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Softonic Rating:
Very good
License:
Free
Added:
December 11, 2006
Updated:
April 4, 2008
Publisher:
Website
File size:
9.28 MB
Downloads:
913,934
Cyril Roger

“Simple and versatile multiformat media player”

by Cyril Roger

There was a time when video files all conformed to some basic requirements and could be played without protest using any media software. As technologies change and licensing becomes more restrictive and specific, simply playing a video file has now become a challenge and thanks to the plethora of obscure proprietary formats now available, finding a media player that works for the majority has become more hassle than it’s worth. Thankfully the open source community have come up with a solution in the form of VLC, otherwise know as VideoLAN.

This cross platform player doesn't strike as particularly good-looking when put side by side with Windows Media Player or Winamp, but you'll appreciate its far superior usability within moments. Its power can be demonstrated with any video files you happen to be downloading, which can be played in whatever form they exist, be it an actual video format or an unclassified temporary one. As you preview a video, it will skip the parts that have yet to be downloaded and let you see the rest – Media Player in comparison, can't preview files in this way.

Apart from playing incomplete videos, because lets face it not many people want to do that anyway, VLC has support for a huge range of video formats. If it doesn't recognize the file type it will try playing it anyway often successfully or if it's an encrypted file it will display the scrambled video in its raw form. The interface is stripped down to the bare bones, with the apparent objective of making it as unobtrusive as possible. With superb hotkey support, you can do practically everything you want without touching your mouse.

Put simply, VLC is a video player that doesn't stray in to other areas. There is only one alternative skin available, but all it will take is one look and you'll quickly be switching back to the default.

This free player should appeal to true cinephiles who want as little distraction as possible from their viewing experience. Being open source it's free to use and thanks to a small file size and a friendly installation process, we would recommend it to absolutely everyone as their "backup" or "catch-all" video player.

Languages:

English

Recent changes in VLC Media Player:

  • Bug fixes

Minimum requirements for VLC Media Player:

  • OS: Win95/98/98SE/Me/2000/NT/XP
Pros
  • Free
  • Supports a wide range of formats
  • Good hotkey support
Cons
  • Poor choice of skins
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From the publisher of VLC Media Player

VLC media player (initially VideoLAN Client) is a media player from the VideoLAN project. It supports many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. It employs the libavcodec codec library from the FFmpeg project to handle many of the formats it supports, and uses the libdvdcss DVD decryption library to handle playback of encrypted DVDs. VLC also has the ability to convert many formats of media from one type to another.

VLC is also known for its relatively unique ability to play video files from uncompressed WinRAR archives saving the need to unpack (extract) the files from the rars. Also, it has the ability to let the user view the video content of incomplete, unfinished video downloads before they've been fully downloaded to the hard drive.

User opinions about VLC Media Player (4)

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Reviews of VLC Media Player in other languages

Softonic Rating:Very good
9/10

User Rating

206 ratings
usability
  • Currently 9/10.
stability
  • Currently 8/10.
installation
  • Currently 9/10.
functionality
  • Currently 8/10.
appearance
  • Currently 7/10.

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