VLC media player (also known as VLC) is a highly portable free and open-source media player and streaming media server written by the VideoLANproject. It is a cross-platform media player, with versions for Microsoft Windows, OS X, GNU/Linux, Android, BSD, Solaris, iOS, Syllable, BeOS,MorphOS, QNX and eComStation.
VLC 2.0 playing Sintel fullscreen
Developer(s)
VideoLAN Project
Initial release
February 1, 2001; 11 years ago
Stable release
2.0.5 [edit] (December 11, 2012; 27 days ago)[1] [±]
Preview release
2.1.0-git[2] [±]
Written in
C, C++, Objective-C using Qt
Operating system
Windows, OS X, GNU/Linux, Android,BSD, Syllable, OS/2, BeOS, QNX, iOS,MorphOS[3]
Available in
53 languages[4]
Type
Media player
License
GNU General Public License v2 or later and LGPL[5][6]
Website
www.videolan.org/vlc/
VLC media player (also known as VLC) is a highly portable free and open-source media player and streaming media server written by the VideoLANproject. It is a cross-platform media player, with versions for Microsoft Windows, OS X, GNU/Linux, Android, BSD, Solaris, iOS, Syllable, BeOS,MorphOS, QNX and eComStation.[7]
VLC media player supports many audio and video compression methods andfile formats, including DVD-video, video CD and streaming protocols. It is able to stream over computer network and to transcode multimedia files.[7]
VLC used to stand for VideoLAN Client, but since VLC is no longer simply a client, that initialism no longer applies.[8][9]
The default distribution of VLC includes a large number of free decoding and encoding libraries, avoiding the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. Many of VLC's codecs are provided by the libavcodec library from the FFmpegproject, but it uses mainly its own muxer and demuxers and its own protocols. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux and OS X by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library.
Contents
[hide]
1 History
2 Design principles
2.1 Interfaces
2.2 Control
2.3 Modular design
2.4 Windows 8 design
3 Features
4 Use of VLC with other programs
4.1 API
4.2 Browser plugins
4.3 Applications that use the VLC plugin
5 Format support
5.1 Readable formats
5.2 Output formats for streaming/encoding
6 Android support
7 Legality
7.1 USA
8 See also
9 Notes and references
10 External links
[edit]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, it is now developed by contributors worldwide and is coordinated by the VideoLANnon-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.[10] 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 cones collected by Ecole Centrale's Networking Students' Association.[11] The cone icon design was changed from a hand drawn low resolution icon[12] to a higher resolution CGI-rendered version in 2006, illustrated by Richard Øiestad.[13]
After 13 years of development, version 1.0.0 of VLC media player was released on July 7, 2009.[14] The version 2.0.0 of VLC media player was released on February 18, 2012.[6][15]
VLC is first in the sourceforge.net overall download count.[16] VLC was available for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch from the Apple AppStore, but was pulled due to a licensing conflict between the GPL and the iTunes Store agreement.[17]
[edit]Design principles
[edit]Interfaces
In VLC, interfaces are modules, which means that VLC's core can launch one, many, or no interfaces.
The default GUI is based on Qt 4 for Windows and Linux, Cocoa for Mac OS X, and Be API on BeOS; but all give a similar standard interface. The old default GUI was based on wx on Windows and Linux.[18]
The interface contains an easter egg 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, and reverts to its normal appearance on January 1.
VLC supports highly customizable skins through the skins2 interface, also supporting Winamp 2 and XMMS 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 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 and HTTP (Ajax).
[edit]Control
In addition to these interfaces, it is possible to control VLC in different ways:
Configurable hotkeys
Mouse gestures
LIRC and infrared controllers
D-Bus
Laptop motion
Remote control software for mobile operating systems such as Android, Symbian and iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch)
[edit]Modular design
VLC, like most multimedia frameworks, has a very modular design which makes it easier to include modules/plugins for new file formats, codecs, or streaming methods. VLC 1.0.0 has more than 380 modules.[19]
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.
[edit]Windows 8 design
VLC Media Player
A component of Microsoft Windows
Metro application of VLC Media Player.
Details
Type
Media player
The project has been developed on Kickstarter. VLC for Windows 8 is designed to work on Microsoft’s new Metro/Modern GUI, while the subsequent release will be aimed at Windows RT tablets, the developers explained.
It could bring support for DVDs, VCDs and unencrypted Blu-ray discs which are not supported in Windows 8. All the existing features including video filters, subtitle support and an equalizer will be present in Windows 8.
[edit]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 (P2P) networks). It also plays m2t MPEG transport streams (.TS) files while they are still being digitized from an HDVcamera 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, 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 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, and mirror videos as well as create display walls or add a logo overlay. It can also output video as ASCII art.
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 createscreencasts 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. 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 or other external drive. VLC can be extended through scripting. It uses theLua scripting language.[20] 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.[21]
[edit]Use of VLC with other programs
[edit]API
libVLC
Developer(s)
VideoLAN Project
Initial release
1 February 2001
Written in
C
Operating system
Cross-platform
Platform
Native, .NET, Java, Python,Go, Qt, Cocoa[22]
Available in
Multilingual
Type
Multimedia Library
License
GNU Lesser General Public License
Website
wiki.videolan.org/LibVLC(English)
Several APIs can connect to VLC and use its functionality:
libVLC API – the VLC Core, for C, C++, and C#
VLCKit – an Objective-C framework for Mac OS X
JavaScript API – the evolution of ActiveX API and Firefox integration
D-Bus controls
Go binding[23]
C# interface
Python controls[24]
Java API[25]
DirectShow filters[26]
Delphi/Pascal API: PasLibVlc by: "Robert Jędrzejczyk"[27]
Free Pascal bindings and an OOP wrapper component, via the libvlc.pp and vlc.pp units. This comes standard with the Free Pascal Compiler as of 2012-11-06.[28]
The Phonon multimedia API for Qt and KDE applications can optionally use VLC as a backend.
[edit]Browser plugins
On Windows, Linux, Mac, and some other Unix-like platforms, VLC provides an NPAPI plugin,[29] which enables users to viewQuickTime, Windows Media, MP3, and Ogg files embedded in websites without using additional products. It supports many web browsers including Firefox, Mozilla Application Suite, and other Netscape plug-in based browsers; Safari, Chrome, and other WebKitbased browsers; and Opera. Google used this plugin to build the Google Video Player web browser plugin before switching to useAdobe Flash.[30]
Starting with version 0.8.2, VLC also provides an ActiveX plugin, which lets people view QuickTime (MOV), Windows Media, MP3, and Ogg files embedded in websites when using Internet Explorer.
[edit]Applications that use the VLC plugin
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, loads libdvdcss from VLC Media Player.
[edit]Format support
[edit]Readable formats
VLC can read several formats, depending on the operating system VLC is running on.[31]
Input
UDP/RTP unicast or multicast, HTTP, FTP, MMS, RTSP, RTMP, DVDs, VCD, SVCD, CD Audio, DVB, Video acquisition (via V4l and DirectShow), RSS/Atom Feeds, and from files stored on the user's computer.
Container formats
3GP,[32] ASF, AVI, DVR-MS, FLV, Matroska, Musical Instrument Digital Interface (.mid/.midi),[33] QuickTime, MP4, Ogg, OGM,WAV, MPEG-2 (ES, PS, TS, PVA, MP3), AIFF, Raw audio, Raw DV, MXF, VOB, RM.
Video formats
Cinepak, Dirac, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (both 8-bit and 10-bit H.264), HuffYUV, Indeo 3,[34] MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2,MPEG-4 Part 2, RealVideo 3&4,[35] Sorenson (thus enabling direct playback of the modified Sorenson H.263 encoded videos downloaded from YouTube), Theora, VC-1,[36] VP5,[36] VP6,[36] VP8, DNxHD, Prores and some WMV.
Subtitles
DVD, SVCD, DVB, OGM, SubStation Alpha, SubRip, Advanced SubStation Alpha, MPEG-4 Timed Text, Text file, VobSub, MPL2,[37] Teletext.[37]
Audio formats
AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR,[32] DTS, DV Audio, XM, FLAC, MACE, Mod, Monkey's Audio, MP3, Opus,[38] PLS, QCP, QDM2/QDMC,RealAudio,[39] Speex, Screamtracker 3/S3M, TTA, Vorbis, WavPack,[40] WMA (WMA 1/2, WMA 3 partially).[41]
[edit]Output formats for streaming/encoding
VLC can transcode into several formats depending on the operating system.
Container formats
ASF, AVI, FLV,[37] Fraps,[37] 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,[36] VP6, VP8,[36] Theora, DV
Audio formats
AAC, AC3, DV Audio, FLAC, MP3,[42] Speex, Vorbis
Streaming protocols
UDP, HTTP, RTP, RTSP, MMS, file
[edit]Android support
As of May 2012, the VLC team states that a version of VLC for Android "is in development".[43] On 29 December 2011, Softpediareported "Also important is the fact that almost every video filter can now be transcoded and it can be ported to mobile operating systems (Android and iOS) as well as 64-bit Windows."[44]
The official beta version v0.0.1 is available as of July 2012.[45]
[edit]Legality
The VLC media player software installers for the Mac OS X platform and the Windows platform include the libdvdcss DVD decryption library, even though this library may be legally restricted in certain jurisdictions.[46][47]
[edit]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 (CSS) encryption, even though the VLC media player software lacks a CSS decryption license.[48] The unauthorized decryption of CSS-encrypted DVD content or unauthorized distribution of CSS decryption tools may violate the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act,[48] although the 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.[49] (These exemptions do not change the DMCA's ban on the distribution of CSS decryption tools.)[50] VLC media plyer ki madad se aap kisi bhi qism ki video play kar sakte hien.is ko aap all player bhi keh sakte hien.kyon k es me mp4 .3gp.mp3. aur har qism ki video play kar sakte hien.is me dvd ki disk play kar sakte hien.es software ko download karne k liye VLC Full Download par click karien...
