This is a review of VLC, a free multimedia player for movies and music. Download it here.
Happy holidays! To go along with that DVD of your favorite movie, that CD of your favorite band, and that ugly sweater from your favorite aunt, here’s a present of a program: VLC!
VLC is a free, open-source multimedia program for any operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux, even Android) that can play movies, music, the whole nine yards. Did I mention it’s free?
There are hundreds of free music/video players out there, and there are plenty that come bundled with your computer, but VLC really is the best. Some of its strengths:
- Plays almost any music/video file type (mp3, ogg, mkv, etc.) I’ve been using VLC for a while and haven’t found a single file type it won’t play.
- Even plays CDs/DVDs when you insert them into your computer.
- Very clean, easy-to-use interface that gets the job done.
- Full screen mode that gets rid of any distractions.
- Plays subtitles well.
- Lets you crop/zoom/process a video as much as you want so it’ll fit your screen.
- Supports music playlists.
- Can capture video and audio (so you can record your screen or music, for example.)
- Has tons of plugins and extensions.
Suffice to say, VLC is a great program; there’s a reason it’s one of the most popular open-source projects (4 million downloads per week!) Go ahead and download VLC, install it, and start playing that music and video you’ve always wanted to. Just ditch the sweater.
