VLC media player - Definition

VLC media player
Screenshot of VLC running on Mac OS X
Developer	VideoLAN developers
Latest release	0.8.1 / ???
OS	Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BeOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, ...
Genre	media player
License	GPL
Web site	www.videolan.net (http://www.videolan.net/vlc/)
edit (http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Template:Infobox_Software)

VLC media player (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. It uses the ffmpeg libavcodec media decoder to handle many of the formats it supports, and uses the libdvdcss DVD decrypter to remove the need for paying for a DVD decoding licence.

It is one of the most platform independent players available, with versions for GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, BSD, and a couple others.

On Windows, Linux, and some other platforms, VLC provides a Mozilla plugin, which lets people view some Quicktime and Windows Media files embedded in websites without using Microsoft or Apple products

See also

• Comparison of media players

External links

• VLC media player homepage (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)
• VLC forum (http://forum.videolan.org)
• List of supported features (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html)
• #videolan IRC channel (irc://irc.freenode.net/videolan)