Thank you to Kyle (phynix) for this recommendation.
VLC (VideoLan) is a cross-platform universial media player. It supports a variety of different inputs, including DVD, VCD, MPEG, AVI, WMV, MP4, and MOV. It has full subtitle support, as well as built-in video filters. There are skins for VLC available at the developer website.
One of the most useful features of VLC is playing incomplete video downloads before they finish. I can start watching a movie as the rest of the data trikles in. VLC plugins are available for Firefox and Mozilla.
You can install VLC through the command-line with the following command:sudo apt-get install vlc
Or, you can select VLC in the Applications -> Add/Remove... dialog. More information about that process is outlined here.
If you like learning about a new Ubuntu application every day, you should subscribe to the site feed.
Also, I'm currently accepting recommendations. Include your name, website if you have one, and a few reasons why you like the app.
What do you use for video playback? How does VLC compare to MPlayer or Totem?
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
VLC - The Universial Media Player
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10 comments:
I don't use VLC as much anymore since I started using a MacBook as my main machine but your review may make me rethink that.
I have had issues in the past using VLC on ubuntu. But I will give it another try as it has been over a year.
I use VLC on openSuse; though the quality of video playback is nowhere near as to what I used to get on Windows XP with DirectX ( I switched my laptop from Windows XP to openSuse recently). Also in few low-quality videos which runs fine on Windows have problem running on openSuse as the audio becomes very noisy.
When will get time I surely would like to take this points up in community.
Still I like the features and freedom provided by VLC and Linux so VLC is the ultimate player for me.
VLC is really a nice app
BTW, you made a typo: universIal
VLC rocks!!!!!!!!
VLC is an excellent app, very stable (although the Mac version has an annoying habit of popping up error messages in the middle of playing when it finds a problem with the stream) and capable of displaying a wide variety of formats.
That said, I'm investigating switching to mplayer -- less stable, but one important feature: you can set the buffer size when you are playing a file (something VLC only permits for a real-time stream.) Since I play files over an irregularly-busy network, VLC occasionally has pauses or skips; mplayer lets me buffer past those.
I usually use xine and sometimes vlc, according to what is able to playback what video format. Vlc is very flexible in that regard. On windows XP VLC all the way.
Right now vlc is saving my ass for video viewing on debian etch. After some recent updates xine, totem, xfmeda are all segfaulting, due to some bug in nvidia-glx.
I like vlc, the only thing is that i can't seem to find the setting for changing brighness. DVDs are a little on my monitor for some reason.
MPLAYER MPLAYER MPLAYER
vlc is a nice app?? xine also
vlc is crap!! xine
I am a BIG(btw..is there way to increase font size of BIG in here ;-) )
BIG fan of mplayer and the real reason for the luv for GNU/Linux OS. I used it and fell in luv with it..
I think the real reason for Mplayer not getting the deserved praise is its officially unrecommended GUI (gmplayer)interface...
who need them anyway..
xine doesn't play all formats and
compiling vlc from source was pain..
everytime i tried it..
even mplayer can play the unfinished files..mplyer's power and smplyer as the front end for mplayer is the best IMHO.
I like to have VLC as an option, but I usually use Kaffeine with the xine engine, given that I prefer KDE. It has a nice GUI with cool file-manager integration allowing me to open a whole mess of video files with just a right-click and other such candy. When I tinker, and/or use my old hardware, I prefer mplayer. Nothing has more options to get a HQ video playing on ancient (as in Pentium2, sub-300Mhz) boxes. You can always get an optimal combination of lowering the resolution and/or using lower quality scalers if need be. Ex: if the video is 500x240 or something, why scale it all the way up to 1024x768? Lowering the res to 512x384 in this case meets it "halfway" and saves big on CPU...
Btw, all players that I've tried can play most unfinished media files. Usually, the trade off is the ability to seek.
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