Developer(s) | VideoLAN | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Initial release | February 1, 2001 [1] | ||||||||||||
Stable release(s) [±] | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Repository | |||||||||||||
Written in | Core: C GUI: C++ (with Qt), Objective-C (with Cocoa), Swift, Java Bundled Extensions: Lua [9] | ||||||||||||
Operating system | Windows, Windows Phone, ReactOS, macOS, Linux, Android, Android TV, ChromeOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, Xbox system software | ||||||||||||
Platform | IA-32, x86-64, ARM, ARM64, MIPS, PowerPC | ||||||||||||
Available in | 106 languages [10] | ||||||||||||
Type | Media player | ||||||||||||
License | GPL-2.0-or-later with some libraries under LGPL-2.1-or-later [11] [12] VLC for iOS (MPLv2.0) | ||||||||||||
Website | videolan.org/vlc |
VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS and iPadOS. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple's App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.
VLC supports many audio- and video-compression-methods and file-formats, including DVD-Video, Video CD, and streaming-protocols. It is able to stream media over computer networks and can transcode multimedia files. [13]
The default distribution of VLC includes many free decoding and encoding libraries, avoiding the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. The libavcodec library from the FFmpeg project provides many of VLC's codecs, but the player mainly [14] uses its own muxers and demuxers. It also has its own protocol implementations. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux and macOS by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library; however, this library is legally controversial and is not included in many software repositories of Linux distributions as a result. [15] [16] It is available on iOS under the MPLv2. [17]
The VideoLAN software originated as a French academic project in 1996. VLC used to stand for "VideoLAN Client" when VLC was a client of the VideoLAN project. Since VLC is no longer merely a client, that initialism no longer applies. [18] [19] It was intended to consist of a client and server [20] to stream videos from satellite dishes across a campus network. Originally developed by students at the École Centrale Paris, it is now developed by contributors worldwide and is coordinated by VideoLAN, a non-profit organization. Rewritten from scratch in 1998, it was released under GNU General Public License on February 1, 2001, with authorization from the headmaster of the École Centrale Paris. The functionality of the server-program, VideoLan Server (VLS), has mostly been subsumed into VLC and has been deprecated. [21] The project name has been changed to VLC media player because there is no longer a client/server infrastructure.
The cone icon used in VLC is a reference to the traffic cones collected by École Centrale's Networking Students' Association. [22] The cone icon design was changed from a hand drawn low resolution icon to a higher resolution CGI-rendered version in 2005, illustrated by Richard Øiestad.[ citation needed ]
In 2007 the VLC project decided, for license compatibility reasons, not to upgrade to the just-released GPLv3. [23] After 13 years of development, version 1.0.0 of VLC media player was released on July 7, 2009. [24] Work began on VLC for Android in 2010 and it has been available for Android devices on the Google Play store since 2011. [25] [26] In September 2010, a company named "Applidium" developed a VLC port for iOS under GPLv2 with the endorsement of the VLC project, which was accepted by Apple for their App Store. [27] [28] In January 2011, after VLC developer Rémi Denis-Courmont's complaint to Apple about the licensing conflict between the VLC's GPLv2 and the App store's policies, [29] the VLC had been withdrawn from the Apple App Store by Apple. [30] Subsequently, in October 2011 the VLC authors began to relicense the engine parts of VLC from the GPL-2.0-or-later to the LGPL-2.1-or-later to achieve better license compatibility, for instance with the Apple App Store. [31] [32] [33] [34] In July 2013 the VLC application could be resubmitted to the iOS App Store under the MPL-2.0. [35] Version 2.0.0 of VLC media player was released on February 18, 2012. [12] [36] The version for the Windows Store was released on March 13, 2014. Support for Windows RT, Windows Phone and Xbox One were added later. [37] As of 2016 [update] VLC is the third in the sourceforge.net overall download count, [38] and there have been more than 6 billion downloads. [39]
Version 3.0 was in development for Windows, Linux and macOS since June 2016 [40] and released in February 2018. [41] It contains many new features including Chromecast output support (except subtitles [42] ), hardware-accelerated decoding enabled by default, 4K and 8K playback, 10-bit and HDR playback, 360° video and 3D audio, audio passthrough for HD audio codecs, BD-J menu support, and local network drive browsing.
In December 2017 the European Parliament approved a budget that funds a bug bounty program for VLC to improve the EU's IT infrastructure. [43]
Starting with version 1.1.0, VLC release codenames refer to characters from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels; an exception is release 2.2.1, which came out shortly after Pratchett's death on March 12, 2015, and which was codenamed Terry Pratchett in honor of the author himself.
Version [44] | Codename [45] | Release date |
---|---|---|
1.0.0 | Goldeneye | 2009-07-07 |
1.0.1 | 2009-07-28 | |
1.0.2 | 2009-09-22 | |
1.0.3 | 2009-10-31 | |
1.0.4 | 2009-12-10 | |
1.0.5 | 2010-01-31 | |
1.0.6 | 2010-04-21 | |
1.1.0 | The Luggage | 2010-06-22 |
1.1.1 | 2010-07-21 | |
1.1.2 | 2010-07-29 | |
1.1.3 | 2010-08-18 | |
1.1.4 | 2010-08-27 | |
1.1.5 | 2010-11-13 | |
1.1.6 | 2011-01-23 | |
1.1.7 | 2011-02-01 | |
1.1.8 | 2011-03-23 | |
1.1.9 | 2011-04-12 | |
1.1.10 | 2011-06-06 | |
1.1.11 | 2011-07-15 | |
1.1.12 | 2011-10-06 | |
1.1.13 | 2011-12-20 | |
2.0.0 | Twoflower | 2012-02-18 |
2.0.1 | 2012-03-19 | |
2.0.2 | 2012-07-01 | |
2.0.3 | 2012-07-19 | |
2.0.4 | 2012-10-18 | |
2.0.5 | 2012-12-15 | |
2.0.6 | 2013-04-11 | |
2.0.7 | 2013-06-10 | |
2.0.8 | 2013-07-29 | |
2.0.9 | 2013-11-05 | |
2.0.10 | 2014-02-21 | |
2.1.0 | Rincewind | 2013-09-26 |
2.1.1 | 2013-11-14 | |
2.1.2 | 2013-12-10 | |
2.1.3 | 2014-02-04 | |
2.1.4 | 2014-02-21 | |
2.1.5 | 2014-07-26 | |
2.2.0 | Weatherwax | 2015-02-27 |
2.2.1 | Terry Pratchett | 2015-04-16 |
2.2.2 | Weatherwax | 2016-02-06 |
2.2.3 | 2016-05-03 | |
2.2.4 | 2016-06-05 | |
2.2.5.1 | 2017-05-12 | |
2.2.6 | 2017-05-24 | |
2.2.7 | 2017-11-21 | |
2.2.8 | 2017-12-05 | |
3.0.0 | Vetinari | 2018-02-09 |
3.0.1 | 2018-02-28 | |
3.0.2 | 2018-04-23 | |
3.0.3 | 2018-05-29 | |
3.0.4 | 2018-08-31 | |
3.0.5 | 2018-12-27 | |
3.0.6 | 2019-01-10 | |
3.0.7 | 2019-06-07 | |
3.0.8 | 2019-08-19 | |
3.0.10 | 2020-04-28 | |
3.0.11 | 2020-06-16 | |
3.0.11.1 | 2020-07-29 | |
3.0.12 | 2021-01-18 | |
3.0.13 | 2021-05-10 | |
3.0.14 | 2021-05-11 | |
3.0.16 | 2021-06-21 | |
3.0.17 | 2022-04-19 | |
3.0.18 | 2022-11-29 | |
3.0.19 | 2023-09-30 | |
3.0.20 | 2023-11-01 | |
3.0.21 | 2024-06-05 | |
4.0.x | Otto Chriek |
VLC, like most multimedia frameworks, has a very modular design which makes it easier to include modules/plugins for new file formats, codecs, interfaces, or streaming methods. VLC 1.0.0 has more than 380 modules. [46] The VLC core creates its own graph of modules dynamically, 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.
The default GUI is based on Be API on BeOS, Cocoa for macOS, and Qt 5 for Linux and Windows, but all give a similar standard interface. The old default GUI was based on wxWidgets on Linux and Windows. [47] VLC supports highly customizable skins through the skins2 interface, [48] and also supports Winamp 2 and XMMS skins. [49] Skins are not supported in the macOS version. [50] VLC has ncurses, [51] remote control, [52] and telnet [53] console interfaces. There is also an HTTP [54] interface, as well as interfaces for mouse gestures and keyboard hotkeys. [55]
The desktop version of VLC media player has some filters that can distort, rotate, split, deinterlace, and mirror videos as well as create display walls or add a logo overlay during playback. It can also output video as ASCII art.
An interactive zoom feature allows magnifying into video during playback. [56] Still images can be extracted from video at original resolution, [57] and individual frames can be stepped through, although only in forward direction. [58]
Playback can be gamified by splitting the picture inside the viewport into draggable puzzle pieces, where the row and column count can be set as desired. [59]
For audio playback, this feature includes an equalizer and other filters that help customize sound quality.
Because VLC is a packet-based media player it plays almost all video content. Even some damaged, incomplete, or unfinished files can be played, such as those still downloading via a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. It also plays m2t MPEG transport streams (.TS) files while they are still being digitized from an HDV camera via a FireWire cable, making it possible to monitor the video as it is being recorded. The player can also use libcdio to access .iso files so that users can play files on a disk image, even if the user's operating system cannot work directly with .iso images.
VLC supports all audio and video formats supported by libavcodec and libavformat. This means that VLC can play back H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 2 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 DVD players that ignore 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, as in these cases the region coding is enforced by the drive itself, however, it can still brute-force the CSS encryption to play a foreign-region DVD on an RPC-2 drive.
VLC media player can play high-definition recordings of D-VHS 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, like Windows DreamScene, by using DirectX, only available on Windows operating systems. VLC media player can record the desktop and save the stream as a file, allowing the user to create screencasts. [60] [61] [62] 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). On most platforms, VLC can tune into and view DVB-C, DVB-T, and DVB-S channels. On macOS 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 or other external drive. VLC can be extended through scripting; it uses the Lua scripting language. [63] [64] VLC can play videos in the AVCHD format, a highly compressed format used in recent HD camcorders. VLC can generate a number of music visualization displays. The program is able to convert media files into various supported formats. [65]
Both desktop and mobile releases are equipped with an audio equalizer. [66]
A red Santa hat appears on top of VLC's traffic-cone logo during Christmas seasons. [67]
There are single-button shortcuts in VLC that don't require Ctrl or Alt button.
For example, pressing keys F and G while a video file is running in VLC shifts the file's audio/video sync for 50 millisecond per adjustment. [68] This is useful to fix an issue with the sound being ahead or lagging behind the video.
VLC media player is cross-platform, with versions for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, tvOS, ChromeOS, Windows Phone, various BSD-based systems, Solaris, BeOS, OS/2, and Syllable. [69] However, forward and backward compatibility between versions of VLC media player and different versions of OSes are not maintained over more than a few generations. [70] 64-bit builds are available for 64-bit Windows, starting with version 2.0.1. [71] [72]
The VLC port for Windows 8 and Windows 10 is backed by a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to add support for a new GUI based on Microsoft's Metro design language, that will run on the Windows Runtime. All the existing features including video filters, subtitle support, and an equalizer are present in Windows 8. [73] A beta version of VLC for Windows 8 was released to the Microsoft Store on March 13, 2014. [74] A universal app was created for Windows 8, 8.1, 10, Windows Phone 8, 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile.
In May 2012, the VLC team stated that a version of VLC for Android was being developed. [75] The stable release version 1.0 was made available on Google Play on December 8, 2014. [76]
Developer(s) | VideoLAN Project |
---|---|
Initial release | February 1, 2001 |
Stable release | 3.0.10 [77] |
Repository | |
Written in | C |
Type | Multimedia Library |
License | LGPL-2.1-or-later |
Website | wiki |
Several APIs can connect to VLC and use its functionality:
VLC can handle some incomplete files and in some cases 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, an open-source video encoder, used to load libdvdcss from VLC Media Player. [90] Easy Subtitles Synchronizer, a freeware subtitle editing program for Windows, uses VLC to preview the video with the edited subtitles. [91]
VLC can read many formats, depending on the operating system it is running on, including: [92]
VLC can transcode or stream audio and video into several formats depending on the operating system, including:
The VLC media player software installers for the macOS platform and the Windows platform include the libdvdcss DVD decryption library, even though this library may be legally restricted in certain jurisdictions. [96] [97]
In May 2022, it was reported by MediaNama that VLC was banned in India and its website was inaccessible from India under the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000. [98] Neither the developers, nor the Indian government offered any explanation to the ban, according to India Today . The official VideoLAN Twitter account stated in August that the website was blocked in India from 13 February 2022. [99] A report by Hindustan Times indicated that the ban could be due to links with China. [100] India had in 2020 banned over 200 Chinese apps following the 2020–2022 China–India skirmishes.
Another Hindustan Times report from April quoting Symantec said that Chinese hackers were depending on VLC to launch malware they had previously installed on Windows machines. [101] The technique they used is called DLL side-loading, in which an external library that a legitimate program loads at runtime is substituted with a modified version containing the malware. [102]
VideoLan president and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf said that the block was most likely a result of a misunderstanding of the Chinese security issue, although the Indian Government did not provide for a reason as to why it was blocked. [103] In October 2022, VideoLan, with assistance from the Indian digital rights organization Internet Freedom Foundation sent a legal notice to the Indian government asking for an explanation for the block order, following which the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology removed the ban in November 2022. [104]
The VLC media player software is able to read audio and video data from DVDs that incorporate Content Scramble System (CSS) encryption, even though the VLC media player software lacks a CSS decryption license. [105] The unauthorized decryption of CSS-encrypted DVD content or unauthorized distribution of CSS decryption tools may violate the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. [105]
Decryption of CSS-encrypted DVD content has been temporarily authorized for certain purposes (such as documentary filmmaking that uses short portions of DVD content for criticism or commentary) under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act anticircumvention exemptions that were issued by the US Copyright Office in 2010. [106] However, these exemptions do not change the DMCA's ban on the distribution of CSS decryption tools; including those distributed with VLC. [107]
Video CD is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard 120 mm (4.7 in) optical discs. The format was widely adopted in Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia and West Asia, superseding the VHS and Betamax systems in the regions until DVD-Video finally became affordable in the first decade of the 21st century.
MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A port for DOS using DJGPP is also available. Versions for the Wii Homebrew Channel and Amazon Kindle have also been developed.
Xvid is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 video coding standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi masking, trellis quantization, and H.263, MPEG and custom quantization matrices.
FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg
tool itself, designed for processing video and audio files. It is widely used for format transcoding, basic editing, video scaling, video post-production effects, and standards compliance.
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. It was designed to be the successor of the MP3 format and generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 at the same bit rate.
Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other compression technologies, WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater for specialized content. After standardization by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), WMV version 9 was adapted for physical-delivery formats such as HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc and became known as VC-1. Microsoft also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store video encoded by Windows Media Video.
VideoLAN is a non-profit organization which develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN Server (VLS), but most of the features of VLS have been incorporated into VLC, with the result renamed VLC media player.
Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32- and 64-bit Microsoft Windows. The original MPC, along with the MPC-HC fork, mimic the simplistic look and feel of Windows Media Player 6.4, but provide most options and features available in modern media players. Variations of the original MPC and its forks are standard media players in the K-Lite Codec Pack and the Combined Community Codec Pack.
The following comparison of video players compares general and technical information for notable software media player programs.
3GP is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services.
These tables compare features of multimedia container formats, most often used for storing or streaming digital video or digital audio content. To see which multimedia players support which container format, look at comparison of media players.
FAAC is a software project which includes the AAC encoder FAAC and decoder FAAD2. It supports MPEG-2 AAC as well as MPEG-4 AAC. It supports several MPEG-4 Audio object types, file formats, multichannel and gapless encoding/decoding and MP4 metadata tags. The encoder and decoder is compatible with standard-compliant audio applications using one or more of these object types and facilities. It also supports Digital Radio Mondiale.
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different Flash Video file formats: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the same way as SWF files. The F4V file format is based on the ISO base media file format, starting with Flash Player 9 update 3. Both formats are supported in Adobe Flash Player and developed by Adobe Systems. FLV was originally developed by Macromedia. In the early 2000s, Flash Video was the de facto standard for web-based streaming video. Users include Hulu, VEVO, Yahoo! Video, metacafe, Reuters.com, and many other news providers.
GOM Player is a media player for Microsoft Windows, developed by GOM & Company. With more than 100 million downloads, it is also known as the most used player in South Korea. Its main features include the ability to play some broken media files and find missing codecs using a codec finder service.
The following is a list of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC products and implementations.
Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is an open source application programming interface that allows applications such as VLC media player or GStreamer to use hardware video acceleration capabilities, usually provided by the graphics processing unit (GPU). It is implemented by the free and open-source library libva, combined with a hardware-specific driver, usually provided together with the GPU driver.
HTTP Live Streaming is an HTTP-based adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol developed by Apple Inc. and released in 2009. Support for the protocol is widespread in media players, web browsers, mobile devices, and streaming media servers. As of 2022, an annual video industry survey has consistently found it to be the most popular streaming format.
The following comparison of audio players compares general and technical information for a number of software media player programs. For the purpose of this comparison, "audio players" are defined as any media player explicitly designed to play audio files, with limited or no support for video playback. Multi-media players designed for video playback, which can also play music, are included under comparison of video player software.
WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML video and the HTML audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by Google, and the corresponding software is distributed under a BSD license.
MediaInfo is a free, cross-platform and open-source program that displays technical information about media files, as well as tag information for many audio and video files. It is used in many programs such as XMedia Recode, MediaCoder, eMule, and K-Lite Codec Pack. It can be easily integrated into any program using a supplied MediaInfo.dll. MediaInfo supports popular video formats as well as lesser known or emerging formats. In 2012 MediaInfo 0.7.57 was also distributed in the PortableApps format.
In 2001, VLC was released under the OSI-approved GNU General Public version 2, with the commonly-offered option to use "any later version" thereof (though there was not any such later version at the time). Following the release by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) of the new version 3 of its GNU General Public License (GPL) on the 29th of June 2007, contributors to the VLC media player, and other software projects hosted at videolan.org, debated the possibility of updating the licensing terms for future version of the VLC media player and other hosted projects, to version 3 of the GPL. [...] There is strong concern that these new additional requirements might not match the industrial and economic reality of our time, especially in the market of consumer electronics. It is our belief that changing our licensing terms to GPL version 3 would currently not be in the best interest of our community as a whole. Consequently, we plan to keep distributing future versions of VLC media player under the terms of the GPL version 2. [...]we will continue to distribute the VLC media player source code under GPL "version 2 or any later version" until further notice.
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