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VLC media player

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VLC media player
Developer(s)VideoLAN Project
Stable release
Windows, Linux, & macOS3.0.21[1] Edit this on Wikidata / 5 June 2024; 12 months ago (5 June 2024)
Android3.6.3[2] Edit this on Wikidata / 31 January 2025; 4 months ago (31 January 2025)
ChromeOS1.7.3[3] Edit this on Wikidata / 23 December 2015; 9 years ago (23 December 2015)
iOS, Apple TV3.6.4[4] Edit this on Wikidata / 23 August 2024; 9 months ago (23 August 2024)
Windows (UWP)3.1.2 / 20 July 2018; 6 years ago (2018-07-20)[5][6]
Windows Phone3.1.2 / 20 July 2018; 6 years ago (2018-07-20)[7]
Repository
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeMedia player
LicenseGPL
Websitevideolan.org/vlc

The VLC media player is an open source media player, distributed under the GNU General Public License since 2001. It is a highly portable multimedia player that supports many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs and various streaming protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various different formats.

It is one of the most platform-independent players available, with versions for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, BSD, Windows CE, and Solaris, and is widely used with 23 million downloads for version 0.8.5[8]

VLC can be considered as mainly a front end for a large number of open source decoding libraries, and most of its codecs are provided by the libavcodec codec library from the FFmpeg project. It has also been the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux and MacOSX, by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library.

History

VLC was initially the client for the VideoLAN project, which aimed to create a program to stream videos accross a network. It was originally developed at the Ecole Centrale Paris, and was released under the GNU General Public License on the 1st February 2001. It is now developed by contributors worldwide.

VLC is the client application for VideoLAN, with VLC standing for "VideoLAN Client". The project also created a server program, VideoLAN Server (VLS), whose functionality has mainly been included in VLC. The VideoLAN Server has since been deprecated.

Design Principles

VLC has a very modular design, which makes it easier to include modules for new file formats and streaming methods.

Features

VLC is very popular for its ability to play the video content of incomplete, unfinished, or damaged video downloads before the files have been fully downloaded. For example, files currently downloading through BitTorrent or eMule.

Another interesting feature of this player is the ability to access .iso files so that the user can play files on a disk image, even if the user 's operating system does not have the capability of working directly with .iso images.

VLC supports all codecs and all file formats supported by ffmpeg. Notably, the codec pack built into VLC is so comprehensive that in some specific cases, such as Vorbis, DVD Video and DivX playback as well as parsers for Ogg and Matroska file formats, it is the only application that can play the video and audio files "out of the box". However, this feature is not unique to VLC, as any player, including MPlayer and Xine, using the ffmpeg libraries can play back those formats without need for external codecs.

VLC media player has some filters that can distort, rotate, split, deinterlace, mirror videos or add a logo. It can also produce video output as ASCII art.

The VLC media player can playback high definition recordings of D-VHS tapes duplicated to a computer using CapDVHS.exe. This offers a permanent way to archive copy freely shows.

Use of VLC with other programs

Browser plugins

On Windows, Linux, and some other platforms, VLC provides a Mozilla/Firefox plugin,[1] which lets people view some QuickTime and Windows Media files embedded in websites without using Microsoft or Apple products.

Starting with version 0.8.2, VLC also provides an ActiveX plugin, which lets people view some QuickTime and Windows Media files embedded in websites when browsing with Internet Explorer.

The 0.9.0 version should have an Opera plugin to provide the same kind of functionality.

Applications which use the VLC plugin

VLC media player is good at previewing incomplete downloads, and several programs make use of this, including eMule and KCeasy.

The open-source Democracy Player also uses VLC code.

The Songbird media browser joins code from VLC and firefox.

Readable formats

VLC can read several formats, depending on the operating system.[9]

Input
UDP/RTP unicast or multicast, HTTP, FTP, MMS, DVDs, VCD, SVCD, CD Audio, DVB, Video acquisition (via V4l and DirectShow), RSS/Atom Feeds, and from files stored on your computer.
Container formats
3gp, APE, ASF, AVI, FLV, MKV, MOV (QuickTime), MP4, NUT, Ogg, OGM, Wav, MPEG-2 (ES,PS,TS,PVA,MP3), AIFF, Raw audio, Raw DV, FLAC
Video codecs
3ivx, Cinepak, DivX, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HuffYUV, Indeo 3[10], MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, RealVideo[11] , Sorenson, Theora, VC-1Cite error: The <ref> tag name cannot be a simple integer (see the help page)., VP5Cite error: The <ref> tag name cannot be a simple integer (see the help page)., VP6Cite error: The <ref> tag name cannot be a simple integer (see the help page)., WMV, XviD
Subtitles
DVD, SVCD, DVB, OGM, Matroska, MPEG-4 Timed Text, Text files, Vobsub
Audio codecs
AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, DTS, DV Audio, FLAC, MACE, Monkey's Audio, MP3, QDM2/QDMC, RealAudio[12], Shorten, Speex, Vorbis, WMA

Interfaces

VLC media player has different interfaces to control it. The most notable interfaces are :

  • RC, Remote Control, to control VLC media player from a distant computer.
  • HTTP, to control VLC media player from a web page. It uses AJAX.
  • telnet, using the telnet protocol.
  • GUI, which is written in Cocoa (API) under MacOSX, and Wxwidgets under Linux/Windows as well as the Be API on BeOS.
  • skins2, a higly personnalisable skinable interface.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to VLC.

Notes

  1. ^ "VLC for Windows Store". 5 June 2024. Archived from the original on 1 April 2025. Retrieved 6 April 2025.
  2. ^ "3.6.3". 31 January 2025. Retrieved 4 March 2025.
  3. ^ "VLC - Chrome Web Store". 23 December 2015. Retrieved 4 April 2022.
  4. ^ "VLC media player on the App Store". Retrieved 7 January 2025.
  5. ^ "VLC for Windows Store". www.videolan.org. VideoLAN. Archived from the original on 2025-04-01. Retrieved 2025-04-06.
  6. ^ "VLC UWP". www.microsoft.com. VideoLAN. Retrieved 2025-04-06.
  7. ^ "VLC for Windows Phone". www.videolan.org. VideoLAN. Retrieved 2025-04-06.
  8. ^ "Download Statistics". Retrieved 2006-10-19.
  9. ^ VideoLAN Website. "List of Features".
  10. ^ Indeo 4 and 5 codecs are not supported
  11. ^ Real Video 9 and 10 are not supported
  12. ^ Real Audio playback is provided through the FFmpeg-library which does only support the Cook (RealAudio G2 / RealAudio 8) decoder at the moment.
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