VLC is what many consider to be the “Hello World” of the video playback world. It is a media playback software that is like the Swiss Army Knife of the computer world. I have yet to see a video or audio file that VLC couldn’t handle. Not to mention one of the best parts is that VLC works on nearly all platforms, like Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD- I could go on.
Here’s basically how it works (caution: I get my geek on for the next few paragraphs): it “ships” with a large collection of free decoding and encoding libraries, and many that aren’t shipped with it are provided by the libavcodec library from the FFmpeg project. And according to Wikipedia, it was one of the first DVD players for Linux, because it used the libdvdcss decryption library. To see all the bajillion and a half playable media formats, I invite you to follow this link right here. I’ll save you some time, though, with a few highlights:
Video
AVI, FLV, MKV, Midi, Quicktime, MP4, MV4, OGG (theora), VP1, VP6, VP8(WebM), MPEG, VOB, AVC-HD, H.263/264, VCD, DVD (and most Blu-rays once decrypted)
Audio
MP3, AAC, AC3, OGG (vorbis), DTS, FLAC, WMA
And an important final note for the positive is that VLC is comstantly being made better, adding support for things like the WebM codec and GPU-decoding for H.264 files.
In terms of technology, VLC is your number one guy. This program was made by geeks and for geeks. The problems all lie in user experience. While it’s getting better, the menus are still more cluttered than should be by default, as well as the toolbar beneath the video. The interface is simply lacking in many areas. And, oh, don’t get me started on that butt-ugly traffic cone they try to pass as an icon. This, in my opinion, is all overwhelming to new or intimidated users.
My final complaint is that the streaming side of this software is terrible, especially right out of the box. Sure, I can use this to stream content across my home network, but I find that it craps out when I try to stream something from internet. Sometimes it plays fine, other times it stutters, buffers, and re-starts half-way through. You can change the amount of buffering you want in the settings, but that’s a pain, it’s confusing, and the options are nearly un-navigable.
VLC will play anything you throw at it, and do it well, too. This is not the type of thing, however, you give to a new user. That’s the bottom line. If you’re interested in more about the technical aspects, I once more invite you to the Wikipedia page. It’s a blast to read.
