Even with all the changes over the years, the new media formats, and streaming services appearing, VLC still manages to handle them all. Even for DVD players, VLC has been the preferred choice.Īnd we wish this titan media player would stay strong forever. From oldest to newest file formats, VLC has always been the go-to opener. Any type of file format, VLC could open it. The VLC media player has always been considered a superhero app. Moving on with our VLC media player review, it’s essential to talk about the user experience. So if you’ve downloaded a two-part movie, for example, VLC can play it consequently.
VLC Media is designed to give playlists their own function, with album covers and multiple videos to play one after the other. Is the audio too quiet? VLC can increase the volume up to 200% once the video is downloaded. Well, the VLC player can open them without unpacking each file. You can get a preview of the downloading video to decide if it’s worth saving it fully or not. VLC can support DivX streaming and MPEG, can play videos while they download too. On top of these great features, it also enables integration with streaming services and other programs. VLC also optimizes videos and audios for any type of device, supports online streaming, and becomes universally useful thanks to its many plugins. Why? Well, mainly because it’s completely free, it is compatible with all file formats, and it makes it all possible with no extra codecs. VLC has been around for years, becoming the preferred choice of many users.
This is a dedicated 64-bit build for Windows and Mac users.Let’s start this VLC review by recognizing its popularity. VLC supports browsing of local network drives and NAS Can stream to Chromecast devices, even in formats not supported natively Allows audio passthrough for HD audio codecs Supports 360 video and 3D audio, up to Ambisoncics 3rd order Activates hardware decoding by default, to get 4K and 8K playback!
VLC 3 is a major update and ships with these new features:
These support various interactive features, such as pulling movie information and subtitles from the internet, or posting to Twitter.
VLC for Mac also includes experimental Blu-ray support, plus adds support for VLC’s lua-based extensions. Options in the left-hand window include a shortcut to the user’s iTunes library and a playlist option, as well as UPNP and various internet streams. Media controls sit at the bottom of the window, and there’s a new audio effects option next to the full-screen button, which takes advantage of Lion’s full-screen support. It opens in Playlist view, with a two-paned window containing a list of common locations for media files in the left-hand pane, and an invitation to drag and drop files into the window for playback on the right.
VLC 2 on the Mac platform replaced the simplistic interface of version 1.x in favour of something more akin to iTunes, while also embracing the look of OS X Lion. This major step forward has divided the VLC community since it first emerged, with some decrying the loss of version 1’s minimalist approach to video playback. Version 2 brought radical changes, most found on the Mac platform, with support for Blu-ray playback being overshadowed by a radical overhaul of the user interface. It also supports Internet-based media streaming, so you can use the player to listen to a streamed audio stream and much more. This is a cross-platform versatile media player that does one thing well: attempts to play just about every format available.īy installing VLC Media Player across your various computers, you can be assured that a video that plays back on your Mac will also play on your PC. This isn’t a recent application, although it’s been ages in development. There must be a better way, a way of handling the various audio and video formats, without having to experiment with different media players. Factor in old videos that were encoded using codecs that have been long discontinued, then it becomes a real pain to just play back your collection of movies. Whilst the various media player developers attempt to convince us to use their codec to encode our home video, this means that we often have to have more than one media player installed to play every video, audio and other media, on our computer.