Decoupling VLC volume and system volume

Known bug : Ticket #3828 (new defect) : QT4 sends processed hotkey events forward, opened 4 months ago :

There is a bug in VLC 1.1.0 QT4 interface that causes processed hotkey events to forwarded. So if volume up key from keyboard is pressed, VLC raises the volume, but it also sends same hotkey event forward and because of this Windows Mixer also raises volume.

Same applies to mute, so both VLC and Windows Mixers are muted. Right way would be that VLC eats all hotkey events it has processed and forwards only those, that it doesn't process.

The only solution is to add your voice to this bug and in the videolan forums, until it's fixed.
Or, as VLC is open source, get the sources and fix the bug, which should be simple enough.

We need more info, such as your operating system and what are the volume keys on your laptop, and what do they generate.

However, you can still try to go into VLC Preferences, Hotkeys section, click on Volume up(down), and try to set or Clear their local and global key definitions. It would be interesting to know what effect this has on the problem.

Update: the previously suggested --volume argument no longer works.

In more recent versions of VLC, you may adjust volume manually via commandline parameter:

vlc.exe [file] --gain [value]

The value is documented in --help --advanced to be a float in range of [0.000000 .. 8.000000], but test show that higher, even much higher values are also accepted (tested up to few thousands).

The gain value is independent of volume value, eg. regardless of the gain value and effective volume, the in-application volume will show as 100% or any other preset value.

The argument is as of this moment not defined in the manual.

Example:

vlc.exe %HOMEDIR%\Desktop\movie.flv --gain 16