VLC media player - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

VLC media player is a free

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

and open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

media player and multimedia framework

Multimedia framework

A multimedia framework is a software framework that handles media on a computer and through a network. A good multimedia framework offers an intuitive API and a modular architecture to easily add support for new audio, video and container formats and transmission protocols...

written by the VideoLAN

VideoLAN

VideoLAN is a project that develops software for playing video and other media formats across a local area network . It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client and VideoLAN Server , but most of the features of VLS have been incorporated into VLC, with the result...

project.

VLC is a portable

Porting

In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...

multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codec

Codec

A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of "compressor-decompressor" or, more commonly, "coder-decoder"...

s and file format

File format

A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...

s as well as DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

s, VCDs

Video CD

Before the advent of DVD and Blu-ray, the Video CD became the first format for distributing films on standard 120 mm optical discs. The format is a standard digital format for storing video on a Compact Disc...

, and various streaming

Streaming media

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...

protocols

Communications protocol

A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications...

. It is able to stream over networks

Computer network

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various formats. VLC used to stand for VideoLAN Client, but since VLC is no longer simply a client, that initialism no longer applies.

It is a cross-platform

Cross-platform

In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...

media player, with versions for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

, GNU

GNU

GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...

, Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, BeOS

BeOS

BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...

, MorphOS

MorphOS

MorphOS is an Amiga-compatible computer operating system. It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the...

, BSD

Berkeley Software Distribution

Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...

, Solaris, Android, iOS, and eComStation

EComStation

eComStation or eCS is a PC operating system based on OS/2, published by Serenity Systems. It includes several additions and accompanying software not present in the IBM version of the system.-Differences between eComStation and OS/2:...

.

The default distribution of VLC includes a large number of free

Free software

decoding and encoding libraries, avoiding the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. Many of VLC's codec

Codec

s are provided by the libavcodec

Libavcodec

libavcodec is a free software/open source LGPL-licensed library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data. Same name but incompatible libraries are provided from both FFmpeg project and Libav project....

library from the FFmpeg

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The most notable parts of FFmpeg are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the ffmpeg command line...

project, but it uses mainly its own muxer and demuxers. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux by using the libdvdcss

Libdvdcss

libdvdcss is a free software library for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the Content Scramble System...

DVD decryption library.

History

The VideoLan project was originally started as an academic project in 1996. It was intended to consist of a client and server to stream videos across a campus network. VLC was the client for the VideoLAN project, with VLC standing for VideoLan Client. Originally developed by students at the École Centrale Paris

École Centrale Paris

École Centrale Paris is a French university-level institution in the field of engineering. It is also known by its original name École centrale des arts et manufactures, or ECP. Founded in 1829, it is one of the oldest and most prestigious engineering schools in France and has the special status...

, it is now developed by contributors worldwide and is coordinated by the VideoLAN

VideoLAN

non-profit organization.

Rewritten from scratch in 1998, it was released under the GPL on 1 February 2001. The functionality of the server program, VideoLan Server (VLS), has mostly been subsumed into VLC and has been deprecated. The project name has been changed to VLC because there is no longer a client/server infrastructure.

The cone icon used in VLC is a reference to the traffic cone

Traffic cone

Traffic cones, also called traffic pylons, road cones, highway cones, safety cones, construction cones or witches' hats or safety wizards, are usually cone-shaped markers that are placed on roads or footpaths to temporarily redirect traffic in a safe manner...

s collected by Ecole Centrale's Networking Students' Association. The cone icon design was changed from a hand drawn low resolution icon to a higher resolution CGI

Computer-generated imagery

Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...

-rendered version in 2006, illustrated by Richard Øiestad.

After 13 years of development, version 1.0.0 of VLC media player was released on July 7, 2009.

VLC is 3rd in the sourceforge.net overall download count. VLC was available for the iPad

IPad

The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...

, iPhone

IPhone

The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...

, and iPod Touch

IPod Touch

The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...

from the Apple AppStore, but was pulled due to a licensing conflict between the GPL and the iTunes Store agreement.

Design principles

VLC 1.0.0 has more than 380 modules. VLC, like most multimedia framework

Multimedia framework

s, has a very modular design which makes it easier to include modules/plugins for new file formats, codecs, or streaming methods.

The VLC core creates dynamically its own graph of modules depending on the situation: input protocol, input file format, input codec, video card capabilities and other parameters. In VLC, almost everything is a module, like interfaces, video and audio outputs, controls, scalers, codecs, and audio/video filters

Filter (video)

A video filter is a software component that is used to decode audio and video. Multiple filters can be used in a filter chain, in which each filter receives input from its previous-in-line filter upstream, processes the input and outputs the processed video to its next-in-line filter downstream...

Interfaces

In VLC, interfaces are modules, which means that VLC's core can launch one, many, or no interfaces.

The default GUI

Gui

Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...

is based on Qt

Qt (toolkit)

Qt is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers...

4 for Windows and Linux, Cocoa

Cocoa (API)

Cocoa is Apple's native object-oriented application programming interface for the Mac OS X operating system and—along with the Cocoa Touch extension for gesture recognition and animation—for applications for the iOS operating system, used on Apple devices such as the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and...

for Mac OS X, and Be API on BeOS; but all give a similar standard interface. The old default GUI

Gui

was based on wx

WxWidgets

wxWidgets is a widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces for cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with minimal or no code changes...

on Windows and Linux.

The interface contains an easter egg

Easter egg (media)

Image:Carl Oswald Rostosky - Zwei Kaninchen und ein Igel 1861.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Example of Easter egg hidden within imagerect 467 383 539 434 desc none...

which changes the VLC traffic cone logo so that it's wearing a Santa hat. The logo changes on December 18, one week before Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

, and reverts to its normal appearance on January 1.

VLC supports highly customizable skins

Skin (computing)

In computing, a skin is a custom graphical appearance achieved by the use of a graphical user interface that can be applied to specific software and websites to suit the purpose, topic, or tastes of different users....

through the skins2 interface, also supporting Winamp

Winamp

Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...

2 and XMMS

XMMS

The X Multimedia System is a free audio player for Unix-like systems.-History:XMMS was originally written as X11Amp by Peter and Mikael Alm in November 1997. The player was made to resemble Winamp, which was first released in May that year. As such, XMMS has supported Winamp 2 "classic" skins...

skins. The customizable skins feature can malfunction depending on which version is being used.
For console users, VLC has a remote control interface and an ncurses

Ncurses

ncurses is a programming library that provides an API which allows the programmer to write text user interfaces in a terminal-independent manner. It is a toolkit for developing "GUI-like" application software that runs under a terminal emulator...

interface. As VLC can act as a streaming server, rather than a media player, it can be useful to control it from a remote location and there are interfaces allowing this. The Remote Control Interface is a text-based interface for doing this. There are also interfaces using telnet

TELNET

Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...

and HTTP (Ajax

Ajax (programming)

Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...

Control

In addition to these interfaces, it is possible to control VLC in different ways:

Configurable hotkeys
Mouse gesture
Mouse gesture
In computing, a pointing device gesture or mouse gesture is a way of combining pointing device movements and clicks which the software recognizes as a specific command. Pointing device gestures can provide quick access to common functions of a program. They can also be useful for people who have...

s
LIRC
LIRC
LIRC is an open source package that allows users to receive and send infrared signals with a Linux-based computer system.There is a Microsoft Windows equivalent of LIRC called WinLIRC....

and infrared controllers
D-Bus
D-Bus
In computing, D-Bus is a simple inter-process communication open-source system for software applications to communicate with one another. Heavily influenced by KDE2–3's DCOP system, D-Bus has replaced DCOP in the KDE 4 release. An implementation of D-Bus supports most POSIX operating...
Laptop motion
Apps
Application software
Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

for operating systems, such as Android and iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch)

Features

Because VLC is a packet-based media player, it can play the video content of some damaged, incomplete, or unfinished videos. (For example, files still downloading via peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...

(P2P) networks). It also plays m2t MPEG transport streams (.TS) files while they are still being digitized from an HDV

HDV

HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV cassette tape. The format was originally developed by JVC and supported by Sony, Canon and Sharp...

camera via a FireWire cable, making it possible to monitor the video as it is being played. The player can also use libcdio to access .iso files so that users can play files on a disk image

Disk image

A disk image is a single file or storage device containing the complete contents and structure representing a data storage medium or device, such as a hard drive, tape drive, floppy disk, CD/DVD/BD, or USB flash drive, although an image of an optical disc may be referred to as an optical disc image...

, even if the user's operating system cannot work directly with .iso images.

VLC supports all audio and video formats and all file formats supported by libavcodec

Libavcodec

and libavformat. This means that VLC can play back H.264

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC

H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC is a standard for video compression, and is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video...

or MPEG-4

MPEG-4

MPEG-4 is a method of defining compression of audio and visual digital data. It was introduced in late 1998 and designated a standard for a group of audio and video coding formats and related technology agreed upon by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group under the formal standard ISO/IEC...

video as well as support FLV or MXF file formats "out of the box" using FFmpeg's libraries. Alternatively, VLC has modules for codecs that are not based on FFmpeg's libraries. VLC is one of the free software

Free software

and open source

Open source

DVD players that ignores DVD region coding on RPC-1 firmware drives, making it a region-free player. However, it does not do the same on RPC-2 firmware drives. VLC media player has some filters that can distort, rotate, split, deinterlace, mirror videos, create display walls, or add a logo overlay. It can also output video as ASCII art

ASCII art

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters...

.

VLC media player can play high definition

High-definition video

High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...

recordings of D-VHS

D-VHS

D-VHS is a digital recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for Data VHS, but with the expansion of the format from standard definition to high definition capability, JVC renamed it Digital VHS and uses that...

tapes duplicated to a computer using CapDVHS.exe. This offers another way to archive all D-VHS tapes with the DRM copy freely tag. Using a FireWire connection from cable boxes to computers, VLC can stream live, unencrypted content to a monitor or HDTV. VLC media player can display the playing video as the desktop wallpaper

Computer wallpaper

Wallpaper is an image used as a background of a graphical user interface on a computer screen or mobile communications device. On a computer it is usually for the desktop, while for a mobile phone it is usually the background for the 'home' or 'idle' screen...

, like Windows DreamScene

Windows DreamScene

Windows DreamScene is a utility that allows videos and other optimized animations to be used as desktop wallpapers. It is one of the Windows Ultimate Extras. Prior to its official announcement, DreamScene was rumored to be in creation under the names Motion Desktop and Borealis...

, by using DirectX

DirectX

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...

, only available on Windows operating systems. VLC media player can create screencast

Screencast

A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. The term screencast compares with the related term screenshot; whereas screenshot is a picture of a computer screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of the...

s and record the desktop. On Microsoft Windows, VLC also supports the Direct Media Object (DMO) framework and can thus make use of some third-party DLLs

Dynamic-link library

Dynamic-link library , or DLL, is Microsoft's implementation of the shared library concept in the Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems...

. On most platforms, VLC can tune in to and view DVB-C, DVB-T, and DVB-S channels. On Mac OS X the separate EyeTV plugin is required, on Windows it requires the card's BDA Drivers.

VLC can be installed or run directly from a USB flash drive

USB flash drive

A flash drive is a data storage device that consists of flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g...

or other external drive. VLC can be extended through scripting. It uses the Lua scripting language. VLC can play videos in the AVCHD

AVCHD

AVCHD is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video....

format, a highly compressed format used in recent HD

High-definition video

camcorders. VLC can generate a number of music visualization

Music visualization

Music visualization, a feature found in electronic music visualizers and media player software, generates animated imagery based on a piece of music...

displays.

API

Several APIs can connect to VLC and use its functionality:

libVLC API – the VLC Core, for C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

, C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

, and C#
VLCKit – an Objective-C framework for Mac OS X
JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

API – the evolution of ActiveX API and Firefox integration
D-Bus
D-Bus
In computing, D-Bus is a simple inter-process communication open-source system for software applications to communicate with one another. Heavily influenced by KDE2–3's DCOP system, D-Bus has replaced DCOP in the KDE 4 release. An implementation of D-Bus supports most POSIX operating...

controls
Go
Go (programming language)
Go is a compiled, garbage-collected, concurrent programming language developed by Google Inc.The initial design of Go was started in September 2007 by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson. Go was officially announced in November 2009. In May 2010, Rob Pike publicly stated that Go was being...

binding
C# interface
Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

controls
Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

API
DirectShow
DirectShow
DirectShow , codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows technology...

filters
Delphi/Pascal
Object Pascal
Object Pascal refers to a branch of object-oriented derivatives of Pascal, mostly known as the primary programming language of Embarcadero Delphi.-Early history at Apple:...

API: PasLibVlc by: "Robert Jędrzejczyk"

Browser plugins

On Windows, Linux, Mac, and some other Unix-like platforms, VLC provides an NPAPI

NPAPI

Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface is a cross-platform plugin architecture used by many web browsers.It was first developed for the Netscape family of browsers starting with Netscape Navigator 2.0 but was subsequently implemented by many other browsers, including all of the browsers...

plugin, which enables users to view QuickTime

QuickTime

QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...

, Windows Media

Windows Media

Windows Media is a multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit with several application programming interfaces and a number of prebuilt technologies, and is the replacement of NetShow technologies.The Windows Media SDK...

, MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

, and Ogg

Ogg

Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.The Ogg container format can multiplex...

files embedded in websites without using additional products. It supports many web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

s including Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...

, Mozilla Application Suite

Mozilla Application Suite

The Mozilla Application Suite is a cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by AOL. It is based on the source code of Netscape Communicator...

, and other Netscape

Netscape

Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...

plug-in based browsers; Safari

Safari (web browser)

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the...

, Chrome

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...

, and other WebKit

WebKit

WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...

based browsers; and Opera

Opera (web browser)

Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...

. Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

used this plugin to build the Google Video

Google Video

Google Videos is a video search engine, and formerly a free video sharing website, from Google Inc. Before removing user-uploaded content, the service allowed selected videos to be remotely embedded on other websites and provided the necessary HTML code alongside the media, similar to YouTube...

web browser plugin before switching to use Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

.

Starting with version 0.8.2, VLC also provides an ActiveX

Component Object Model

Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages...

plugin, which lets people view QuickTime (MOV), Windows Media, MP3, and Ogg files embedded in websites when using Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...

Applications which use the VLC plugin

VLC can handle incomplete files and can be used to preview files being downloaded. Several programs make use of this, including eMule and KCeasy. The free/open-source Internet television application Miro also uses VLC code. HandBrake

HandBrake

HandBrake is a general-purpose, open-source, cross-platform, multithreaded video transcoder software application. HandBrake was originally developed by titer in 2003 as a general-purpose video transcoder to make ripping a film from a DVD to a data storage device easier...

, an open-source video encoder, loads libdvdcss

Libdvdcss

libdvdcss is a free software library for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the Content Scramble System...

from VLC Media Player.

Readable formats

VLC can read several formats, depending on the operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

VLC is running on.
Input : UDP

User Datagram Protocol

The User Datagram Protocol is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol Suite, the set of network protocols used for the Internet. With UDP, computer applications can send messages, in this case referred to as datagrams, to other hosts on an Internet Protocol network without requiring...

/RTP

Real-time Transport Protocol

The Real-time Transport Protocol defines a standardized packet format for delivering audio and video over IP networks. RTP is used extensively in communication and entertainment systems that involve streaming media, such as telephony, video teleconference applications, television services and...

unicast

Unicast

right|200pxIn computer networking, unicast transmission is the sending of messages to a single network destination identified by a unique address.-Addressing methodologies:...

or multicast

Multicast

In computer networking, multicast is the delivery of a message or information to a group of destination computers simultaneously in a single transmission from the source creating copies automatically in other network elements, such as routers, only when the topology of the network requires...

, HTTP, FTP, MMS

Microsoft Media Services

Microsoft Media Server is the name of Microsoft's proprietary network streaming protocol used to transfer unicast data in Windows Media Services . MMS can be transported via UDP or TCP...

, RTSP

Real Time Streaming Protocol

The Real Time Streaming Protocol is a network control protocol designed for use in entertainment and communications systems to control streaming media servers. The protocol is used for establishing and controlling media sessions between end points...

, RTMP

Real Time Messaging Protocol

Real Time Messaging Protocol was initially a proprietary protocol developed by Macromedia for streaming audio, video and data over the Internet, between a Flash player and a server...

, DVDs, VCD, SVCD, CD Audio, DVB, Video acquisition (via V4l and DirectShow), RSS

RSS (file format)

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...

/Atom

Atom (standard)

The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...

Feeds, and from files stored on the user's computer.
Container formats: 3GP

3GP

3GP is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 3G mobile phones but can also be played on some 2G and 4G phones....

, ASF

Advanced Systems Format

Advanced Systems Format is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media...

, AVI

Audio Video Interleave

Audio Video Interleave , known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback...

, FLV

FLV

Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player versions 6–11. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different video file formats known as Flash Video: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files...

, Matroska

Matroska

The Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks in one file. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows...

, Musical Instrument Digital Interface

Musical Instrument Digital Interface

MIDI is an industry-standard protocol, first defined in 1982 by Gordon Hall, that enables electronic musical instruments , computers and other electronic equipment to communicate and synchronize with each other...

(.mid/.midi), QuickTime, MP4, Ogg

Ogg

, OGM, WAV

WAV

Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...

, MPEG-2

MPEG-2

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...

(ES

Elementary stream

An elementary stream as defined by MPEG communication protocol is usually the output of an audio or video encoder. ES contains only one kind of data, e.g. audio, video or closed caption. An elementary stream is often referred to as "elementary", "data", "audio", or "video" bitstreams or streams...

, PS, TS, PVA, MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

), AIFF

AIFF

Audio Interchange File Format is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices...

, Raw audio, Raw DV, MXF

MXF

Material eXchange Format is a container format for professional digital video and audio media defined by a set of SMPTE standards.- A brief summary of MXF :...

, VOB

VOB

A VOB file is a container format in DVD-Video media. VOB can contain video, audio, subtitle, menu and navigation contents multiplexed together into a stream form. VOB is based on the MPEG program stream format, but with additional limitations and specifications in the private streams...

.
Video formats: Cinepak

Cinepak

Cinepak is a video codec developed by Peter Barrett at SuperMac Technologies, and released in 1991 with the Video Spigot, and then in 1992 as part of Apple Computer's QuickTime video suite. It was designed to encode 320x240 resolution video at 1x CD-ROM transfer rates. The codec was ported to the...

, Dirac

Dirac (codec)

Dirac is an open and royalty-free video compression format, specification and system developed by BBC Research at the BBC. Schrödinger and dirac-research are open and royalty-free software implementations of Dirac...

, DV

DV is a format for the digital recording and playing back of digital video. The DV codec was launched in 1995 with joint efforts of leading producers of video camcorders....

, H.263

H.263

H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bitrate compressed format for videoconferencing. It was developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group in a project ending in 1995/1996 as one member of the H.26x family of video coding standards in the domain of the ITU-T.H.263...

, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC

H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC is a standard for video compression, and is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video...

(8-bit; nightly builds also have 10-bit H.264 support), HuffYUV

Huffyuv

Huffyuv is a lossless video codec created by Ben Rudiak-Gould which is meant to replace uncompressed YCbCr as a video capture format.Despite the "YUV" in the name, it does not compress the YUV color space, but YCbCr...

, Indeo

Indeo

Indeo Video is a video codec developed by Intel in 1992. It was sold to Ligos Corporation in 2000. While its original version was related to Intel's DVI video stream format, a hardware-only codec for the compression of television-quality video onto compact disks, Indeo was distinguished by being...

3, MJPEG

MJPEG

In multimedia, Motion JPEG is an informal name for a class of video formats where each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is separately compressed as a JPEG image...

, MPEG-1

MPEG-1

MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to 1.5 Mbit/s without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting possible.Today, MPEG-1 has become...

, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2

MPEG-4 Part 2

MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual is a video compression technology developed by MPEG. It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It is a discrete cosine transform compression standard, similar to previous standards such as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2...

, RealVideo

RealVideo

RealVideo is a suite of proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks – the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and is at version 10. RealVideo is supported on many platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and several mobile...

3&4, Sorenson

Sorenson codec

Sorenson codec may refer to either of three proprietary video codecs: Sorenson Video, Sorenson Video 3 or Sorenson Spark. Sorenson Video is also known as Sorenson Video Codec, Sorenson Video Quantizer or SVQ...

(thus enabling direct playback of the modified Sorenson H.263

H.263

encoded videos downloaded from YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

), Theora

Theora

Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container....

, VC-1

VC-1

VC-1 is the informal name of the SMPTE 421M video codec standard, which was initially developed as a proprietary video format by Microsoft before it was released as a formal SMPTE standard video format on April 3, 2006...

, VP5

VP5

On2 TrueMotion VP5 is a proprietary lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies.It was announced by On2 Technologies in February 2002...

, VP6

VP6

On2 TrueMotion VP6 is a proprietary lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies. This codec is commonly used by Adobe Flash, Flash Video, and JavaFX media files.- Overview :The VP6 codec...

, VP8

VP8

VP8 is an open video compression format released by Google, originally created by On2 Technologies.After purchasing On2 Technologies in early 2010, Google has provided an irrevocable patent promise for underlying patents for the VP8 format, and released a bitstream format specification under a...

, and some WMV.
Subtitles: DVD, SVCD, DVB, OGM, SubStation Alpha

SubStation Alpha

SubStation Alpha , abbreviated SSA, is a subtitle file format created by CS Low that allows for more advanced subtitles than the conventional SRT and similar formats. This format can be rendered with VSFilter in conjunction with a DirectShow-aware video player , or MPlayer with the SSA/ASS library...

, SubRip

SubRip

SubRip is a software program for Windows which "rips" subtitles and their timings from video. It is free software, released under the GNU GPL...

, Advanced SubStation Alpha, MPEG-4 Timed Text, Text file

Text file

A text file is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists within a computer file system...

, Vobsub, MPL2, Teletext

Teletext

Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...

.
Audio formats: AAC

Advanced Audio Coding

Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....

, AC3, ALAC

Apple Lossless

Apple Lossless Apple Lossless Apple Lossless (also known as ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), or ALE (Apple Lossless Encoder) is an audio codec developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music. After initially being proprietary for many years, in late 2011 Apple open sourced...

, AMR

Adaptive Multi-Rate

The Adaptive Multi-Rate audio codec is a patented audio data compression scheme optimized for speech coding. AMR was adopted as the standard speech codec by 3GPP in October 1999 and is now widely used in GSM and UMTS...

, DTS

Digital Theater System

DTS is a series of multichannel audio technologies owned by DTS, Inc. , an American company specializing in digital surround sound formats used for both commercial/theatrical and consumer grade applications...

, DV Audio, XM

XM (file format)

XM, standing for "extended module", is an audio file type introduced by Triton's Fast Tracker 2. XM introduced multisampling-capable instruments with volume and panning envelopes, and basic pattern compression...

, FLAC, MACE, Mod

MOD (file format)

MOD is a computer file format used primarily to represent music, and was the first module file format. MOD files use the “.MOD” file extension, except on the Amiga where the original trackers instead use a “mod.” prefix scheme, e.g. “mod.echoing”...

, MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

, PLS

PLS (file format)

PLS is a computer file format that stores multimedia playlists. It is a more expressive format than basic M3U, as it can store information on the song title and length...

, QDM2/QDMC, RealAudio

RealAudio

RealAudio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelity formats for music. It can also be used as a streaming audio format, that is...

, Speex

Speex

Speex is a patent-free audio compression format designed for speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm. Speex claims to be free of any patent restrictions and is licensed under the revised BSD...

, Screamtracker 3/S3M, TTA

TTA (codec)

True Audio is a free software, real-time lossless audio codec, based on adaptive prognostic filters.Also, .tta is the generic extension to filenames of audio files created by True Audio codec.- Codec overview :...

, Vorbis

Vorbis

Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...

, WavPack

WavPack

WavPack is a free, open source lossless audio compression format developed by David Bryant.-Features:WavPack compression can compress 8-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit fixed-point, and 32-bit floating point audio files in the .WAV file format. It also supports surround sound streams and high frequency...

, WMA

Windows Media Audio

Windows Media Audio is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft. The name can be used to refer to its audio file format or its audio codecs. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs...

(WMA 1/2, WMA 3 partially).

Output formats for streaming/encoding

VLC can transcode

Transcode

Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital data conversion of one encoding to another, such as for movie data files or audio files. This is usually done in cases where a target device does not support the format or has limited storage capacity that mandates a reduced file size, or to convert...

into several formats depending on the operating system.
Container formats: ASF, AVI, FLV, Fraps, MP4, Ogg, Wav, MPEG-2 (ES, PS, TS, PVA, MP3), MPJPEG, FLAC, QuickTime, Matroska
Video formats: H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, VP5, VP6, VP8, Theora, DV
Audio formats: AAC, AC3, DV Audio, FLAC, MP3, Speex, Vorbis
Streaming protocols: UDP

User Datagram Protocol

, HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....

, RTP

Real-time Transport Protocol

, RTSP

Real Time Streaming Protocol

, MMS

Microsoft Media Services

Microsoft Media Server is the name of Microsoft's proprietary network streaming protocol used to transfer unicast data in Windows Media Services . MMS can be transported via UDP or TCP...

, file

Legality

The VLC media player software installers for the Mac OS X platform and the Windows platform include the libdvdcss DVD decryption library

Libdvdcss

libdvdcss is a free software library for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the Content Scramble System...

, even though this library may be legally restricted in certain jurisdictions.

USA

At least one recent release of the VLC media player software is able to read video and audio data from DVDs that incorporate Content Scramble System

Content Scramble System

Content Scramble System is a Digital Rights Management and encryption system employed on almost all commercially produced DVD-Video discs. CSS utilizes a proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm...

(CSS) encryption, even though the VLC media player software lacks a CSS decryption license. The unauthorized decryption of CSS-encrypted DVD content and/or the unauthorized distribution of CSS decryption tools may violate the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...

, although the decryption of CSS-encrypted DVD content has been temporarily authorized for certain purposes (such as documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

making that uses short portions of DVD content for criticism and/or commentary) under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act anticircumvention exemptions that were issued by the US Copyright Office in 2010. (These exemptions do not change the DMCA's ban on the distribution of CSS decryption tools.)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Design principles

Interfaces

Control

Features

API

Browser plugins

Applications which use the VLC plugin

Readable formats

Output formats for streaming/encoding

Legality

USA

See also

External links