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I briefly operated an audiovisual services company (that lost a tremendous amount of money, but that had nothing to do with VLC), and after trying loads of play

I briefly operated an audiovisual services company (that lost a tremendous amount of money, but that had nothing to do with VLC), and after trying loads of players, came back to VLC. It allowed all of the stuff I needed and that many other players (including expensive commercial ones) failed at. It plays literally everything. We regularly had sponsors show up the day of the show and hand me a USB drive with their ad reel on it. With no clue what the format would be, I would always be able to say, "yeah, we can put it in the playlist for tonight". It has excellent playlist abilities, and excellent means of controlling the playlist. Our shows often included multiple sources (live video, sponsor reel, feature, short, trailers, etc.), and being able to manually select the right things at the right times with keyboard shortcuts was great. It actually allows one to kill all on screen displays, and can be reliably configured to always open video on the secondary display (projector) and controls on the primary display (laptop). This is shockingly difficult with every other player I used. They would always have problems getting things onto the right display, or would show some kinda bullshit on the screen. This is particularly true of the DVD and Blu Ray capable players; they're an utter shit show, even if you pay a bunch of money for them. So, thanks! I love VLC bunches. I've donated in the past, and will certainly donate again.

stordoff 11y ago
> It plays literally everything In the ten or so years I've used it, I've only come across one file that VLC wouldn't play (excluded DRMed files) - a (possibly malformed) 24hr long MP4 I recorded a few years ago. Pretty much everything chokes on it (VLC crashes straight away), though oddly enough Windows Media Player handles it fine until you try to seek to a different time. I've dabbled with other media players/codecs in the past, but usually end up back at VLC not long after due to its versatility. Impressive stuff.
- projct 11y ago
  you might be able to reindex or remux this file (save to a new file in the process) to fix it, by the way.
  - stordoff 11y ago
    I tried that at the time, but all of the tools I tried either crashed or only recognised the audio track (tried ffmpeg, QuickTime in OS X and Windows, Handbrake, VirtualDub, MKVToolnix, and mpegstreamclip plus a few others; mostly ffmpeg-based stuff crashed AFAICT - most of the others either errored out or just listed the audio track). I ended up recovering most of the footage by re-recording the screen whilst it was playing in Windows Media Player. Not ideal, but it was a low-ish quality capture of a webstream anyway, so any quality loss wasn't particularly important.
- NamTaf 11y ago
  I recently used this amazing little utility: http://slydiman.me/eng/mmedia/recover_mp4.htm http://slydiman.me/eng/mmedia/recover_mp4.htm It helped me recover some GoPro footage that went corrupt. You feed it a known good video from the same camera/same settings and then it basically uses the structure of the good footage to rebuild the bad footage. It worked a treat after I found a good file for it. Have a look at it, you may find it helps you out.
  - stordoff 11y ago
    I don't currently have access to the drives it is stored on, but I'll give it a go next time I do. Thanks for the suggestion.
- greggman 11y ago
  I have quite a few files VLC doesn't play that MPlayer does. I use VLC as my main viewer but I get a file that doesn't work I try MPlayer.
  - jbk 11y ago
    Please share them with us :)
    - jzelinskie 11y ago
      Lots of modern anime rips have had corruption issues with VLC in the past[0]. It's actually become a meme in those communities[1]. As x264 and 10bit encodings became ubiquitous, I think VLC's support also became fairly sufficient. However, the anime community is known for being early adopters of new encoding strategies. I believe it would benefit the development of VLC if some developers could check out what those encoders are doing every so often. It seems like they're always a few years ahead of how everyone else is encoding. [0]: http://i38.tinypic.com/34gkavn.jpg http://i38.tinypic.com/34gkavn.jpg [1]: http://i.imgur.com/RWIAe.jpg http://i.imgur.com/RWIAe.jpg
      - lmm 11y ago
        One big change was VLC switching to use mplayer's libass rather than their own (buggy, quite likely to the extent of allowing remote code execution) ass parser. These days VLC mostly seems alright, though it'll take a while for it to gain my trust.
    - miahi 11y ago
      Codec not supported: VLC could not decode the format "CFHD" (No description for this codec)
      - jbk 11y ago
        This codec was RE'd 2 weeks ago and was merged in FFmpeg and libavcodec this weekend, by a member of the VideoLAN non-profit organization. Expect it in VLC soon.
- stephancoral 11y ago
  My dad's friend is a lawyer in Boston and I remember he had a big case and needed to review some of the evidence urgently - it was security cam footage. However he had no idea how to play the video file, it was in some obscure format. Nothing but VLC worked. I'm pretty sure he ended up winning the case.
- lmm 11y ago
  What bothers me are the crashes. A crash probably translates into an arbitrary code execution when a malicious file exploits it. I've seen files that mplayer won't play that VLC will (though I've seen more of the opposite), but when mplayer can't parse a file it tends to simply not play it rather than crashing. So I'm not going to use VLC on files from the untrusted internet.
rossy 11y ago
In general, it seems like FOSS multimedia software blows proprietary software out of the water with regards to format support, and that proprietary software works at a disadvantage, because for them, adding support for a new format means navigating a patent minefield and paying licence fees, but for FOSS, supporting every format is as simple as including FFmpeg.
- gioele 11y ago
  I have a theory that I call "just one small fix". I think FOSS media players can handle more video files (not just formats) because most of the times the errors that makes them unplayable are just small mistakes in the way things are encoded. Does a certain camera produces only even timestamps? Let's check for that fix it, it is "just one small fix: one if and a division". Is that MPEG encoded with swapped croma? Let's detect it and fix it, it is "just ome small fix: one if and a swap". Over the time FOSS projects accumulate all these fixes and one day you realize that they can read practically everything as if a single person sat down and wrote that super-robust code in one go. Proprietary software cannot benefit from this kind of drive-by contributions.
  - Bouncingsoul1 11y ago
    One "if" here a "dirty bool flag" there and sooner or later your code is unmaintainable, I think OpenSource + Review prevents this kind of code.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      If you figure out early enough that you need this kind of feature, you can architecture your code in such a way that those "drive-by fixes" are actually pluggable and maintainable.
      - nfriedly 11y ago
        Indeed - at my last job, we built a js widget that would go on customers websites, and we learned pretty quickly that we would need pluggable, sometimes customers-specific hacks. Things like old versions of Prototype.js that broke JSON.stringify or forcing Internet Explorer 8+ into IE7 emulation mode. One customer overwrote Array.prototype.forEach with a broken version that lost the scope. Fun times.
cortesoft 11y ago
The DVD and BluRay not working on secondary monitors is probably due to the ridiculous DRM stuff that prevents you from playing on an 'unauthorized' display.
xrjn 11y ago
One thing that I'm having trouble with is HTTP/HTTPS streaming with VLC on Android. Almost every time it's unable to open the stream after trying to load it for a number of seconds. Does anyone else have this, or is it just me with some weird configurations? For example, I wasn't able to stream any of the 32C3 streams, they only worked via the in-browser player.
odbol_ 11y ago
As a VJ, that's what I love about VLC too. Even now, I cringe when I go to professional film screenings, and between each film the screen reverts to a Mac desktop wallpaper and some person in the projection booth is frantically twiddling with their mouse to click the play button in QuickTime.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  We did a job where they insisted on us playing the show off of their Mac running, I think, iTunes. It was a whole bunch of shorts for a festival type event. These were video/photography pros. It was an utter shit show. Videos starting halfway through, videos being skipped without warning, etc. We spent a significant amount of time with the projector blanked, while setting up the next video or fixed fucked up start times. The level of stress caused by Apple's fuckery was enough to where we, as a company, instituted a rule that clients either provided video to us in advance of the show so we could put it into a VLC playlist, or they were explicitly responsible for all the shit that would follow (including running the computer that was being projected...and whatever ended up on the screen was their responsibility). QuickTime doesn't even have a damned playlist function which is why they were using iTunes. But, iTunes has some of the most bizarre behaviors I've ever dealt with, and awful playlist functionality, in general.

stordoff 11y ago

> It plays literally everything In the ten or so years I've used it, I've only come across one file that VLC wouldn't play (excluded DRMed files) - a (possibly malformed) 24hr long MP4 I recorded a few years ago. Pretty much everything chokes on it (VLC crashes straight away), though oddly enough Windows Media Player handles it fine until you try to seek to a different time. I've dabbled with other media players/codecs in the past, but usually end up back at VLC not long after due to its versatility. Impressive stuff.

projct 11y ago
you might be able to reindex or remux this file (save to a new file in the process) to fix it, by the way.
- stordoff 11y ago
  I tried that at the time, but all of the tools I tried either crashed or only recognised the audio track (tried ffmpeg, QuickTime in OS X and Windows, Handbrake, VirtualDub, MKVToolnix, and mpegstreamclip plus a few others; mostly ffmpeg-based stuff crashed AFAICT - most of the others either errored out or just listed the audio track). I ended up recovering most of the footage by re-recording the screen whilst it was playing in Windows Media Player. Not ideal, but it was a low-ish quality capture of a webstream anyway, so any quality loss wasn't particularly important.
NamTaf 11y ago
I recently used this amazing little utility: http://slydiman.me/eng/mmedia/recover_mp4.htm http://slydiman.me/eng/mmedia/recover_mp4.htm It helped me recover some GoPro footage that went corrupt. You feed it a known good video from the same camera/same settings and then it basically uses the structure of the good footage to rebuild the bad footage. It worked a treat after I found a good file for it. Have a look at it, you may find it helps you out.
- stordoff 11y ago
  I don't currently have access to the drives it is stored on, but I'll give it a go next time I do. Thanks for the suggestion.
greggman 11y ago
I have quite a few files VLC doesn't play that MPlayer does. I use VLC as my main viewer but I get a file that doesn't work I try MPlayer.
- jbk 11y ago
  Please share them with us :)
  - jzelinskie 11y ago
    Lots of modern anime rips have had corruption issues with VLC in the past[0]. It's actually become a meme in those communities[1]. As x264 and 10bit encodings became ubiquitous, I think VLC's support also became fairly sufficient. However, the anime community is known for being early adopters of new encoding strategies. I believe it would benefit the development of VLC if some developers could check out what those encoders are doing every so often. It seems like they're always a few years ahead of how everyone else is encoding. [0]: http://i38.tinypic.com/34gkavn.jpg http://i38.tinypic.com/34gkavn.jpg [1]: http://i.imgur.com/RWIAe.jpg http://i.imgur.com/RWIAe.jpg
    - lmm 11y ago
      One big change was VLC switching to use mplayer's libass rather than their own (buggy, quite likely to the extent of allowing remote code execution) ass parser. These days VLC mostly seems alright, though it'll take a while for it to gain my trust.
  - miahi 11y ago
    Codec not supported: VLC could not decode the format "CFHD" (No description for this codec)
    - jbk 11y ago
      This codec was RE'd 2 weeks ago and was merged in FFmpeg and libavcodec this weekend, by a member of the VideoLAN non-profit organization. Expect it in VLC soon.
stephancoral 11y ago
My dad's friend is a lawyer in Boston and I remember he had a big case and needed to review some of the evidence urgently - it was security cam footage. However he had no idea how to play the video file, it was in some obscure format. Nothing but VLC worked. I'm pretty sure he ended up winning the case.
lmm 11y ago
What bothers me are the crashes. A crash probably translates into an arbitrary code execution when a malicious file exploits it. I've seen files that mplayer won't play that VLC will (though I've seen more of the opposite), but when mplayer can't parse a file it tends to simply not play it rather than crashing. So I'm not going to use VLC on files from the untrusted internet.

rossy 11y ago

In general, it seems like FOSS multimedia software blows proprietary software out of the water with regards to format support, and that proprietary software works at a disadvantage, because for them, adding support for a new format means navigating a patent minefield and paying licence fees, but for FOSS, supporting every format is as simple as including FFmpeg.

gioele 11y ago
I have a theory that I call "just one small fix". I think FOSS media players can handle more video files (not just formats) because most of the times the errors that makes them unplayable are just small mistakes in the way things are encoded. Does a certain camera produces only even timestamps? Let's check for that fix it, it is "just one small fix: one if and a division". Is that MPEG encoded with swapped croma? Let's detect it and fix it, it is "just ome small fix: one if and a swap". Over the time FOSS projects accumulate all these fixes and one day you realize that they can read practically everything as if a single person sat down and wrote that super-robust code in one go. Proprietary software cannot benefit from this kind of drive-by contributions.
- Bouncingsoul1 11y ago
  One "if" here a "dirty bool flag" there and sooner or later your code is unmaintainable, I think OpenSource + Review prevents this kind of code.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    If you figure out early enough that you need this kind of feature, you can architecture your code in such a way that those "drive-by fixes" are actually pluggable and maintainable.
    - nfriedly 11y ago
      Indeed - at my last job, we built a js widget that would go on customers websites, and we learned pretty quickly that we would need pluggable, sometimes customers-specific hacks. Things like old versions of Prototype.js that broke JSON.stringify or forcing Internet Explorer 8+ into IE7 emulation mode. One customer overwrote Array.prototype.forEach with a broken version that lost the scope. Fun times.

cortesoft 11y ago

The DVD and BluRay not working on secondary monitors is probably due to the ridiculous DRM stuff that prevents you from playing on an 'unauthorized' display.

xrjn 11y ago

One thing that I'm having trouble with is HTTP/HTTPS streaming with VLC on Android. Almost every time it's unable to open the stream after trying to load it for a number of seconds. Does anyone else have this, or is it just me with some weird configurations? For example, I wasn't able to stream any of the 32C3 streams, they only worked via the in-browser player.

odbol_ 11y ago

As a VJ, that's what I love about VLC too. Even now, I cringe when I go to professional film screenings, and between each film the screen reverts to a Mac desktop wallpaper and some person in the projection booth is frantically twiddling with their mouse to click the play button in QuickTime.

SwellJoe 11y ago
We did a job where they insisted on us playing the show off of their Mac running, I think, iTunes. It was a whole bunch of shorts for a festival type event. These were video/photography pros. It was an utter shit show. Videos starting halfway through, videos being skipped without warning, etc. We spent a significant amount of time with the projector blanked, while setting up the next video or fixed fucked up start times. The level of stress caused by Apple's fuckery was enough to where we, as a company, instituted a rule that clients either provided video to us in advance of the show so we could put it into a VLC playlist, or they were explicitly responsible for all the shit that would follow (including running the computer that was being projected...and whatever ended up on the screen was their responsibility). QuickTime doesn't even have a damned playlist function which is why they were using iTunes. But, iTunes has some of the most bizarre behaviors I've ever dealt with, and awful playlist functionality, in general.