Remember the times when you installed a media player and needed to get a bunch of codec drivers in order to make your movies work? Can you still believe there are still some players who need this?
If you don't, then you're probably a lucky user of VLC Media Player.
This multimedia software has been a favorite of users for a very long time, and it now comes in a portable version.
It supports most audio and video formats, including DVDs and VCDs. In addition, it comes with built-in packs for almost every codec that was ever made.
What sets apart VLC from other media players is the fact that it can play audio and video files even if the files are damaged or incomplete (but it plays them with the respective gaps, of course).
Features include subtitle settings (DVD, text files etc), tags, video filters (adjusting image, cropping, rotating or resizing), audio filters, extensions for fixing damaged files, and many others.
You don't have to be a fierce user to understand them, but if you already have some knowledge in the multimedia field, then you'll really appreciate this software.
In addition, you can convert audio and video extensions to WMV, WMA, MP3, MP4, FLAC, and others.
Media players usually have audio issues, meaning that the sound has a very low volume (especially when it comes to certain DVDs). Besides a standard volume tray, VLC also has a "hidden" option when you scroll your mouse up to further increase volume. The sound may not be of the best quality, but at least you won't have any problems understanding dialogue and hearing special effects.
CPU and memory usage is fair.
Portable VLC Media Player might not be specifically built for music listening purposes, but it's probably the best software out there for movies and clips.

What's New in This Release:
Access:
· fix and improve the CDDB information retrieval
· fix the samba module compilation
· fix UDP / RTP multicast stream reception on Mac OS X when using the 10.7 SDK
· multiple fixes for HLS support, notably on Win32 and for encryption
· multiple fixes for Bluray discs playback
· fix for DVD decryption on some RPC-I drives
Codecs:
· Support for MXPEG files
· limit auto-detected threads to 4 in avcodec module
· fix quicktime audio codecs in RTSP streams
Demuxers:
· Fix multi-file splitted RAR archive support
· Fix a crash when seeking in mka
· Improve MKV multi-video tracks support
Muxers:
· Fix ogm header creation
Audio filters:
· limit spatializer filter distortions
· Use fastest SinC algorithm for samplerate module
Audio output:
· Fix S/PDIF passthrough with ALSA.
· Remove flawed ALSA channels autodetection. The available ALSA channels MUST be configured now (stereo by default).
Video filters:
· Fix gradfun unloading on Windows platform
Qt interface:
· allow a native seek slider instead of the blue one
· fixe...