Questions about VLC...

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ZanasoBayncuh
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Questions about VLC...

Postby ZanasoBayncuh » 03 Jul 2011, 23:13

Or mostly... about it's reputation online. I've seen a large amount of hate for VLC Media Player online and I don't understand why. I've been using it for ages and have had no major issues.

I finally ask here because I've been wondering what the deal is for ages and frankly I just have to get some answers.

A little help here?
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Elomin Sha » 04 Jul 2011, 05:44

I've never had any issues with it and didn't know there was any flak against it.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby korri » 04 Jul 2011, 06:27

Yeah VLC is pretty much boss... I don't know what those other people are talking about. I haven't found anything it won't play
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Yaxley » 04 Jul 2011, 06:42

Really? There are people who hate VLC? I've never seen anything but love for it. Or, at least, "Use VLC. It works." which seems like a positive endorsement.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Master Gunner » 04 Jul 2011, 06:58

^What they said^. It really does work, and I've never heard anyone badmouth it.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Dutch guy » 04 Jul 2011, 07:55

VLC DOES work, but atleast on my rig, it won't propperly run High-def mkv's. Playback stutters and sometimes crashes. I've had no problems whatsoever with Mplayer, so it's what I mainly use to view video files. My university offers online television in a format basically only VLC can understand, so I use VLC for that.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Myrph » 04 Jul 2011, 08:13

VLC has done me brilliantly for all the time that I've used it, although I've had a few issues with subtitles from DVDs that I've ripped (living at uni, can't be bothered with taking loads of discs with me), but I haven't worked out if that's a problem with the rips or with VLC player.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby GreigKM » 04 Jul 2011, 08:29

VLC is fine, great for people who want a grab-n-go media player, however I prefer Media Player Classic for 2 reasons, the first being its near infinite configurability, the second being its 64 bit version. Still, VLC is alright, no hate here.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Valliac » 04 Jul 2011, 09:47

VLC works for me no problem. Works with everything and it's light, too.

Tell them to shove it as they need codecs to watch everything on other players.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby sdhonda » 04 Jul 2011, 11:23

I could understand some uber nerds considering VLC to be have problems compared to their favorite, but really, theres nothing wrong with it. It'll play almost anything.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Darkobra » 04 Jul 2011, 13:09

VLC is my go-to as well.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Trymantha » 04 Jul 2011, 14:11

i use Gom as my go to out because of subtitle issues with VLC which were fixed about 4 years ago and i havent got around to swapping back
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Tapir12 » 04 Jul 2011, 14:19

I've used VLC for years and been very happy with it, though I recently switched to MPC (Media Player Classic) because it plays mkv files that VLC won't.

Within the anime community I have heard a lot of people bashing VLC, but I think the gripes with it are very technical and specific.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Graham » 04 Jul 2011, 14:29

Why would anyone hate VLC?
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Ottoman » 04 Jul 2011, 15:28

I had the source code for VLC inserted into the genome of a virus, which I then injected into my eyeballs. Now, I can watch videos just by balancing a hard drive or flash stick on my head.

A+, would download again!
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby thatlaurachick » 04 Jul 2011, 15:35

Graham wrote:Why would anyone hate VLC?


There are a lot of stupid people on the internet.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby sdhonda » 04 Jul 2011, 15:49

So, 60% of my allies on SC2 last night. Stupid, stupid people.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby phlip » 04 Jul 2011, 17:51

Tapir12 wrote:Within the anime community I have heard a lot of people bashing VLC, but I think the gripes with it are very technical and specific.

I saw a page once with some complaints... I think they were specifically about the way it handles subtitles... rendered kinda ugly-ly, or not enough formatting options, or something. I can't remember the details, it was a while ago, and it's probably improved a bunch since then anyway.

Personally I prefer MPlayer, but for people who don't live almost exclusively in the command line like I do, VLC is pretty darn good (there is gmplayer, being a GUI for mplayer, but it's kinda pants). That said, I don't think I've ever gotten VLC's transcoding options to work... every combination of settings I've tried, either the audio codec, the video codec or the muxer doesn't actually exist (but that doesn't stop it from offering that format on the screen), or that muxer doesn't support that codec, or the resulting video just doesn't play for some reason, or something. MEncoder, on the other hand, Just Works.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Gap Filler » 05 Jul 2011, 02:52

While it did the job fine when I was using it, I've not used VLC in quite some time. Given my experiences with MPC I doubt I could go back. Its true that VLC will play pretty much anything, but that doesn't mean it'll play it well. I've had my share of codec grouses with VLC (mostly subbing) which is kind of irritating. VLC isn't particularly versatile in terms of configuration either. In light of those nitpicks (and they are nitpicks, frankly), VLC feels a little overrated.

Mind you, my problems with VLC are highly technical and specific (exactly the kind of problems Tapir12 was alluding to) and most likely not issues the majority of people will consider deal breakers. There's also the fact that this was a long time ago and VLC functionality has probably improved since then.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby Geoff_B » 05 Jul 2011, 04:46

i've never had any problems with vlc - the only times it wouldn't run were when the video files themselves were corrupt. and there's something fun about setting the video you're watching as your desktop background :D
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby MowDownJoe » 05 Jul 2011, 05:24

I have VLC Portable installed on my thumb drive. Work great, except with some video podcasts. (I can never get Zero Punctuation to work.)
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby phlip » 06 Jul 2011, 01:06

MowDownJoe wrote:I have VLC Portable installed on my thumb drive. Work great, except with some video podcasts. (I can never get Zero Punctuation to work.)

Really? Huh. VLC on my machine can play ZP fine, it's just your usual MP4/H.264/AAC setup...
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby ZanasoBayncuh » 08 Jul 2011, 05:27

I saw several mentions of MKV playback problems above and for that I offer the following: MKV is, in and of itself, a terribly inefficient video format and anyone who has access to WinFF should MP4 that stuff at the earliest possible moment. Don't want quality loss? Dump -sameq on the additional command line.

Graham wrote:Why would anyone hate VLC?


I'm not really sure, I wouldn't regard someone "not preferring it" or "disliking it" as being anything all that bizarre, out of the ordinary, or particularly worth asking about because all sorts of people have odd preferences that are based on arbitrary details. However, several times, the most memorable of which was a post by an anime sub-group, I have noticed pretty clear HATE for VLC. Now, having seen mentioned their early subtitles issues, that's a moot point because any subtitle group worth paying attention to hardsubs either AVI or MP4 files...

Interesting though that 21 responses have fostered no answer... maybe I'm just damned good at running into the fringe?
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby tamaness » 10 Jul 2011, 22:24

I had issues with playback in VLC for a while, so I switched to smplayer; smplayer stopped working for me so I switched back to VLC.

I really don't have any gripes with any media player, as the things that cause them to break are usually the fault of the encoder - not the player.
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Re: Questions about VLC...

Postby GaProgMan » 24 Jul 2011, 03:29

VLC client is my go to program whenever someone says "This video/song wont play on my computer." (which happens quite a lot more than you might expect) In fact, it's one of the very first programs I'll install on a virgin system (independent of the OS).

I'm not the first to say it, and I wont be the last either, but VLC is an amazing program. It does things that most other media players can't or wont (including the ones that you could end up paying for). You can convert video and audio to different formats, capture streams, (and in the very latest version) Watch Blu-Ray movies (you need to remove the copy protection yourself [which I don't condone...ish], though).

Side note: Not many people know that you can use a function within iTunes to strip any of your purchases of DRM. Set you're CD ripping format to what ever you want (I use AAC), then find the protected song, right click it and choose "Convert to AAC". Voila (obviously, this is the Windows method. But I'm sure that that Mac method wont be too different)

The only thing it wont play is copy protected stuff. Anything with ANY form of DRM (aside from DVDs) can be written off (but then most media players don't touch stuff with DRM). Protected AAC (from iTunes), protected Blu-Ray movies, protected WMA (although, who protects their WMA rips anyway? [come to think of it, who uses WMA when they can use something else?] ) - none of these will work without converting them first.

The only gripe I have with it, is that it takes a few seconds to brute force it's way through the CSS on some DVDs - although, that could just be my set up. Seriously, that's the only problem I've ever had with it.

Well, that and DVDs that are poorly authored as a backwards way of providing copy protection (I'm looking at you, Fox) seem to be problematic from time to time. It's only ever these DVDs that I have a problem watching if they have subtitles (either optional or forced), and sometimes I get a strange stuttering whenever I pause of "push a button" on a menu screen on one of these DVDs.

Other than that, it's a perfect program. Region independent viewing of my DVDs? Why thank you VLC
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