This week was all about open source software and creative commons led by Adam Muir. For this discussion I will be reporting back on my experiences with some video players. I now use VLC media player for viewing video files on my computer. In the past i had used the more standard Windows Media Player for my viewing needs but i started to get annoyed at it. As newer video technologies became available more and more often i found myself having to download larger codec packs for the program and it never seemed to work quite properly. From dual audio animation where it would play both audio tracks at once to jumpy and distorted video files from the newer divx and xvid video types. I found myself at an impasse until a friend told me of a open source media player that handled all of these types of video file without needing codec packs. Needless to say i was stunned and thrilled.
Without even doing any research which i now admit was incredibly foolish i went out and grabbed the latest variant of the vlc media player which at the time was still in beta testing and fully expecting a 50 meg or higher download( I was on 56k dial up at the time) i was stunned to see the player was a tiny 5 megs to download. It was basic, but all of the codecs that where released at the time where included in it. Hesitantly i went for a troublesome dual audio file i had at the time and loaded it up and i was stunned. It had only loaded one of the two soundtracks and the subtitles track was clearly visible as well. Sadly it was running the Japanese sound track and well i cant speak Japanese so i was confused as all hell how to get this to work. 5 minutes later i had found a simple menu that allowed me to change the soundtrack from Japanese to English and also a menu to turn the subtitles off as i didn't need them for the English audio. I was hooked.
A little down the track and a few updates later i wondered who had created this marvel of software and for a product this excellent why was it free? I found out it was created as open source software by a group of students who where as annoyed as i was at the codec problems of the more mainline players. Since those early beta days this player has evolved a number of times yet it still retains its minimalistic look, will play any video file that you can think of. Its still free software and I happily use it at home for everything from mkv dual audio files, avi files, xvid .264 files and DVDs. I have yet to find a file that wasnt completely corrupted that vlc will not play.
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