VLC Media Player is the most popular and robust multi format, free
media player available. The open source media player was publically
released in 2001 by non-profit organization VideoLAN Project. VLC Media
Player quickly became very popular thanks to its versatile multi-format
playback capabilities. It was aided by compatibility and codec issues
which rendered competitor media players like QuickTime, Windows and Real
Media Player useless to many popular video and music file formats. The
easy, basic UI and huge array of customization options have enforced VLC
Media Player’s position at the top of the free media players.
Flexibility
VLC plays almost any video or music file format you can find. At its
launch this was a revolution compared to the default media players most
people were using that often crashed or displayed “codecs missing” error
messages when trying to play media files. VLC can play MPEG, AVI, RMBV,
FLV, QuickTime, WMV, MP4 and a shed load of other media file formats.
For a full list of compatible file formats please click here. Not only
can VLC Media Player handle loads of different formats, VLC can also
playback partial or incomplete media files so you can preview downloads
before they finish.
Easy to Use
VLC’s UI is definitely a case of function over beauty. 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 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.
Summary
VLC Media Player is quite simply the most versatile, stable and high
quality free media player available. It has rightly dominated the free
media player market for over 10 years now and looks like it may for
another 10 years thanks to the constant development and improvement by
VideoLAN Org.
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