it, you should see the name of a randomly selected MP4 file echoed to the console window before being asked to press any key to continue. If that works for you, replace the last two lines with start %chosen% and you should find that it launches a random MP4.
posted by flabdablet at 6:43 PM on April 15, 2011

Sorry, that replacement line should be

start "Opening %chosen%" "%chosen%"

instead of start %chosen%, so it still works for files with spaces in their names.
posted by flabdablet at 6:49 PM on April 15, 2011

Gah. Sorry, still not quite right for filenames that could contain spaces. Here's the complete corrected script:

setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set count=0
for /f "delims=" %%a in ('dir /b *.mp4') do @(
	set filename[!count!]=%%a
	set /a count = count + 1
)
set /a choose = (%random% * 32768 + %random%) %% count
set chosen=!filename[%choose%]!
start "Opening %chosen%" "%chosen%"

posted by flabdablet at 7:00 PM on April 15, 2011