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:
Video Output:
· XP machine will now use DirectX mode by default, like in previous versions.
· There were too many errors with broken drivers.
· More accurate colourspaces conversions for YUV->RGB in OpenGL
· Add menu support for libvlc / VLCKit applications on Mac OS X
· Various fixes on Mac OS X, notably for crop, zoom, osd and menu support
· Misc fixes in OpenGL module, on all platforms
· Fix video output on PowerPC-based Macs equipped with an ATI Radeon 7500,
· an ATI Radeon 9200 or a NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 Ultra.
· Fix video output of 10bit encoded contents on Intel-based Macs equipped
· with an Intel GMA 950 chipset running OS X 10.6 or later.
· Add support for the HiDPI mode used on recent Apple products with so-called
· Retina Displays.
Access:
· Rework Digital TV module for Windows. DVB-T and DVB-C should work again
· Fixes for RAR compressed files
· Fix DirectShow crashes on exit
· Improve PulseAudio input latency
· Fixes for HTTP access through a proxy
· v4l2 webcam outputting H264 can now be used directly (u...