Linux.com takes a look at one of our favorite media players, VLC. They write “VideoLAN’s VLC is a cross-platform media player with a simple interface that doesn’t require a degree in rocket science to operate. That doesn’t mean, however, that VLC is a simplistic application: it has a few tricks up its sleeve that can significantly extend its functionality and enhance your user experience. Here are a couple of VLC’s nifty features you might want to try.”
VLC: Beyond the Basics
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Adam Scheinberg
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I use it daily to watch TV from my ISP (“Free”). It is a good thing that people show more interest in it, maybe someday we will have a good KDE interface
How do you do that? Anyways, I just started using VLC as of late because I have an x40 that didn’t have any dvdplayback software on it. VLC works perfectly on it.
My ISP is using VLC to broadcast TV across its network. They’re using rtsp protocol so that I can have all my TV channels on my computer.
Actually Free isn’t using VLC to broadcast TV channels, but you are using VLC to access to the broadcasted TV channels (note that not all your TV channels are available via VLC).
maybe someday we will have a good KDE interface
I don’t know if they’re still on track, but the VLC team had planned to drop the wxWidgets interface for version 0.9 and use Qt instead. I actually started helping them with that, but then my laptop died and I got too busy. I hope they new interface will make it! More info here: http://wiki.videolan.org/QtIntfTODO
Also, one of the main devs is looking for some help with the new Qt4 interface:
Rationale for choosing Qt http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2007/02/10/Qt4-Interface
Help request
http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2007/03/17/Help-me-with-Qt4-and-er…
Edited 2007-03-26 20:51
This is one of the best media player. No codec downloading headache. Just drop any media file on it and it plays it.
In my experience, there has never been any media file that VLC couldn’t play unless it was corrupt. OTOH windows media player, real player or quicktime fails to detect so many media files.
I simply love VLC.
It seems to play anything I drop on it. Then I started digging deeper. What really peeled my brain was when I had it playing a DVD on my Vaio, over wifi with the DVD itself in my flatmates Powerbook. Then there’s fun with webcams. Brilliant stuff.
Try mplayer – plays even more files!
Allthough it has no support for DVD menus and it’s DVB-S support sucks(have to use xine for that) but I like it’s minimalistic interface and mencoder is a very powerful tool for video conversion.
…does it have a position slider during fullscreen playback yet?
Well, it does in the OSX version, so it’s probably platform dependent.
I don’t think “simplistic” is the right word here. “Simple” will suffice.
Using VLC almost all the time, I just have to sayy that’s a really nice player and not just play your ordinary files, but also comes to rescue you when you got a problem with any specific file… It can even export file sequences from a movie file! It’s very useful.
That said, I just home some more developers for the Windows version join the crew, this port needs some more love. =]
I fail to see how an article about a media player fits on a site about operating systems. I know OSNews occasionally post about other things, but can we expect to see articles about amaroK, Totem, Winamp, and Windows Media Player in the future?
That’s an easy one- Yes!!
just so you don’t get yelled at like has been done to me on numerous occasions… I’ll let you in on a /secret/ …
OSNews isn’t about just “OS News” anymore… It’s a technology blog/magazine/news site… now…
Not to mention, one of the first tasks many people do when they install a new OS is get the media stuff working. VLC is a common choice on multiple OS’s.
:p
supported.
Lots of artists selling digital versions of their audio in lossless are using WMA Play For Sure DRM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PlaysForSure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairUse4WM
If VLC implements as an add-on this FairUse to strip out this DRM then it definitely gets my vote.
VLC is a very good media player, specially when you are using windows and when compared to MS Media Prayer.
But I prefer to use mplayer and xine on my linux box. They are the best players of market, even when compared to commercial media players.
I use VLC on both XP and Ubuntu!
Only thing is, it doesn’t seem to have a playover function,
whereby you can run a clip on a loop, endlessly.
Other than that, it’s great!! – and it’s free!
Repeat/loop options are available in playlist menu.
No, I’m pretty certain it has that feature. The company I work for used VLC, running on an old PC, to power a simple digital signage setup (basically a large LCD screen setup in a shop window).
Great player though I still haven’t found an easy way to stretch the video the way Media Player Classic or ZoomPlayer do.
Video menu -> Aspect ratio -> …
See the manual on adding a custom value to the ar or crop menus.
Is the only thing missing for me.
I like to run my system with default output on channel 1&2 of my audio card and then manually set music and video audio channels to audio 3&4.
That way I can use speaker out for entertainment and I can play games using my headphones whilst my GF practices on our Digital Piano which is routed through my PC. VLC is limited in this sense.
Still the only video playback software I use.
I’ve been using VLC forever on BeOS & W2K with good results, far more things in there than I care to know about.
When I tried Ubuntu, I had hoped it would just install “Just Like That” like it does elsewhere, no such luck. I wasted too much time already with no movies played so far. I assume it works though so I will get around to fixing it eventually, just a bit disappointed at the work involved.
So for a clean VLC on Ubuntu install, just how much work should it have taken?
It worked fine on Slackware. (Though it didn’t create shortcuts automatically but that’s hardly a chore)
vlc is not capable in displaying styled subtitle correctly (advanced substation alpha)
Browser: Opera/8.01 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/3.1.7196/1644; en; U; ssr)
Hmmm, are you guys able to get your VLC to start up in the newly shosen skin ?
Mine always starts up with the basic default skin, then I’m able to change one of the installed skins.
Apart from that, it is a great player – making life much more easy than MPlayer did.
Hmmm, are you guys able to get your VLC to start up in the newly shosen skin ?
Mine always starts up with the basic default skin, then I’m able to change one of the installed skins.
Apart from that, it is a great player – making life much more easy than MPlayer did.
What platform are you using? If it is Windows I believe there is a separate executable which allows you to start up with a skin. It’s VLC-skins or something like that. Linux uses a command switch I believe, “-skins” or something of that nature.
Is there any way to set a loop area in VLC? This is one feature I can’t find and I really need. I don’t want to loop the entire video, just an area.
Edited 2007-03-27 12:25