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Play music and video files in various formats

Play music and video files in various formats

Vote: (1,536 votes)

Program license: Free

Developer: VideoLAN

Version: 3.0.20

Works under: Mac

Also available for Windows Android

Vote:

Program license

(1,536 votes)

Free

Developer

Version

VideoLAN

3.0.20

Works under:

Also available for

Mac

Windows Android

Pros

  • Free to download and use
  • Runs very smoothly and doesn't sap up power
  • Can play a very wide array of file extensions
  • Tons of different adjustment features with the player

Cons

  • Not a very attractive media player (without skins)
  • Doesn't look that great in full screen

Perhaps the most famous alternative media player for millions of people with a home computer and a desire to watch videos

An Overview of VLC Media Player

Whether people use a Mac or a PC, there have long been complaints about the usability and limitations of proprietary players like RealPlayer and WMV. They don't handle a lot of extensions. There's not much you can do with them besides creating some music playlists. They don't allow for any video manipulation features. This is why the VLC Media Player is one of the most popular on the web.

The VLC Media Player is famous, always recognizable by that orange and white road cone, and deals in a wide variety of extensions so that it can play everything from an FLV extension to H.264 and so much more. This player is free to download, without ads, for the PC and Mac, and it's a relatively small file.

This player is famed for its ability to load up quickly, play almost anything you can throw at it, while also giving you a variety of options to manipulate the video and audio files that are playing.

What VLC Media Player Is and What It Does

VLC is a media player, plain and simple, but it offers users a lot more than their basic players that come along with their installed OS. This player can handle many more file extensions than basic players, and it can even play a broken or corrupted file. The playback might not be perfect, but this player can crawl through the good parts and still handle video playback.

It might not be the most attractive player out there, but savvy users know that they can go and download a wide range of skins to make their player look entirely different while keeping its core functionality. This means that VLC can be scaled and customized, even including the ability to add different plugins to the player.

For all of these reasons and many more, VLC is the king of free media players. Plus it's very easy to use, at least in terms of figuring out the basics.

Features of VLC Media Player

The feature list with VLC is rather lengthy. One of the first things people notice when playing videos is that they can control and fine-tune the play speed. There are also ample controls to adjust the colors, textures, hue, and many more video aspects. This is ideal for those people who want to brighten up those darker video recordings for superior playback.

Another cool thing users can do with VLC is add caption files directly to the playback by simply playing the video from the same contained folder as the captions, and VLC does the rest. Or you can add the subtitles in from the Tools section. There are also tons of different audio features, with a Visualizations tab that allows you to manipulate audio.

Newer versions of VLC even have a live streaming feature that allows you to use video and audio playback with software like OBS. There are a ton of features here overall, most of which are really easy to figure out.

Pros and Cons VLC Media Player

Pros

  • Free to download and use
  • Runs very smoothly and doesn't sap up power
  • Can play a very wide array of file extensions
  • Tons of different adjustment features with the player

Cons

  • Not a very attractive media player (without skins)
  • Doesn't look that great in full screen