Awesome Features of VLC Media player

VLC Player being the most celebrated open source media player is also ranked as the best among thousands of media players available out there.And it is one of the powerful media player, playing most of the media codecs and video formats out there.

  

Features:

Live Recording:

The latest version of VLC Media Player supports on-the-fly recording for all type of medias. In case you are wondering how to make recording easier, go to View menu and hit Advanced Controls. You will now see a Record button next to control buttons.

Frame By Frame Playback:

Frame by frame playback makes tasks such as snapshot much more easier.

You can now go over it frame-by frame with the frame by frame playback functionality. When you enable advanced controls from the View menu, apart from Record, Snapshot, and Loop buttons, you will find the Frame-by-Frame Playback button. Clicking it once will move your video to the next frame, pressing it again will move it to another frame ahead and so on.

Before VLC 1.0, if you had to take a snapshot of any part of the video the quickest way would be to hit snapshot button at the right time during the video. If you don’t get lucky, an alternative way is to try hitting the Pause button which will actually pause the videoafter missing few seconds. 

Customizable Interface:

You can customize the interface according to your own styles and needs. Simply head over to the View menu and hit Customize Interface. Now go ahead and select the buttons that you want, the position at which you want them, and much more. There are also some pre-configured Profiles that you might want to try out.

AirTunes Streaming

For those who don’t know what is Airtunes streaming, it is a functionality forApple’s Airport Express that allows you to play media files on your home stereo speakers. Originally it was developed to work with iTunes but now VLC has officially added the support for AirTunes streaming as well.

If you have Apple’s Airport Express properly installed, all you need to do is to load up your favorite media file on VLC Media Player, head over to the playlist, right-click the media file and hit Stream. Ofcourse you will need to tweak some basic settings later, but it works flawlessly.

Full Screen Interface/Minimal View & Better Video Scaling

Whether you have an old 17” monitor or the latest 40” LCD, VLC Media Player will now scale your videos better in fullscreen mode. Don’t get confused between Fullscreen Mode and Fullscreen Interface, the former is the same old fullscreen when you double-click the video, while the later is the new functionality. Fullscreen interface and Minimal view, both can be accessed from the View tab and are important in their own terms.

- Fullscreen Interface comes useful when you have to watch the video in fullscreen and at the same time want access to the menus. (Hotkey: Ctrl+H)

- Minimal view comes useful when you want to watch the video in fullscreen mode and keep watch on other windows in the taskbar as well. (Hotkey: F11)

Finer Speed Controls:

Remember the good old days when you were able to easily forward and reverse your movie in the VHS Player, such a functionality is back in the latest release of VLC but in a whole new way. Head over to the Playback menu and you will find all types of Speed Controls from faster/slower to jump forward/backward.

Rip DVDs: 


VLC includes a basic DVD ripper. You probably would never use it when there are better DVD rippers available, but it helps to know that you can in fact, get a decent quality DVD rip with VLC. To rip a movie follow these steps: Go to the Media menu and choose Convert/Save. Click on the Disc tab.

•  You can adjust the Starting Position and rip only specific titles or chapters.
•  Enter file name making sure to end with .MPG, and start ripping.And Click Save.

Record videos:

 With the new VLC, you can record videos during playback. The record button is hidden by default. To see it, click on View>Advanced Control. The record button will now appear. Clicking on the button while playing a movie or video will start recording. Clicking again will stop recording.

Play RAR files: 

VLC can play videos zipped inside RAR files. They play like normal video files and you can even use the seek bar. If the RAR file is split into several files, no problem. Just load the first part (.part001.rar ) and it will automatically take the rest of the parts and play the whole file.

Play in ASCII mode: 

VLC media player has an amusing ability, to playback movies in ASCII art. To enable ASCII mode, open VLC media player and click on Tools>Preferences. Open the section “Video” section and under “Output” select “Color ASCII art video output” from the drop down menu. Save it. Now play any video file to enjoy the ASCII art.

Listen to online radio: 

VLC includes hundreds of Shoutcast radio stations. You just need to enable it through Media>Services Discovery>Shoutcast radio listings. Now, open the Playlist and browse through the stations.

Convert Audio and Video formats: 

In VLC you can convert video and audio files from one format to another. Several different formats are supported like MP4, WMV, AVI, OGG, MP3 etc. To access the converter:

• Go to Media>Convert/Save.
• Load the file you want to convert using the Add button and click Convert.
• Now choose the output format and output file location.

Download YouTube and other online videos: 

First grab the URL of the YouTube video page. Now click on Media>Open Network stream. Paste the URL and click Play.

Once VLC starts streaming the video, go for following .....

• Click Tools>Codec Information and at the bottom of the window you will see a Location box. 

• Copy the URL and paste it on your browser’s address bar. The browser will now download the file which you can save it to your hard disk. Alternatively, you can record the video.