I moved away from VLC because of the somewhat boring UI. Then I used potplayer, then I discovered MPV - which is awesome because it's so performant you can easily customize it.
But I think VLC helped pioneer the library that allows decoding and playing videos without the mess that were video codec drivers on desktop.
If I try to play 3 random videos in VLC, they all three will play perfectly. If I try those same three on anything else, at least one of them will be buggy in some way.
Yes you can argue there could be encoding problems in the video file of that buggy one, but somehow VLC just always works. Shit's unbelievably good, so I won't be switching.
I remember the first time I encountered the Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) media type which ultimately lead me to downloading VLC as it was the only player that could handle it at the time
Sadly i recently learned VLC doesn't just always work.
About a year ago i had an issue with playing FLAC files on VLC, where there would be short periods of no audio. I had recently made some upgrades to my audio hardware, so i was looking at my new hardware/cables/config.... but in the end i realized it always happened at the same point in the same files, so a software issue was more likely:
Nice quote from this issue:
VLC is broken since months
Use their nightly version, it has a nice new interface too, and no bugs.
I don't get how they can keep a huge breaking bug like this in vlc from MONTHS.
And neither can i... until a year ago VLC was for me the pinnacle of "it just works". Now after them leaving a bug causing audio playback issues into their stable version for months, they broke my trust in them... they're probably still the best option out there, but now i'll just say probably, not for sure, and there is room for improvement...
And if it were some obscure format, sure, but FLAC? ....
Damn, that sucks. I've rarely used VLC for anything but video. I wonder if it's not super high priority because it's not a video bug? Sucks either way because yeah it has always seemed very solid
It was already fixed in their nightly builds, and it's an extremely mature video & audio player, i get most open source projects can't pounce on any tiny issue. But like the most mature open source player should be able to resolve a serious playback issue in their stable build in less than a month. Either by applying the fix that fixed it in their nightly builds, or by reverting to a previous version of whatever is causing it that had it working well in earlier versions. I get the open source mantra of "you're not the client", but VLC is good & big enough to manage this kind of stuff a lot better.
MPC-HC and MPV both rock, but VLC will always stay on all my machines because any time I have a problem with a video file, VLC opens that shit no issue.
As of right now VLC also doesn't properly support Wayland, but MPV does. It's a great piece of software!
Agree on the sentiment about VLC though, having an open source project demonstrate what is possible and stand the test of time definitely paves the way for future work and improvements.
Why does the UI matter for a video player? It’s not like you’re looking at it when the video is playing. How odd. I’ve been using VLC for years, I like that it doesn’t change. It just cracks on and plays the video, which is what you want in a video player. Isn’t it?
MPC comes with those inexplicable keybindings, and it's a hassle setting them, as far as I remember. Or it lacked some deal breaking customization option for me, some stuff is essential.
Ease of use, I suppose. I can certainly set it up, but it would be another investment of time. I have a hundred other software that needs similar treatment, so one have to triage, if you know what I mean.