VLC media player - "it just works"

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 3/28/2006, 7:01 PM
I recently discovered VLC media player and thought that I should share. it is, without a doubt, the most versitile player I've ever used. And who needs QT Pro - when this can play the mov files and can maximize your screen No Problem - You can designate the amount of Post processing you want to apply and can play just about any codec in existance.

anyway - excellent player if you don't know about it, It's worked for me, and hopefully it will work for all of you.

enjoy

Comments

Yoyodyne wrote on 3/28/2006, 7:50 PM
Yep - VLC is great, it also has a good de-interlacing tool for lcd playback.
apit34356 wrote on 3/28/2006, 8:56 PM
VLC is a good player, plays about everything.
johnmeyer wrote on 3/28/2006, 9:37 PM
I've heard about it, but hadn't heard from anyone that had actually used it. Thanks for the endorsements.
cbrillow wrote on 3/29/2006, 6:58 AM
VLC has been my favorite player for the past couple of years. It's under active development, so be on the lookout for periodic updates.

A good source for finding gems like this is BetaNews. I visit a couple of times a month and peruse the listings for the past 30 days or so. Some good stuff to be had for free or inexpensively.
craftech wrote on 3/29/2006, 3:15 PM
Ditto here. Plays everything well.

John
Jackie_Chan_Fan wrote on 4/5/2006, 5:54 PM
VLC is pretty poor. I like Media Player Classic. VLC is buggy and does some really odd things. Bad Ui too.
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 4/5/2006, 6:09 PM
well, to each their own, but I like it quite well myself.

Dave
johnmeyer wrote on 4/5/2006, 6:12 PM
VLC is buggy and does some really odd things.

I've been thinking of installing it. Can you elaborate on what problems you've had?
richard-courtney wrote on 4/5/2006, 6:51 PM
I like the VLC program too. Jackie- make sure you have the latest build. There are nightly builds done fairly often that fix minor bugs.

The best part for me is the ability to send transport streams over the
LAN to other computers. Several people are working on hardware
"Set Top Boxes" that you could put near your big screen projector
and connect to your server with LAN cable. Using a remote you
can select from a menu your favorite movie or music.
BrianStanding wrote on 4/6/2006, 7:46 AM
My biggest complaint about VLC is that you cannot detach the playback controls from the video display. This makes it very difficult to do laptop presentations or V-J stuff on a video projector with the display screen maximized. Otherwise, I agree, it's a great player, and it's open-source, which is nice.

I've been using WinAmp because of its modular UI. The downside of WinAmp is that it doesn't handle all the video codecs VLC does, so I have to recode in Vegas before doing presentations.
cbrillow wrote on 4/6/2006, 8:13 AM
BrianStanding,

Doesn't going to fullscreen mode do what you want to accomplish? The video controls don't show on my system when it's fullscreened...
dand9959 wrote on 4/6/2006, 8:22 AM
I installed VLC and it seemed to work fine on any file I tried to play...

until I tried to download a simple .wmv from a website (by clicking on the link).

Nothing happened at all. No activity whatsoever (looking at Task Mgr processes showed no activity.) So I uninstalled VLC, clicked on the link again, and Windows Media Player appeared immediately and played the file.

Say "Lah vee".
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 4/6/2006, 10:20 AM
you can have the desktop extend to the projector, and then just maximize it on that screen and drag your controlls over to your laptop screen. This allows you to have full screen on the projector and controll from you laptop screen.

Dave
BrianStanding wrote on 4/6/2006, 2:18 PM
No, maybe I didn't explain what I need very clearly.

I do some V-J work in a nightclub, where I have a laptop set up with video clips ready to run. The laptop is connected to a projector, which is set up as the secondary monitor in Windows. I need to have the video playback and playlist controls visible on the laptop screen, while the video display window is shown in fullscreen.

richard-courtney wrote on 4/6/2006, 3:51 PM
DAND9959 -

If you have a WMF on your hard drive, what is the icon show when
you look at the folder contents?

If VLC is associated for this file extension you should see the orange/white
traffic cone, otherwise it may be associated to Windows Media Player.
Jackie_Chan_Fan wrote on 4/6/2006, 4:10 PM
One thing that drove me insane was the ui and lack of good skins for VLC... i could not figure out how have a video loop in full screen mode. It would always play once in full screen then stop and go back to windowed mode.

I just dont like VLC. Its very hacky and poor designed from a ui point of view.

richard-courtney wrote on 4/6/2006, 4:33 PM
Looping:

click on VIEW
click on Playlist
click on Manage
Click on Simple Add File
add your files you want in the playlist
click on Repeat All


Thats all for me otherwise we will need to lock the message thread.
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 4/6/2006, 7:31 PM
"No, maybe I didn't explain what I need very clearly."

Right - just make sure that you have it a little past half on the screen that you want the video to show and then you're good to go - just double click the screen - it will maximize on the projector, and you can still click-drag the player window off to the laptop screen. I am not sure if they fixed the ability to maintain the maximized screen on the projector when switching clips though.

Dave
PossibilityX wrote on 4/6/2006, 8:43 PM
Best thing about VLC, IMO, is that I can rid my computer of iTunes and the QT player. VLC plays QT files no problem. No more hassles with Apple.

jlafferty wrote on 4/7/2006, 5:37 PM
Best thing about VLC, IMO, is that I can rid my computer of iTunes and the QT player. VLC plays QT files no problem. No more hassles with Apple.

How do you encode H264 quicktime files now?
PossibilityX wrote on 4/8/2006, 2:35 AM
:::How do you encode H264 quicktime files now?:::

Never have. Never will.
HHaynes wrote on 4/8/2006, 7:45 AM
"How do you encode H264 quicktime files now?"

...with Vegas and the MainConcept H/264 encoder, silly.