Vlc

[Anticipat3]

I've heard a lot about the program, but haven't investigated it much, and I'm still confused about what it DOES --

If I'm not mistaken, here's what it does --

Lets me have a server box that's jam packed with video files, and a TV tuner input, and DVDs in its drives, and lets me play them as streaming files through the network.

Right?

One more question -- If I have no linux server box with all those things on it, is it useless or no?

 

[Veldek]

You can use vlc to play all kinds of media files (avi, mpg, wmv etc.) plus vcds and super-vcds. As Quicktime isn't able to play some avi-files, it's a great thing to have this program. Although I heard that mplayer is even better.

 

[iNari Rachs!]

MPlayer is great, plays all the files VLC does, and some that it still can't. The only thing it is missing is a "timeline" bar, and the ability to sort files in the playlist alphabetically, so that it plays (for example) 10 all dropped into the playlist at once in proper sequence. They fixed this in the latest version of VLC, but there are some files it cannot play; this has more to do with specific flavors of codecs, rather than just ".avi", ".wmv" etc...some work, some don't. Still a problem with wildly wavering pitch on the audio of some files as well in VLC. Bottom line: get both, they're free.

 

[PyroTurtle]

now if they could fix the audio sync problem in each we'd be all set!

 

[Anticipat3]

Yeah, I've used mPlayer and been fairly satisfied with the results... my one huge gripe is that I couldn't play DIVX movies without a little hicccup here and there on my 12" powerbook.... then again, it won't be such a problem with the dual 2.0 G5

 

[daveg5]

i have even been albe to watch dvds with a voodoo 5500 and a biege g3 with only 6 mbvram stupid hey. and it works well with the rev 7.1 pci sound card.

 

[QCassidy352]

I've found vlc to be a lot better than mplayer because it plays more stuff, and seems to have higher quality (mplayer stutters). But that's just my experience.