VLC (2001)
| Developer | VideoLAN |
|---|---|
| Release Year | 2001 |
| Category | Mobile applications |
VLC — a program that simply opens a file. Sounds modest until you remember the era when you had to search for a codec for every video and install dubious bundles: VLC carries all the decoders inside and therefore plays almost any container, corrupted recording, incomplete torrent, DVD, stream over the network. The project started as a student work at a French engineering school, in 2001 the code was opened, and since then it has been maintained by the non-profit organization VideoLAN. No ads, paid versions, or telemetry — a rarity these days. It can do significantly more than expected: format conversion, screen recording, streaming, adjusting subtitle and audio delay, equalizer, network playback. Available on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS. The interface is austere and sometimes non-obvious, but the orange cone has never let anyone down in twenty years. Alternatives include MPV and MPC-HC.
Program card in the MegaInet.art catalog — reference information. Files are not distributed.
