Review
VLC media player is an open source media player software project with the fifteen-year history and large amounts of enthusiastic fans from all over the world. It has been developed by the so-called VideoLAN project, a twenty-nation cooperation, initially planned as a development project for creating software for streaming video file inside a local network (LAN).
However, VLC media player itself is a relatively recent program, released on July 7, 2009 as the result of merging two initial VideoLAN software project, namely VLC (VideoLAN Client) and VLS (VideoLAN Server). It is a multiplatform application, allowing its users to effectively control their media files by means of a high number of available functionalities.
The hallmark of the VLC media player design is its modularity. Virtually any functionality can be worked with in the appropriate module. On the one hand, this peculiarity makes VLC media player quite easy-to-use, since you don't have to look where a filter or codec information is; however, on the other hand, the program gets a bit fragmented and unmanageable, because the sheer number of the resulting modules is slightly great (to be honest I can't call it overwhelming, though).
VLC is the best program for playing incomplete or damaged media files. For example, it is nice to use when watching a film that is still being downloaded by a P2P-client, as it doesn't lead to system freezing every five seconds, unlike some other media players.
Despite a wide array of positive features like large format and filter libraries (they are more of a must for this software type these days), one of the most noteworthy VLC functionality is that it can play D-VHS files, reading the data from the D-VHS tapes, duplicated onto your system with the special CapDVHS.exe file: once it took me ages to find an appropriate converter, which would allow me to watch these files in my media players.
The current release features many of the security issues, be found in the previous versions, fixed. The use security is the major release priority, as VideoLAN itself states. I have found their words to be quite true, as there's hardly any open-source browser that is more easier-to-use and more understandable than VLC, so if you like sleekly-designed programs with no superfluous details, it is your choice. |
