One media player to rule them all

1.3k points · 104 comments · view on lemmy.world

104 Comments

Hackworth@piefed.ca · 120 pts · 292d (24 replies)

I get the sense that VLC doesn't really care if something is a valid video file, it's just gonna start playing and see what happens.

Dagnet@lemmy.world · 56 pts · 292d (8 replies)

You can shove French fries into a CD drive and vlc will still make it a video

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 292d (3 replies)

Rallys/Checkers fries? Or Burger King? Because there is a HUGE difference!

Or Wendys?

Or McDonalds?

WHOSE FRIES ARE WE TALKING ABOUT??? I WANT TO WATCH VIDEOS ON FRENCH FRIES!!!!

AtariDump@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 291d

White castle fries show Robin Hood: Men in Tights

thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 292d
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Kolanaki@pawb.social · 1 pts · 283d

Taco Bell

echodot@feddit.uk · 9 pts · 291d (1 reply)

Extract the eyes of murder victims and VLC will show their final moments.

Sidyctism2@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 283d

Wild wild west style?

thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 292d (1 reply)

reminds me of Oats Jenkins on YT designing “Money 2” and the biggest coin (1000 “grain”) was a playable CD

the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MqfGO81Lus

ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org · 3 pts · 291d

Eww, that's a kitschy video

The bill could be a playable CD too if you don't care about folding, or add bends around the central square. The widest rectangle that can be cut out of a CD and still retain a bit of the data area is about 108×51 mm, as opposed to approx. 156×66 mm of a $1 bill.

But yeah, NFC or just printing the data is more viable.

catshit_dogfart@lemmy.world · 32 pts · 292d (7 replies)

I'm pretty sure it can still do that. Like if you can trick it into playing something that isn't even video, it'll shit out whatever it can interpret as video. Which of course will be garbled nonsense, but it did exactly what you asked.

Derpenheim@lemmy.zip · 33 pts · 292d (2 replies)

I wish every program was this way. Fuck off with your file format restrictions, I know what Im doing

Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 15 pts · 292d (1 reply)

Audacity does as well and I use it to edit pictures sometimes.

Yes pictures.

You can get some interesting effects from it.

AtariDump@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 291d

Interesting.....

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 292d

Which of course will be garbled nonsense, but it did exactly what you asked.

Is it possible that someone took a copy of hitlers book, shoved it into VLC, took the video it spit out, and somehow we got a president from that process? Garbled nonsense. Highly racist. But it did what you asked!

Wait.....does this explain Mark Zuckerberg? They put a piece of cellery, mixed with dog shit, and out comes Mark Zuckerberg who's almost a real boy?

ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org · 1 pts · 291d (2 replies)

My camera shat out an MP4 without a moov atom and VLC nor anything else could play it :( Not even when inserted in the middle of a valid file of the same format.

Yes, ffplay can interpret it as rawvideo when asked but so can it /dev/random

AtariDump@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 291d (1 reply)

Some files are more particular than others about being closed properly.

ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org · 2 pts · 291d

MP4 is decent at this, it's the camera's fault for writing critical information at the end and not retrying on SD write errors. A bad couple of frames is still preferrable to losing up to 20 minutes (yes, that's the split size, and it loses 5 seconds in between).

MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net · 20 pts · 292d (3 replies)

I recall a few AVIs from the long ago that VLC would throw an error on, something about a format error, and it gave the option to try converting it or try playing as-is. Attempting to convert took forever, and playback was mostly fine, though IIRC you couldn't scrub through the file.

Harvey656@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 292d

Yeah it absolutely can fix broken avi files! Was a lifesaver back in high-school for me, during that era, avi was every camcorder format (at least that I had).

I always stored it on this 128gb external drive and I swear that drive was cursed, always corrupted my files. Vlc was an easy way to fix them for class.

zurohki@aussie.zone · 9 pts · 292d (1 reply)

IIRC that's AVI files that aren't indexed properly. VLC could either build its own index for the file or it could just start playing the file one frame at a time and hope for the best.

MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 292d

That's it! Thanks for the assist lol.

thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 12 pts · 292d (1 reply)

MacOS was telling me "Open this openSUSE ISO in: Balena Etcher, VLC"

what

bluesheep@sh.itjust.works · 18 pts · 292d

VLC be like: "it's a disk image is it not?????"

SorryQuick@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 292d

But really isn’t that just libavcodec behaving like that? VLC itself doesn’t actually read your video file, it just takes what FFMPEG gives it and blindly trusts it.

falseWhite@lemmy.world · 87 pts · 292d (5 replies)
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sfxrlz@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 291d (4 replies)

Til vlc is older than me

AtariDump@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 291d (3 replies)

TIL I’m older than you.

oppy1984@lemdro.id · 5 pts · 291d (2 replies)

TIL I still need to schedule that colonoscopy

AtariDump@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 290d (1 reply)

Get checked everyone! If you listened to the album “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory” in HS, it’s time for a mammogram and/or colonoscopy.

oppy1984@lemdro.id · 2 pts · 290d

Hey now I'm not that ancient, I was listening to Amish Paradice in high school, but I am getting to the age where I need to schedule a colonoscopy.....

NorthWestWind@lemmy.world · 61 pts · 292d (4 replies)

sad ffmpeg noises

somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 29 pts · 292d

sad mpv noises

Fmstrat@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 291d (2 replies)

Dont you mean sad libavcodec noises?

VLC, IPlayer, and FFMpeg are interfaces for libavcodec 😀

io@piefed.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 291d (1 reply)
Fmstrat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 291d

Ah yes, I guess if that was interpreted as sad ffmpeg team it would hold true 😀

absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz · 43 pts · 292d

Long ago; a non-tech friend saying to another non-tech friend. "you should try it on VLC; it'll play a slice of cucumber" when referring to some obscure video file they had.

Taldan@lemmy.world · 42 pts · 292d (2 replies)

I did a CTF once where one of the challenges was forensics on a video file. It had the header ripped off, the entension removed, and was split into chunks that had to be ripped out of a pcap and reassmebled

VLC just played the mangled chunks as-is. It was an unintended cheat code for the challenge

thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 14 pts · 292d

VLC: "I am 4 Parallel Universes ahead of you"

echodot@feddit.uk · 6 pts · 291d

I had it once play a video recorded on an old Motorola razr circa 2004. It was this super obscure file format, that basically only this one phone used, and was never used on any other phone.

VLC didn't care, played it right out of the box without any problems.

It supports an obscure single use, 2004 video format. If aliens come to earth, VLC will be able to play their files too.

0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 27 pts · 292d (3 replies)

And it still supports devices with Android version 4.2 (released on November 13, 2012) and newer. That's a 13 year old release.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.videolan.vlc/

Perfect use of old devices as a media player. It struggles with modern file formats but having modern UI and support this long is epic.

GeekFTW@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 291d (2 replies)

Which is what I did. Had an old 2nd gen Nexus 7 from 2013 which I used as an occasional media player. Finally died back in January, had VLC running on it until its last day!

ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org · 2 pts · 291d (1 reply)

I have a 2013 phone running Android 13. Sony Xperia Z, found in e-waste in 2023 in great condition (except for dust in the camera). I used it a lot and even replaced the battery, although that didn't make much difference, it just kept overheating and discharging like crazy on modern websites. The notification LED broke in a peculiar way (likely shorted driving transistor, burning it out within hours) and so did the vibrator. Recently, I dropped it and the back shattered but I still carry it every day, although now it's a secondary phone (can't get some apps running on my primary one although both are degoogled). It has a 32-bit processor, noisy camera and no fingerprint reader, but a 5" 1080p LCD, MHL (HDMI over microUSB), NFC and headphone jack. And a mediocre FM transmitter that can be enabled with custom drivers for the Qualcomm chip. It was covered in Janus Cycle's video on monoliths.

ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org · 1 pts · 291d
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pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 25 pts · 291d (1 reply)
Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org · 16 pts · 291d

You had that screenshot locked and loaded 😂

verdigris@lemmy.ml · 20 pts · 292d (11 replies)

mpv is better

Zorque@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 292d (7 replies)

... go on

SorryQuick@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 292d (6 replies)

Faster, simpler but not user friendly.

Zorque@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 292d (2 replies)

What's the point of simplicity if it's not for user-friendliness?

Crashumbc@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 292d

Measuring epeen mostly.

SorryQuick@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 291d

Depends on your usecase. It’s user friendly if all you care about is playing a video, but not if you want to push it further.

tiramichu@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 292d (2 replies)

I mean, it is user-friendly in some ways, depending how you define that.

Double-click a video and it opens. You get a visually appealing, sleek and minimalistic UI that helpfully appears only when your mouse is over the video, and otherwise gets out of the way. You can seek, adjust volume, select audio language and subtitles, and that's it. Very uncluttered, obvious and easy in the way that modern applications try to be.

For most usage, that's enough. It's when you find yourself needing to pan/scan, or change subtitle offset, or enable looping etc you discover there are no buttons or menus for those things and you have to go hit the docs to discover what the keybinds are.

Holytimes@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 290d (1 reply)

Minimalism rarely is ever user friendly is the problem.

Minimalism has the assumption the user preknows how to do everything.

User friendlyness is how you end up with button gore. It's why UI/UX is so hard to do well.

tiramichu@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 290d

We can't simply say minimalism is bad, though, because the truth is "it depends".

The iPod Shuffle music player from the mid 2000s could be considered a minimalistic design. It had no screen, with only buttons for next, previous, play, pause, volume and (as the name suggests) shuffle. The player had far less functionality than its big brother iPods, but because it had less functions, the interface didn't need many buttons.

It was, perhaps, "truly" minimal.

In software we do sometimes have true minimalism, but more often than not we actually have a lot of features, but have to choose to hide some amount of it and have a simpler interface, and the amount we choose to show or hide may determine how "minimalist" or not it appears.

So you can have minimalism via simply /not having/ functions, or you can have minimalism via hiding.

When you open a CAD program for the first time, you are likely immediately intimidated by the sheer number of buttons and toolbars, with no idea what to press. But a minimalist CAD program would be a nightmare because it ruins any discoverability of features. Showing the complexity is necessary.

On the other hand, an image viewer which is secretly also a featureful image editor - but hides all the edit controls behind an 'edit' button until you ask for them - is perhaps an appropriate time to hide it.

To look at mpv specifically, my personal opinion is that the lack of any option toolbars is 'bad' minimalism because it forces you to the wiki to find out how to do things with keybinds, but the main interface is 'good' minimalism because it shows you the controls you need probably 95% of the time, and nothing extra beyond that.

eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 292d

Both are good tools for the job. I use mpv but VLC just works for 99% of use cases. mpv is best for working with terminals, vlc is best for GUI and is consistently easy on any operating system, even android.

pressanykeynow@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 292d

Don't they both use ffmpeg so their codecs support is exactly the same?

MrSmith@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 291d

Yep, to me, simply because it can be color managed. Just because VLC will play anything, doesn't mean it'll play it well.

CameronDev@programming.dev · 20 pts · 292d (5 replies)

Arch split out the h264 decoders from vlc, and its not installed by default, so last time I needed to use it, it didn't work. No idea why they did that.

mp3@lemmy.ca · 14 pts · 292d (3 replies)

Most likely patents and licensing.

CameronDev@programming.dev · 17 pts · 292d (2 replies)

The packages still exist, you can install them, its just not by default. Their argument for splitting is that they can be updated independently, but that doesnt explain why the h264 plugins aren't just included by default.

thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 292d

useful things are bloat apparently

ExtremeUnicorn@feddit.org · 2 pts · 290d

Logic: Ok, you installed a video player. Fine. It has a GUI, settings and all. Oh, you want to play any videos with it? Go search for their dependencies.

pizza_the_hutt@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 292d

Yep, and lately it stopped working altogether. I have since switched to mpv.

TachyonTele@piefed.social · 13 pts · 292d (5 replies)

Eventually, after I stop using my steam deck I'm going to turn it into a VLC machine. With emulators on it too

BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 292d (3 replies)

Isn't a tablet gonna offer a larger screen for less weight if all you wanna do is watch videos

TachyonTele@piefed.social · 2 pts · 292d (2 replies)

Music

BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 292d (1 reply)

Then a small dedicated music player like an ipod is even better, you wanna lug around a steam deck just to listen to music?

TachyonTele@piefed.social · 4 pts · 292d

Idk who knows what I'll use it for down the road.

bryndos@fedia.io · 7 pts · 292d

I rarely take a laptop on trips anymore (unless its my work one), bt kb+mouse, plug in 4tb ssd (that has built in hdmi out). shitty plywood stand that i made. It's cool.

frankly the shitty cheap used laptops that i get, its probably better performance than any of them if i do need to do anything serious.

deranger@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 292d

VLC is good but I like MPC-HC best. Open source and has a shit load of nerdy ass technical options and great upscaling through madVR.

umbraroze@piefed.social · 9 pts · 292d (4 replies)

Me, upon installing Debian KDE distro, and having Dragon Player pop up: I ALREADY INSTALLED VLC, WHAT THE HELL DUDES

stevedice@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 292d (3 replies)

It's so bizarre that KDE "makes" its "own" videoplayer when libVLC is literally a dependency of KDE.

PieMePlenty@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 291d (2 replies)

The real question is why they make two! Did a fresh install of Fedora KDE the other day and had to remove dragon and installed haruna.

stevedice@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 291d

They've been trying to replace all of their software with Qt4 Qt5 Qt6 versions for like 7 centuries now.

RmDebArc_5@feddit.org · 1 pts · 290d

Two? Don't forget Kaffeine!

ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 291d (7 replies)

Nah. mpv.

tetris11@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 291d (3 replies)

I don't know what it is about mpv that makes it my favourite. Gstreamer is performative enough. FFplay is also pretty clean. Cvlc is fine.

I think I just like that it has sensible controls, and ultimately gets out of the way

ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 291d

I really like the configuration aspect of it. You can customize how it works internally and how it even looks. For example, I use a big 1m diagonal TV as my main screen and I sit about 45cm in front of it. So with bidirectional integer scaling, Full HD looks kind of blurry and bad, but with lanczos scaling it looks great! And that's why I like MPV.

Holytimes@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 290d (1 reply)

If I want a program that calls a video player seemlessly for the end user mpv is great.

If I want an actual app that is human useable and doesn't require arcane bullshit. I'll use VLC.

Different use cases really.

tetris11@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 289d

I'm continually impressed that mpv can run from a tty. It does not need X11 or Wayland, it can render directly to the framebuffer itself!

nshibj@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 291d (2 replies)

Until you want to add external subtitles

wasabi@feddit.org · 8 pts · 291d (1 reply)

When the file is called video.mkv name them video.srt. MPV will pick it up automatically.

nshibj@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 291d

I know, but what about when I have several subtitle files? Different languages, or maybe several subtitle files I downloaded and want to check which one matches my video? mpv has zero flexibility.

With VLC I can just "Subtitle / Add subtitle track" or add the language code after the filename (video.en.srt, video.fr.srt, video.spa.srt), with mpv: just one file at a time: rename, launch, retry.

can@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 292d

Back in the day Media Player Classic was this for me. I didn't know enough about codecs but I knew that player seemed to have all of them.

Of course it's now superceded by vlc (and maybe even was at the time) but it's still a fond memory of working out why the video I downloaded only played audio.

Bloomcole@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 291d

There are other media players?

SereneSadie@quokk.au · 6 pts · 292d (6 replies)
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A7thStone@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 292d

Don't get mad at the software trying to do it's best to overcome intentionally malicious coding.

eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 26 pts · 292d (1 reply)

Blu-rays are purposely made to be combersome to read and use without explicit permission from the Blu-Ray commission.

Blu-rays aren't DVDs, each release has a unique encryption on it that you either break, or use a program to scan and break for you with public listings of known keys.

VLC would need to ask the Blu-Ray Group to open up their software on how encoding and decoding works, and they never will.

Sony gets a cut for every single Blu-ray, it's why you need to install the app for Xbox when the gaming console can naturally play Blu-ray discs for games. Microsoft doesn't want to fork over more money to it's main competitor, and part of why they backed HD DVD.

Is it VLCs fault? Not really. If they had a lot of money and man hours they could maybe work something out. But DVDs are child's play to figure out compared to Blu-Rays. That's on purpose.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 292d

Yeah. The are not going to make blu rays as simple as

[09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0]
KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 292d

Some of my 4k videos, especially drone footage refuses to play smoothly in vlc, I couldn't be arsed to find out why, it's just annoying.

AliasVortex@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 292d

4k's are their own special thing, but for regular Blu-ray's I've had good luck using the MakeMKV integration for VLC (and Handbrake).

Technically there's also libbluray from the same folks that make VLC, but in order to use it you have to have a list of disk IDs and their decryption keys which are annoying to get ahold of (I think I remember running across a community generated list or a methodology to break the key on avsforum, but it's been years since I mucked with it- makemkv is significantly easier)

Also, if you want disk menus, you'll need to have some version of the java 8 runtime installed and configured for VLC to use.

krooklochurm@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 292d

On high quality video files with 7.1 and 5.1 surround the audio in box is cutting in and out for me constantly.

As of this morning it no longer plays video. Just outputs black.

I'm tired.

Wispy2891@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 291d (1 reply)

Somehow I'm unable to let VLC play any kind of video on my Arch (actually cachyos) laptop. Whatever the format it says codec is missing even if I installed everything (mpv, totem and others can play them).

(I tried to install vlc-git from aur but then gave up when after 30 minutes was still compiling, I don't have enough patience to wait all that time every time I run yay)

I'm forced to run the flatpak version of VLC for some reason, the only way to make it work

tempest@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 291d

You should read the wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/VLC_media_player

Likely you just want vlc-plugins-all

expatriado@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 292d

the only one that could play the videos i recorded on my BlackBerry 2008-2012

Gammelfisch@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 291d (2 replies)

Developed by the French and funded by the EU. I'll download it.

can@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 291d

If you're telling us you found Lemmy before vlc that's honestly remarkable.

Bloomcole@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 291d

Despite that I still like it

ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 3 pts · 291d

VLC... my choice since 2007.

mlg@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 291d (1 reply)

VLC sucks ass when you want to do any type of live transcoding or remuxing without setting up a video stream. Especially with multichannel audio:

This has been an issue ever since feature added, the maximum bitrate you can set is 512 kb/s on every codec, despite codecs that support more.

The bug thread for this was basically "stop complaining about our shit UI and use the CLI"

Much prefer Kodi for this purpose, and an ffmpeg based player for lightweight stuff.

LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 291d

My experience with VLC in Linux is subpar. In Windows it was always a good tool to have. Granted for me it was just, does this shit have working codecs, phew, it plays

user224@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 292d

Cisco coming up with ARF and WRF to make that false.

MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 291d (2 replies)

Shame it's shit on Android tv

can@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 291d (1 reply)

Is it? What's wrong with it? What do you use instead?

MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 291d

It seems to fail with some files. I think 4k and/or .mkv ones. I've had to use Kodi during those times instead. I've not going a great simple media player to use on Android tv yet. They all have their caveats. Unless there's a better one I've not found yet.

polle@feddit.org · 1 pts · 291d (1 reply)

Only on windows (or mac?), but not on linux. Which was a unexpected realisation.

buddascrayon@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 291d

Yeah, this was a surprise to me as well. Although, its the only video player I can get to play Blu-ray discs. I can even play 4K discs to a certain extent (my processor and video card just aren't up to that particular task).