If you want to play video
or music
records in just about any format, VLC media player
is most likely your answer. VLC media actor is the most successful free
open source multimedia player not in there with over 500 million downloads
according to the developers. In particular, VLC Media Player Software is a great
alternative to Windows Media
Player, Tunes,
and Real Player.
It's lightweight fast easy to use and most
outstandingly plays almost
anything.
It's been two and a half years since account
1.0 was released and version 2 Twinflower brings a new interface
faster decoding, support for more formats and the ability to play HD and Bleary.
It still remains though the most stable flexible and lightweight audio and
video player around today. While other media players will play unusual formats
after downloading a codec, or simply refuse to play things, VLC media player
handles tons of formats, from MPEG to FLV
and RMBV files. Version 2 has seen some important additions
too such as support for 10-bit codes plus multi threaded decoding for H.264,
MPEG-4/Xvid and WebMD.
besides useful is the fact that you can use
VLC media player to preview files you are downloading since it plays incomplete
parts of video files. VLC media player is not just for video playback however.
It also offers superb integration with video channel streaming services such as
Channels.com giving you access to channels such as ESPN,
Reuters and National Geographic. Just right click or CMD click
on the playlist select Services
Discovery. Will then appear in your VLC media player playlist. Click on it to
reveal the different categories of channels available. Click on the category
you want and a drop down list of all available channels appears in VLC mediaplayer. Just click on the channel you want to watch and streaming should begin
almost immediately.
VLC media player also has great hotkey
support and if you take the time to learn the shortcuts so it can be controlled
without touching your mouse. If you're watching DVDs or video files through it,
this is not an issue. For music, it plays supplementary or less any file and
features an equalizer and playlist creation. VLC media player isn't as
intuitive as iTunes as a
media manager, but it's a much more flexible player in terms of file formats.
You can still use VLC Software to convert your files and on top of all the format and
physical media it will play. many streaming protocols and TV imprison cards are
supported.
VLC media player makes it simple to add subtitles
to your video files too just add the SRT file to the
folder where your video is kept and it will mechanically play with subtitles. Finally the interface has been somewhat
improved in version 4 although it remains strictly functional. However you can
download skins to completely change VLC media player's manifestation. The
preferences menu is complete without being overwhelming and there is extensive
documentation online.
Don't forget to check out some of our blog
posts such as VLC media
player v KMP layer, How to rotate
a video with VLC media player, How to sync
audio with video in VLC media player and How to use
subtitles with VLC media player. VLC Media Player is quite simply the best multimedia application (BMA) for
Windows and Mac.
Recent changes:
1
With faster
decoding on multi core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more
formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codec’s, 3.1 is a major upgrade
for VLC
2
Two flower has a
new rendering pipeline for video, with higher quality subtitles, and new video
filters to enhance your videos
3
It supports many
new devices and Blurry Discs (experimental)
4
Completely
reworked Mac and Web interfaces and improvements in the other interfaces make
VLC easier than ever to use
5
Two flower fixes
several hundreds of bugs, in more than 7000 commits from 160 volunteers
6
7
Version 3.0.5
8
9 3.0.4 is a major
update that fixes a lot of regressions of the 3.0.x branch of VLC.
10 3.0.4 Introduces an important number of fixes and
improvements for all playback, notably for Blu-Ray, DVD, HLS, Ogg and MKV
files; but also for YouTube, Video, Koreas and Sound cloud.
11 3.0.4 adds Opus codec support, including multichannel
ones and streams, and MSS playback through DMO libraries.
12 3.0.4 fixes numerous issues, including audio device
selection, Qt and Mac OS interface, security issues and Windows wallpaper
mode...
13 With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile
hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and
10bits codec’s, 3.0 was a major upgrade for VLC.
14 3.0.4 Fixes around a hundreds of bugs, and adds more
than 300 commits on top of 3.0.3.