Click to read our editor's review for VLCVLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

VideoLan Client can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Here are some key features of "VLC":
Inputs:

· UDP Unicast / Multicast
· RTP Unicast / Multicast
· HTTP
· FTP
· MMS
· File
· DVD
· VCD
· Audio CD
· DVB-S/C/T
· MPEG encoding card
· Video acquisition

Input formats:

· MPEG ES/PS/TS/PVA/mp3
· AVI
· ASF/wmv/wma
· Ogg/OGM/Annodex
· MP4/MOV/3gpp
· Matroska
· Wav
· DTS Wav
· Raw DV
· Raw AAC
· Raw ac3/a52 audio
· Raw DTS audio
· FLAC audio

Video Codecs

· MPEG-1
· MPEG-2
· DivX 1/2/3
· MPEG-4/DivX 5/XviD/3ivX D4
· Sorenson (SVQ 1/3)
· DV
· Cinepak
· Theora (alpha 3)
· H263/H263i
· MJPEG A/B
· WMV 1/2

Subtitles

· SVCD
· CVD
· DVB
· OGM
· Matroska
· MicroDVD
· Vobsub
· SubRIP
· SubViewer (v1 & v2)
· SSA1-4
· SAMI
· Vplayer

Video Filters

· Deinterlace
· Crop
· Image Wall
· Brightness-Saturation-Contrast
· Rotate
· Upside down
· Logo overlay

Video Output

· Native
· GDI
· X11
· Xvideo
· SDL
· Framebuffer
· ASCII art
· colored ASCII art
· MGA
· GGI

Audio Codecs

· MPEG Layer 1 and 2
· MP3
· AC3 (i.e. A52)
· DTS
· LPCM
· AAC
· Vorbis
· WMA 1/2
· ADPCM
· DV Audio
· FLAC
· MACE
· Speex

Audio Output

· Native
· S/PDIF
· multi-channel
· SDL
· ESD
· aRts
· File

Interfaces

· GTK+ (unmaintained)
· Gnome (unmaintained)
· QT (unmaintained)
· KDE (unmaintained)
· WxWidgets
· Skins
· HTTP/Webpage

Service Information

· SAP / SDP
· SLP

Misc

· Command line
· RTSP client
· Remote Control
· Infrared
· Mozilla plugin
· DVD Menus
· Audio Visualization Effects
· Localization
· ID3 tags
· CDDB CD info
· IPv6
· IGMPv3
· CPU acceleration