VLC Media Player & Why It Rocks!
The VLC Media Player is a cross-platform, free and open source media player created by the VideoLan Organization.
The strength behind the VLC Media Player is that it simply works.
Unlike other media players such as the Windows Media Player, Apple's Quicktime Player or iTunes, VLC Media Player will play just about anything without the need to download additional plugins, codecs or convert to another format in order to view a video.
For example, the Mac's Quicktime player will not natively play WMV videos without having to download a plugin called Flip4Mac. The Windows Media Player will not play certain MP4s, Quicktime videos, MKVs or VOBs without some wrangling. Finally, iTunes will simply not play anything that doesn't conform to it's H.264 codec for video.
Another significant strength is that VLC Media Player is fault tolerant.
In other words, not all video and audio is encoded correctly. VLC Media Player goes through a lot of effort to work around faulty audio and video in order to play your file without the need for your intervention.
AND... if being an easy to use, fault tolerant media player that works with practically every format under the sun wasn't enough, VLC Media Player includes a ton of advanced features to export clips and adjust various aspects of your videos. Although some of these features require plenty of video and audio encoding and streaming knowledge, they are there for the pros and the adventurous.
Oh, did I mention it's FREE. No sign up, no advertisements, no newsletters, no spy-ware, nothing but a fantastic media player without any hassle at any point of the process.
So, is there anything I dislike about VLC? Well, like practically every piece of software, it auto checks for updates. It's clearly not as bad as some software that will nag you to death to update- I'm looking at you Microsoft -but it will let you know there's an update available on occasion. There may be a preference item to turn this feature off, but it hasn't bugged me enough to bother.
To download VLC Media Player just visit www.VideoLan.org and click on their giant download button.
Enjoy.