My Review of VLC

In this article, I'll be reviewing VLC (version 3.0.20), a free and open source video player that works on both Windows and Linux.

Summary: VLC has great support for all common audio and video formats, provides many customizability options, and implements several usability features, but lacks a few functions common in other video players and unnecessarily hides some of its advanced functionality in obscured locations in its user interface. If it weren't for the missing functionality, it would have been a perfect video player.

Supported Formats

I've tried opening a few different files on the VLC to check if it supports them.

Format	Support
WAV	✅ Yes.
MP3	✅ Yes.
FLAC	✅ Yes.
OGG	✅ Yes.
WMA	✅ Yes.
AIFF	✅ Yes.
MIDI	⚠️ Yes*.

⚠️ VLC can't play MIDI by default because it doesn't come with a soundfont. Its online wiki explains where to obtain the soundfont file and install it in VLC.

To playback MIDI files, you need a SoundFont file (with extension .sf2).

https://wiki.videolan.org/Midi/ (accessed 2025-04-11)

✅ VLC managed to open an .aif file I found that MPC-BE couldn't open.

Format	Support
AVI	✅ Yes.
MP4	✅ Yes.
WebM	✅ Yes.
MKV	✅ Yes.
WMV	✅ Yes.
MOV	✅ Yes.
FLV	✅ Yes.

Playlist

❌ No sibling traversal. VLC doesn't support playing the next file in the same folder without manually adding it to the playlist. There is a thread about this from 2006.

Hi. I like VLC

Why it plays not the next film / file in folder?

I don't find an Button abaut this?

Vroni (Germany)

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=21143 (accessed 2025-04-11)

My thoughts exactly, Vroni.

⚠️ Impure open function: opening a file in VLC creates a playlist for it, which makes some sense. However, opening a second file while VLC is still open won't just start playing the file, it will also modify the existing playlist by adding the newly opened file to VLC. This means that if you double click on a file in a file manager, close VLC, and double click on another, you get a different state on the application than just double clicking on two different files without closing VLC. In one case you'll have a playlist of one item, in the other a playlist of two items. Consequently, if you open multiple files in VLC without closing it, pressing "go to next file" will loop back to the first file you opened. This unexpected behavior isn't obvious to the user since the playlist is modified even if a playlist panel isn't shown and there are no indicators for what's happening either. ⚠️ As if that wasn't confusing enough, opening the same file twice adds it to the playlist twice.

✅ Playlist has own window: by default, VLC displays the playlist is docked mode, through View -> Playlist, but you can make the playlist appear in a second window by unchecking View -> Docked Playlist.

⚠️ By default, VLC displays a notification when minimized after a finishing a file and starting the next in the playlist. Linux Mint's notifications are noisy by default, which makes this the worst combination of behaviors imaginable. Thankfully, it's possible to disable this feature through: Tools -> Preferences, on the "Interface" tab, in the "Look and feel" section, change "Show media change popup" from "When minimized" (the default) to "Never."

Looping

✅ Can loop a whole playlist.

✅ Can loop a single file.

⚠️ To change the behavior of looping you must click on a button with two looping arrows found on a bar the bottom of the window. ⚠️ This option isn't available through the menubar, even though you would expect it to be found in the Playback menu where some menu items that perform the same actions as some buttons of that bar can be found.

⚠️ The looping setting only affects the behavior of VLC when a media file is played to its end. If you press "go to next" button, it won't go back to the start of the file if looping a single file is enabled but there are multiple files in the playlist. ⚠️ Additionally, pressing the next button on the last item of a playlist always loops back to the beginning. There doesn't seem to be a setting to customize this behavior.

✅ Can loop a segment of a file. This functionality is a bit hidden. Instead of being available directly from the menubar like in MPC-BE, you must click on View -> Advanced Controls, which displays an additional control bar at the bottom of the window where a button to "Loop from point A to point B continuously" can be found. You must press this same button twice to set the start and end point. After setting the end point, VLC begins to loop the defined segment.

Shuffling and Playback Order

✅ Can traverse the playlist in random order. To do this, click on the button with a crossed arrows icon at the bottom of the window. ⚠️ This option is also missing from the Playback menu.

✅ Can shuffle the items of an existing playlist.

⚠️ Despite being dockable in the main window, actions to manipulate the playlist aren't found in the menubar. Instead, you must right click on the playlist to display its context menu to find the option to Shuffle playlist and other playlist manipulation actions.

✅ The playlist has multiple view modes, include icons and list.

❌ No thumbnails for videos in the playlist. The icon view just displays a large VLC icon even in files of types that aren't associated with VLC. I feel like I'm missing something? Why would anyone want to browse a playlist as just large icons? For reasons far beyond my understanding I have the option to browse files in the My Pictures folder from VLC and then a "playlist" appears with thumbnails for any images in that folder. ⚠️ Double-clicking on a folder in this strange file browser appears to try to play it in VLC, stopping any video you were playing before.

✅ The playlist can be sorted by Title, Artist, Album, Track number, URI, or disc number, both ascending and descending.

✅ List view column headers are clickable and sorts the list accordingly.

Playback

✅ Has a progress bar.

✅ The time elapsed is displayed on the left side of the progress bar, with the length displayed on the right side. Clicking on the length label switches the information displayed from "length of the video" to "time remaining."

✅ Can seek. Pressing the left and right arrow keys skip forward and backward by 10 seconds, respectively. Holding modifier keys change this amount. Shift+Arrows skips by 5 seconds, Ctrl+Arrows by 1 minute.

✅ Can jump to a specific time. Playback -> Jump to specific time.

✅ Spacebar pauses and unpauses playback.

❌ Clicking on the main pane does nothing. It seems there is a third-party plugin that you can install to add the ability to click on the main pane to pause [https://superuser.com/questions/172494/how-to-play-pause-with-a-single-mouse-click], but as that's not part of VLC it's outside the scope of this review.

✅ Has a windowed minimal interface.

Casting

✅ Can cast to a smart TV using Chromecast.

Full screen

✅ Can go full screen.

✅ Double clicking the main pane enter and exists full screen mode.

✅ Pressing the Esc key leaves full screen mode.

✅ The interface is hidden while in full screen, but reappears when you move the cursor around, and there is a button to exit full screen mode on it.

Speeds and Frames

✅ Can play at different speeds through Playback -> Speed. ✅ Ranges from 0.02x to 64x. ⚠️ The speed is displayed on screen but it's rounded to 2 decimal places so I'm not sure what's the exact factor of the lowest speed.

✅ Can go to the next frame of a paused video. ⚠️ This is also not on the menubar but hidden in View -> Advanced Controls.

✅ Can save the current frame of the video with Video -> Take Snapshot. The snapshot is saved in your Pictures folder.

Audio

✅ Has a volume control.

✅ Clicking on the speakers quickly mutes and unmutes the audio.

✅ A slider displayed on the bottom bar can be clicked on to set the volume at any time with one click.

Music Playback

✅ Has an equalizer. And compressor, spatializer, and stereo widener. They're found via Tools -> Effects and Filters.

✅ Has visualizations. They're rather few and simple but they exist on Audio -> Visualizations.

❌ Can't display the cover picture of a music album.

Video Audio Playback

✅ Can switch between languages in videos with multiple audio streams, Audio -> Audio Track and choose the stream.

Subtitle Support

✅ Can display embedded subtitles. Subtitle -> Sub Track and choose the subtitles.

✅ Can load subtitles from a file. Subtitle -> Add Subtitle File.... ⚠️ The open file dialog for choosing a subtitle file has the filter "Subtitle Files" without listing which file extensions are being filtered, e.g. I don't know if .srt is supported because it isn't written on the filter's label.

✅ Can retime the subtitles. Press the G and H key to move backward and forward by 50 milliseconds, respectively. ⚠️ This isn't available through the menubar and is only found by searching the Hotkeys (keyboard shortcuts) in the preferences dialog.

File Properties

✅ Has a dialog for file properties that includes the title, artist, album, genre, and codec of a file, accessible through Tools -> Media Information.. ❌ The codec tab seems to work only sometimes. It appeared for one MP3 file I tested, but not for another. It appeared for an OGG file, but not for AIFF files. It seems that on some files it just doesn't appear for some reason. When it does appear, it has bit rate, number of channels, and other information about the encoding.

Other Observations

✅ Has a menubar, although it's missing a lot of operations and File is called Media for some reason but it's there.

✅ Has a right click main menu in addition to the menubar.

✅ Every keyboard shortcut can be customized in the options dialog.

✅ The order and layout of buttons on the interface can be customized as well.