Programming :: VLC Control With Perl Sending Via Serial Connection?

My computer for a project I'm working on will be using Ubuntu with Perl and VLC from the repositories, if that matters at all. I'm not sure what I should/could use to accomplish this, but essentially I'm looking for Perl to be able to send predefined data via a serial connection based on the time within a song that VLC is playing.

A couple of the things that I've thought about after Googling a bit are SMPTE and subtitles/lyrics; I can't stop thinking that there's got so be a simple way that I'm just overlooking, though - most of the stuff I've found is for over-the-network applications, and that's overkill for this situation. All the subtitles/lyrics would have for text is hexadecimal values; all the SMPTE would do is keep Perl and VLC (playing audio) in-sync with each other. I would need either one or the other, but not both. Or, I could use something else...

I'm envisioning something like the setup below, I just don't know what else I need to make it happen.

Files:
song.mp3
timing.txt
script.pl

When I run "./script.pl song.mp3 timing.txt", VLC will open, and start playing "song.mp3", and the variable "$mils", for milliseconds elapsed, will be equal to zero. For each line in "timing.txt", the "script.pl" will assume the portion before an underscore is the "$time" for that line (time in milliseconds), and "script.pl" will assume that the portion after the underscore is the "$data", a three-byte hexadecimal value (such as "ff101f", or "011c00"), for that line.

I think that I will need to use two arrays, "@time" and "@data", such that the given line in "timing.txt" would read the same as printing: "$time[$line]".'_'."$data[$line]"."
" (if "$line" is the line number). My problem: jitter/stuttering playback. If VLC stumbles (which it sometimes does), and is a about half a second behind where it "should" be, but Perl didn't stumble, then I've got an out-of-sync issue.

Since Perl can't just count the time by itself to avoid synchronization issues, I've got two main ideas for getting this done: One way: Perl has to "read" where VLC is at, and use that as the "$mils" value. Then, if VLC delays/stubmles, so will Perl, but everything will still be in-sync. Alternative way: VLC has to "listen" to what Perl says "$mils" is at any given moment, essentially having Perl be in control of VLC's timing. This would make VLC "skip ahead" (to where it "should" be) if it starts to fall behind, thus keeping the two in sync.

I don't know which, if either, of these ways is best for my particular need. I would need "script.pl" to send "$data[$line]" over the serial connection when "$mils" == "$time[$line]". I already know how to send serial data from Perl, read files via Perl, and convert the hexadecimal number (if needed). I don't know how to "link" Perl and VLC so that they stay synchronized, and I am quite lost as to where to go from here.