Overview
VLC Media Player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MP3, OGG, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
Note: While the software is classified as free, it is actually donationware. Please consider making a donation to help support development.
What's new in VLC Media Player
- Multiple DVD fixes & improvements
- Better adaptive streaming support
- Fix video rendering on macOS
- Various MP4 improvements
- Better macOS Catalina support
- Adds support for SMB2/3 shares
- It also fixes security issues notably various DOSes in the microDNS service discovery
- And a dozen more issues...
Note: Starting with VLC 3.0.5, VLC is distributed with runtime hardening enabled on macOS Mojave. All external VLC plugins need to be signed by a DeveloperID certificate in order to continue working with the official VLC package.
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- Intel 64
- Mac OS X 10.7.5 or later
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How would you rate VLC Media Player app?
1132 Reviews of VLC Media Player
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So far, there are no exploits in-the-wild. But keep an eye out for a VLC update past v3.0.7.1.
ARTICLE:
VLC Media Player Plagued By Unpatched Critical RCE Flaw
https://threatpost.com/vlc-media-player-plagued-by-unpatched-critical-rce-flaw/146611/
This is a deal breaker for me, as I use this feature constantly to review short, specific clips over and over. I'm a little hard of hearing, so when I'm watching a video, often I miss something or can't make it out unless I hear it repeated a few times, so this feature to be able to quickly scroll back in very short increments is useful. Yes, I know you can click on the timeline bar, but the granularity is not as fine as using the scroll feature. For a 2 hour movie, clicking even the slightest amount on either side of the current time marker still results in a jump of several minutes or more, instead of seconds. This is on a Mac mini 2018 with the i7 upgrade, so I know it is not due (or shouldn't be) to CPU or video lag. it has been reported (actually had already reported it when 3.0.0 came out)
As VLC3 is getting better, I've filed my issue about .ts audio being out of sync: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=147595
We can't expect using great freeware such as VLC without spending some of our time reporting bugs. ;-)
I suppose that when they have enough reports about a specific issue they focus on it...
This is the only issue I've found, but it's a fundamental one for my use case, so I keep relying on v2.2.8 until it's fixed.
As it is a function I'm using a lot while playing movies on my 16:10 display, I've reverted once again to v2.2.8, hoping for the best in the next 3.0.3 update. ;-)
Head over to VideoLAN and review the bug list for 3.0 so far, you read some of them, and you say 'Really?..How did that not get caught in testing?" Don't get me wrong, I'm a VLC supporter (I have donated) and advocate, but boy, this 3.0 release has been / is really sloppy.
First, loses its file association to play MKV files, at least for me. Previously with 2.2.8, MKV files were set to open with VLC by default. After installing 3.0, that association broke, In Finder, double clicking on an MKV will not launch VLC. Right click on MKV file in Finder and select Open and Open With.. no longer show VLC as an app that can open MKV. Tried to reset file association using the two usual methods 1) In Finder, Open With then 'Other..', but in the Finder dialog window, VLC is greyed out as an app that can handle MKV, so you can't select it. 2) Tried 'Get Info' on a MKV file, select Open With, VLC gone from list of apps, then try Other... same thing, VLC is greyed out in the Finder dialog. Appears VLC is not registering itself with macOS as an app capable of handling MKV. I reported this to VideoLAN.
Second, when set to resume playing at previous time mark of a video when you last stopped viewing it, appears broke. It always jumps to the time mark saved when the video was last play in VLC 2.2.8. For example, let's saly you view a video in 2.2.8, and stop watching at the 20 min mark. If you reopen in 2.2.8 it will resume playback at 20 min mark. Open the video in VLC 3.0, jump to a different time mark in the clip, like the 40 min mark, stop. Reopen, VLC 3. 0 should resume at the 40 min time mark, but instead resumes at the 20 min time mark of when it was last opened in 2.2.8. Apparently when quiting, it is not refreshing the time mark of where you are at the video in the metadata it stores for each clip. So when you restart, it reloads the same time info from metadata that was never updated. Reported this one as well.
You know the old saying, be wary of .0 (dot zero) releases.
Amazing universal player for pretty much any type of media file there is.
VLC remains the most useful non-problematic media player on the OS X platform and others — I also use it in Ubuntu — and most of the problems are of a nuisance character rather than show stoppers.
Of the new and old features of late that I REALLY appreciate is
- Plays back 1080p+ material without skipping also on older hardware
- Supports hardware acceleration
- Can play back from optical drives OS X deems as invalid
- Always connects the proper naming of subtitles to the correct language and puts it in a menu
- simple to choose alternative audio devices
- The Media library function
- Supports X265 very well
- Remembers playback position
- Plays back partial files
- Plays back DVD titles fully without issues
- Supports many odd formats
- Easy to place full screen on secondary display
- Works well on Ubuntu and Windows as well as other platforms.
I'd love if video and audio extraction could work better. I haven't tried the network stream functions yet but it's great they are there.
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