subject: Vlc Media Player Ends Your File Conversion Frustrations [print this page] The VLC Media Player is one of those rare software programs that's well-loved by both technologically sophisticated users and the technologically clueless. No matter how advanced or basic your computer skills are, VLC is a universal media player that can make your computer use much easier. The reason for that is, it plays just about any media format you feed it, audio or video. Once you set up VLC, the days of having to bail from your media player and miss watching a video file or listening to an audio file because of formatting issues are over. Not only that, the software will attempt to repair corrupted files and play them, and quite often, it succeeds at it.
The technologically-inclined among us love the VLC player because it has a simple user interface, yet it is very customizable as well. And because it is an open source software, those who want to can even get a copy of the source code to modify to their own needs. Most users won't do that, but will simply download the program and start playing media files with no trouble and no worries about formats, codecs, or other technical wizardry. The program was made to be unobtrusive, yet ready whenever you need it, whether to watch a YouTube file, record a video clip from a file or DVD, or burn a file onto a DVD.
The VLC download is free and simple. It is the product of an open source development program that began in France as an academic project in 1996, intended for streaming videos on a campus computer network. Now it is developed worldwide and coordinated by the non-profit organization VideoLAN. First released under the free and open GNU public license in 2001, version 1.0 of the media player came out in 2009. Since the release of the full-fledged version, the software has been downloaded millions of times as people discover just how useful it is.
You can even get a "portable" version of the media player that only takes up 20MB and doesn't have to be installed. Many people use this when they take media files along on a thumb drive or a card, because the media player can be run right from the external drive. The fully featured version allows customization of menus so that users can create controls that work best with how they use the program most often. People who don't want to customize the controls will easily recognize the defaults so that they can start watching videos or listening to audio files right off the bat.
The VLC Media Player has become so popular that there are now versions of it for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. It runs on the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, and more recent versions of the iPod Touch. The latest version lets you delete files without having to go through iTunes to do so. And those with Android devices needn't feel left out, because a version specially made for Android devices is scheduled to drop early in 2011. If you're looking for a "work horse" program that can handle any media you hand it, and that's friendly to both the technically inclined and the technically averse, then this is your best choice by far.
