NEWS

VLC Media Player is an Open Source Multimedia Player licensed with GPL that allows you to view videos and listen to audios in practically any format. VLC Media Player can play any video or audio format, including MPEG, WMV, AVI, MOV, MP4, MKV, H.264/AVC, FLV, MP3 and OGG, along with many others. It also supports Blurays, DVDs, VCDs, and several different streaming formats. Additionally, VLC Media Player is capable of reading incomplete files if they are corrupted or partially downloaded.

The application also supports several subtitle formats, like SRT, ASS, and other files extracted from disks. It allows you to customize the style, size, and placement of the subtitles on the screen. The interface is plain, but you are able to customize it with the skins that are available. Because VLC Media Player can be run by the command-line interface, Telnet, or a web navigator, its functionality goes above and beyond that of other media players.

VLC Media Player supports various plugins and is a modular platform and therefore supports, all the video formats. If the NPAPI plugin is clubbed with a VLC media player for pc, the users can also play the embedded videos of the websites. One can check the download preview of an incomplete file using this player.

• It plays all videos including webcams, devices, and streams.
• Plays almost all the codecs without the use of any additional codecs.
• It runs on almost all platforms.
• VLC Player can be without spending a buck.
• You can customize the VLC Player by changing its skin and installing extensions.
• It has plenty of music visualization options.
• It can play even incomplete and broken video and audio files.

Easy to Use

VLC’s UI is definitely a case of function over format. The basic look does, however, make the player extremely easy to use. Simply drag and drop files to play or open them using files and folders then use the classic media navigation buttons to play, pause, stop, skip, edit playback speed, change the volume, brightness, etc. A huge variety of skins and customization options mean the standard appearance shouldn’t be enough to prevent you from choosing VLC as your default media player.

Advanced Options

Don’t let VLC Media Player’s simple interface fool you, within the playback, audio, video, tools, and view tabs are a huge variety of player options. You can play with synchronization settings including a graphic equalizer with multiple pre-sets, overlays, special effects, AtmoLight video effects, audio spatializer, and customizable range compression settings. You can even add subtitles to videos by adding the SRT file to the video’s folder.

PROS

Versatile and free: VLC Media Player is completely free, and it allows you to play media in a wide variety of formats, many of which would not otherwise be immediately compatible with Mac. In this way, it eliminates the need to convert files before you can play them back and lets you get right down to the fun part.

Advanced features: While most users will probably only use this app to watch media, it does offer a few nice advanced features that more experienced users will enjoy. For instance, there are several basic editing tools that allow you to adjust various file properties to enhance your viewing experience.

CONS

Unwelcoming interface: VLC Media Player’s interface may be a bit intimidating to inexperienced users, as it’s quite bare-bones and utilitarian. And while it’s easy enough to figure out how to access basic features, finding the more advanced tools can take some determined poking around.