Filed under: Utilities, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Open Source
VLC's latest version: 81,297,899 downloads and rising
by Drew Olanoff May 21st 2008
By the time you're reading this, the download number for the latest version of the popular VLC Media Player is well past 81,297,899. And for good reason.As cross-platform, plays-every-type-of-media-file, and-for-free players go, it's tops in a lot of people's bookmarks. It's one of those toolkit apps that we have ready to go for the right occasion. You know, those moments when a friend gets a new Macbook and wants to play AVI (or MPEG, MOV, MP4, and many more) files. They ask you, and you fire back "VLC" without hesitation.
It's tough to get this type of mass following and community around an application, but VideoLAN has done it.
With really easy installs on Windows, Mac, and all of the popular flavors of Linux, there's no excuse not to give this a try if you haven't yet.
The major knock on VLC has been its bland interface, which obviously isn't their main focus with this app. But with skins you can liven it up a bit. It even works with Winamp skins. Remember Winamp? Of course you do, heck, some of us still use it (but refuse to admit it).
Give it a shot, put it in your toolkit. Pretty or not, it gets the job done.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Dagwood said 4:22PM on 5-21-2008
My favorite video player in linux and windows. VLC is awesome.
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jfjb said 4:42PM on 5-21-2008
strange, I just uploaded -- may 21 @ 4:51 -- and the statistic count says 81,285,274.
So either it's not rising of I was downloading another program... or eggs from Hungary... or I should see my financially-dependent physician to change my prescription.
ah-ah-ah
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jfjb said 6:05PM on 5-21-2008
replying to myself to add this:
I just realized... when updating my archive directory... that I have had this VLC version 0.8.6f for a while, in fact since it was announced way back April 2nd, 2008...
Is this article writer talking about "another" VLC update?
Or this article writer sent a 49-days "forgotten" blog?
Drew Olanoff said 6:40PM on 5-21-2008
This post was more of a followup to previous musings about VLC. It goes forgotten a lot of the time, even though a lot of people rely on it. Thought I'd let everyone know how well they're doing.
boogie said 5:14PM on 5-21-2008
The thing I hate about VLC the most (other that that it's great): Playback indicator is not available in a full screen mode. If you need to see where you're at or rewind/ff you have to downsize the windows, do it, and then go back to full screen again. It's truly a pain in the a$$, VLC team.
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mikedee said 9:16PM on 5-21-2008
FWIW, the OS X Version does have playback controls (and indicator) in the full screen mode when you move your mouse.
lars said 5:27PM on 5-21-2008
Select "Settings" | "Preferences" | "Interface" - then tick "Show interface with mouse" - restart VLC - Now the interface is shown when you move your mouse to the top left of the screen. Strange way though. VLC also has mouse gesture control and other...
I don't particularly like VLC myself ;P
Drew Olanoff said 6:41PM on 5-21-2008
Awesome tip Lars, didn't know that!!
nabilalk said 7:04PM on 5-21-2008
I'm with you boogie, that drives me nuts with VLC. Anyone have a workaround for this, possible a skin that slightly alters the UI to allow for the playback indicator to be shown in full screen mode?
WolvenSpectre said 5:37PM on 5-21-2008
I have used Video Lan Client as my main video media player (using Media Player Classic as a backup and to play files VLC can't or doesn't) but It has some of the worse music audio playback so I use WinAmp 5.X... and am proud of it.
I have tried several players on XP to play music and the one that has the best sound control and manipulation is WinAmp. Windows Media Player 11 has very good sound so long as you don't want to adjust it from the defaults. VLC's music sounds stepped on to me and when I play with the settings like the equalizer it seems to kludgy. MPC has slightly 'off' like its been run through a filter unless it is high quality or lossless.
WinAmp right out of the gate on the same hardware sounds better and has better installed controls not to mention the audio plugins which many are first class.
Its not perfect, and AOL has spent alot of time taking 2 steps forwrd and 1 or 2 steps back in developing WinAmp, much to the users community's dismay, but it is still the best... for now.
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mko said 6:27PM on 5-21-2008
I too still using Winamp. I classic view. No modern skins, no album arts. Also I use winamp as video player. When properly configured Winamp can also play all formats you need. Including rather exotic ones like FLV
Drew Olanoff said 6:42PM on 5-21-2008
I too use Winamp and Love it. It's simple, there's still an awesome community there, and well it's how I got started with MP3s, so why not, right?
Zack said 5:38PM on 5-21-2008
I used VLC for a while and liked it, but on a tip from someone else, I tried the GOM Player and like it much better. I just had too many bugs and irks with VLC that GOM doesn't present, and it'll play anything I need it to, just like VLC.
When I would play some of my videos in VLC and tried to move the window as it was playing, the video would go black. And every time I play an AVI video from my camera, it says the video is broken and asks to fix it in order to be able to seek. GOM has neither of these problems, so I'm sticking with it until I get a reason to do otherwise. It also looks a lot better with low memory usage.
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hazard said 6:01PM on 5-21-2008
VLC is fantastic and is generally my first choice on any platform. Howerver, it's subtitle functionality is relatively poor. My media pc is WinXP so for Anime and other non-english video I prefer Media Player Classic with CCCP or SMPlayer. Plus I've found that the image quality of MPC and SMPlayer to be better than VLC.
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Okänd said 10:14AM on 5-22-2008
That's the only problem I have with it too. Bad subtitle support.
edward said 6:27PM on 5-21-2008
VLC FTW winamp to be succeeded by Songbird!!! W00T
I love songbird...
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Drew Olanoff said 6:43PM on 5-21-2008
I too enjoy Songbird, but haven't downloaded any updated versions lately, I think I have something to do now...
WolvenSpectre said 10:14PM on 5-22-2008
I also use songbird, but its playback is bad, with little ability to tune it.
It great for music organization, just like WinAmp, and to a lesser extent iTunes (although I haven't used it since it first came out and it has to have gotten better). I don't use software to organize my songs other than to make playlists... I just don't have that much audio media that I need to.
Haris said 6:45PM on 5-21-2008
I still use Winamp for music, but when it comes to video, VLC Player beats all!
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zkam said 6:49PM on 5-21-2008
And don't forget that there's a portable version of VLC too, so you can run it right from a USB flash drive:
http://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/vlc_portable
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