VLC 0.9.9: The best media player just got better
If you've ever struggled to play a file you downloaded from the hinterlands of the Web, you clearly didn't try opening it with VideoLan's VLC media player, a free, hugely popular, and open-source media player. VLC can open anything.
VideoLan released on Thursday version 0.9.9, a bug fix release that corrects a few issues with the previous version.
The best media player just got better and is rapidly approaching 1.0 status.
Version 0.9.9 adds the following improvements to the feature-packed VLC player:
- Fullscreen behavior on Windows with multiple screens.
- Workaround bug with libxml2 >=2.7.3.
- Video performance on Intel-based Macs.
- Various decoders updates on Windows.
In addition:
An experimental native decoder for Real Video 3.0 & 4.0 using FFmpeg has been added and many fixes happened in our Real Media demuxer. This should improve Real Media Files support on all platforms.
VideoLan's logo
(Credit: VideoLan)If you're an existing VLC user, you might opt to skip this release if you haven't noticed the problems above. But on my Mac, I did notice an improvement in video performance, to the point that in my non-scientific test, the VLC felt like it performed slightly better than Apple's QuickTime and certainly plays a much wider range of video formats. That update alone made the download worth it.
If you've yet to try VLC, do so. Whether you just want to play media files or also want to convert them, VLC can handle just about anything you throw at it. When all other media players fail, whether on Windows, Linux, or the Mac, VLC will almost always deliver.
You can download VLC media player 0.9.9 from Download.com for Windows and Mac. It's open source, but that's not why you'll want to keep using it. You'll use it because it's better than its proprietary peers--by a long stretch.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
MediaPlayerClassic is what I've been using for years for every type of video file, and on the rare occasion that it doesn't play a file correctly, VLC is my number two choice.
At least VLC plays practically everything, doesn't have Appleupdater.exe running in the background even if i remove it, and has a ton of playback features, (inc the cool for 10 seconds ASCI art filter)
Sorry but anything that comes out of Apple designed for window's I try not to touch with a yard barge pole.
Crap crap crap worse than MS stuff.
Apple SW for Macs:
Great, efficient, calming almost. Except iTunes, QuickTime, and iMovie are all slow and bloated.
(I've only used iMovie HD so if they fixed it in the newer versions please tell me, I'd be interested.)
As for the one person commenting on .MOV files I would note that Apple abandoned their own proprietary video format for H.264 several years ago. Except for the occasional encounter with older filles you won't encounter the older .MOV files anymore. Certainly virtually nothing new is being encoded that way anymore.
Great slogan. How does it pertain to this discussion?
I did a review of it on my blog at: http://vwbusguy.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/review-songbird-and-flock/
The only problem I ever had with VLC was how it handles subtitles. Anime can be terrible to watch when a bunch of subtitles start popping on top of each other. I also have Media Player Classic Homecinema, so between these two, you should be able to handle any video file you come across.
The CCCP codec pack is the best bundle I have found for watching anime or most anything on Windows. I still use VLC as a back up though.
For the mac though nothing can touch VLC.
you might benefit by being a bit open minded
and why is this a part of a VLC discussion as in open source software
BTW the OSX version of VLC has a far superior UI to the Windows version
Anecdote, yes, and representative of the first impression many users will have under these circumstances. Why do I need to spend a half-hour reading about codecs and runtime vars to playback a movie?
IT ain't VLC's fault and at least it can play most of those off the bat, yo need to get codec pack's n what not to attempt to get WMP to play much beyond wmv's n DVD's.
Botnets, worldwide botnets.
What kind of boxes make up botnets?
Compaq, HP, Dell and Sony, true!
Gateway, Packard Bell, maybe even Asus, too.
Are boxes. Found on botnets.
All running Windows. FOO!
To quote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: ?I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.?
And not being part of a botnet!
OS X is light years ahead of any Windows OS.
A botnet runs OS X???? Are you really this dumb?
VLC is Open Source, made by Linux guys. Windows is following in Linux footsteps, just ask the guys who decided to code in .odf format into the next version of Office. While you're at it, check out who had limited users as the default set up first.
I'll give you a hint, the answer isn't Microsoft.
Now, let's get back to the topic of the article.
Agree with the comments about Media Player Classic and Quicktime.
VLC's biggest attraction when it came out is that it made people format agnostic.
Wmv, mov, avi, it played all the net popular formats.
That was what people appreciated the most when they installed it.
No need to have software from each of the proprietary companies simply to play a certain format or worry about the latest divx codec when this little program would do it all. It worked and it was simple to use. Oh, and it worked really well.
Fast forward to now. It works and its simple to use and you dont even need to see the interface, just click the file into full screen and play-pause with the Space bar. Of course, if you want to remap the shortcuts, that's easy too.
Are there better video players? To do what?
Watch Dr Who and Stargate (rip) episodes?
How much easier and better can it get?
Which is a question I ask myself of VLC, so I will be downloading the Wayne Gretzky edition now.
The great thing about VLC is it made formats, codecs and video players kind of unimportant.
One of the advantages to VLC has been the multi-platform aspect and has made migrating my friends and family to Gnu-Linux less scary. For quite a few years, I've been telling friends about free software alternatives on Windows such as Firefox, Thunderbird, OO and VLC. So once you have them switch to the Linux side on a KDE desktop (which is more recognizalbe to Windows user) all you need is to get them an mp3 player that looks like Winamp (the old amarok1.4 or XMMS) and Kopete which is similar to Trillian for chatting. Throw in a few programs like Picasa and Skype and the switch is pretty much effortless. Good cross-platform software makes OS differentiation less relevant.
I like VLC most of all because... I rarely think about it.
It works. It's free/libre and its gratis/free.
Win. Win, Win.
Quicktime on WINDOWS, on the other hand, is almost useless if it wasn't for .mov files (which, incidentally, I don't see that often). That's why Windows users use CCCP/K-lite or whatever as plugins to Windows Media Player/Media Player Classic (I recommend the latter).
Finally, to clear everything up, I use both Mac and Windows (sometimes at the same time). But no matter which OS you use, VLC is generally useless (unless you have Linux, then it's probably your only option in most cases).
and that's about where i stopped reading.
quicktime is a piece of junk. Its basically Apple's prostitute for itunes and safari almost requiring you to install those to use it. VLC is one of the best programs i've ever seen. It plays everything from full disk .iso's to mkv files. something that quicktime does NOT do. Funnily enough, i think VLC actually looks way better than quicktime. Apple uses the same stupid gray interface for everything. COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER LOOKING.
VLC > most proprietary software
<a href="http://qtp.blogspot.com">Sachin</a>
Better customization, better subtitle handling, better interface, more features
The KMPlayer>>>VLC
- by croatia1309 April 5, 2009 2:53 AM PDT
- yesterday I bought Core AVC codec accelerator and it is super
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