VLC is the supreme of all open source projects, you used it in school, college, work and home.
I used it since I was a child and it has never failed on me. It didn’t matter what type of file you chucked at it, it would run it.
Do you disagree or agree with VLC being the best media player? What are your thoughts?
VLC is one of the greatest achievements of the modern era imho (along with Linux, Wikipedia, etc).
A good dev who didn’t sell out, fully FOSS, always
up-to-datebefore-the-date, no nonsense or bloatware, no UI changes every month to get more engagement, etc.This is how all products of humanity with our level of tech should be like (even non-software).
Plus it puts on a Santa hat around Christmas.
The 4.0 version will make drastic changes to the UI ):
I am quite worried about that direction design… Feels like a departure of the sleek video player that we all know and love.
Great thing is that since it’s open source someone can just fork the project and continue development in a different direction.
I’ve actually moved away from vlc. It’s had some weird issues with videos that MPV doesn’t have. Plus, MPV has a much simpler interface which I like. I’ve also learned how to use ffmpeg to convert media so I don’t need that functionality from vlc anymore.
It’s still a great program though, especially for windows where there’s not many better options.
VLC for the everyday person, all the way until you get to enthusiast class, then you use MPV.
Shortcuts, lightweight, CLI etc…
We all have Jean-Baptiste Kempf, and many other brilliant volunteer developers to thank for it
We don’t deserve our open source heroes, so grateful for the incredible free software ecosystem
Gimp, 7zip, blender, vlc, open office, the kernel, thousands of others, I feel like our lives have been universally improved by these inverted charity projects. The few taking care of the undeserving many.
I didn’t expect to click on a VLC appreciation thread agreeing that it’s awesome only to end up maybe switching to MPV based on the comments, but such is life I guess.
I will remember it just like I will remember winamp, as one of the greats of its time.
I used to use it, but then I switched to MPV, as it works a lot better with hardware acceleration. MPV supports more methods for hardware decoding (e.g. nvdec), and also MPV will keep the frames in VRAM when doing hardware decoding, and do additional processing and presentation using the GPU, while VLC copies everything back to system RAM and processes the frame on the CPU.
At the time I switched hardware decoding with copy-back would actually result in twice the CPU usage compared to software decoding, but that was a long time ago. Also, I would get tearing in VLC and not in MPV.
I’ve ran into a few issues with VLC. That being said, I’d probably only ever replace VLC with WinAmp.
the thing can read fucking SNES soundtrack files out of the box. i’m sure it could run a marathon if you asked it to
It flawlessly plays me 1080p videos on my 8 year old smart phone with a 480p screen. It is the most performative app I have.
It very much needs to update its interface.
I’ve been waiting for a Dark Mode for VLC for over a decade. It’s absurd. Yes I know some skins sorta do that, but they all suck because they change everything around and remove buttons and options instead of just making the default UI darker.
VLC 4.0 will be released with a massive change in the interface…eventually.
Will it be before or after Star Citizen?
My only complaint about VLC is that it consistently drops the first few seconds of audio anytime I start playing a new file…
mpv+uosc is my jam these days.
I have always had minor issues with VLC with video playback when seeking or playing certain videos that mpv has never, ever, ever had. mpv just works.
VLC is a nice piece of software but it’s just never beaten mpv for me.
My only comment is I was surprised my work - which uses Windows and has closed source software exclusively - has VLC installed on all workstations and even as the default media player as well. It’s a testament to how ubiquitous and approachable VLC is to be included in such a fashion over just Windows Media Player or some other form.
I mostly use mpv nowadays, but I used VLC a lot years ago. Played pretty much everything.
