• tetris11@feddit.uk
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      16 hours ago

      I don’t know what it is about mpv that makes it my favourite. Gstreamer is performative enough. FFplay is also pretty clean. Cvlc is fine.

      I think I just like that it has sensible controls, and ultimately gets out of the way

      • ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        I really like the configuration aspect of it. You can customize how it works internally and how it even looks. For example, I use a big 1m diagonal TV as my main screen and I sit about 45cm in front of it. So with bidirectional integer scaling, Full HD looks kind of blurry and bad, but with lanczos scaling it looks great! And that’s why I like MPV.

  • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Somehow I’m unable to let VLC play any kind of video on my Arch (actually cachyos) laptop. Whatever the format it says codec is missing even if I installed everything (mpv, totem and others can play them).

    (I tried to install vlc-git from aur but then gave up when after 30 minutes was still compiling, I don’t have enough patience to wait all that time every time I run yay)

    I’m forced to run the flatpak version of VLC for some reason, the only way to make it work

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    VLC sucks ass when you want to do any type of live transcoding or remuxing without setting up a video stream. Especially with multichannel audio:

    This has been an issue ever since feature added, the maximum bitrate you can set is 512 kb/s on every codec, despite codecs that support more.

    The bug thread for this was basically “stop complaining about our shit UI and use the CLI”

    Much prefer Kodi for this purpose, and an ffmpeg based player for lightweight stuff.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      My experience with VLC in Linux is subpar. In Windows it was always a good tool to have. Granted for me it was just, does this shit have working codecs, phew, it plays

      • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
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        5 hours ago

        It seems to fail with some files. I think 4k and/or .mkv ones. I’ve had to use Kodi during those times instead. I’ve not going a great simple media player to use on Android tv yet. They all have their caveats. Unless there’s a better one I’ve not found yet.

  • Hackworth@piefed.ca
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    2 days ago

    I get the sense that VLC doesn’t really care if something is a valid video file, it’s just gonna start playing and see what happens.

    • catshit_dogfart@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I’m pretty sure it can still do that. Like if you can trick it into playing something that isn’t even video, it’ll shit out whatever it can interpret as video. Which of course will be garbled nonsense, but it did exactly what you asked.

      • Derpenheim@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        I wish every program was this way. Fuck off with your file format restrictions, I know what Im doing

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Which of course will be garbled nonsense, but it did exactly what you asked.

        Is it possible that someone took a copy of hitlers book, shoved it into VLC, took the video it spit out, and somehow we got a president from that process? Garbled nonsense. Highly racist. But it did what you asked!

        Wait…does this explain Mark Zuckerberg? They put a piece of cellery, mixed with dog shit, and out comes Mark Zuckerberg who’s almost a real boy?

    • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
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      2 days ago

      I recall a few AVIs from the long ago that VLC would throw an error on, something about a format error, and it gave the option to try converting it or try playing as-is. Attempting to convert took forever, and playback was mostly fine, though IIRC you couldn’t scrub through the file.

      • Harvey656@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Yeah it absolutely can fix broken avi files! Was a lifesaver back in high-school for me, during that era, avi was every camcorder format (at least that I had).

        I always stored it on this 128gb external drive and I swear that drive was cursed, always corrupted my files. Vlc was an easy way to fix them for class.

      • zurohki@aussie.zone
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        1 day ago

        IIRC that’s AVI files that aren’t indexed properly. VLC could either build its own index for the file or it could just start playing the file one frame at a time and hope for the best.

    • SorryQuick@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      But really isn’t that just libavcodec behaving like that? VLC itself doesn’t actually read your video file, it just takes what FFMPEG gives it and blindly trusts it.

  • Taldan@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I did a CTF once where one of the challenges was forensics on a video file. It had the header ripped off, the entension removed, and was split into chunks that had to be ripped out of a pcap and reassmebled

    VLC just played the mangled chunks as-is. It was an unintended cheat code for the challenge

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      20 hours ago

      I had it once play a video recorded on an old Motorola razr circa 2004. It was this super obscure file format, that basically only this one phone used, and was never used on any other phone.

      VLC didn’t care, played it right out of the box without any problems.

      It supports an obscure single use, 2004 video format. If aliens come to earth, VLC will be able to play their files too.

    • GeekFTW@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Which is what I did. Had an old 2nd gen Nexus 7 from 2013 which I used as an occasional media player. Finally died back in January, had VLC running on it until its last day!

  • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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    2 days ago

    Long ago; a non-tech friend saying to another non-tech friend. “you should try it on VLC; it’ll play a slice of cucumber” when referring to some obscure video file they had.

    • MrSmith@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Yep, to me, simply because it can be color managed. Just because VLC will play anything, doesn’t mean it’ll play it well.

        • tiramichu@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          I mean, it is user-friendly in some ways, depending how you define that.

          Double-click a video and it opens. You get a visually appealing, sleek and minimalistic UI that helpfully appears only when your mouse is over the video, and otherwise gets out of the way. You can seek, adjust volume, select audio language and subtitles, and that’s it. Very uncluttered, obvious and easy in the way that modern applications try to be.

          For most usage, that’s enough. It’s when you find yourself needing to pan/scan, or change subtitle offset, or enable looping etc you discover there are no buttons or menus for those things and you have to go hit the docs to discover what the keybinds are.

    • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      Both are good tools for the job. I use mpv but VLC just works for 99% of use cases. mpv is best for working with terminals, vlc is best for GUI and is consistently easy on any operating system, even android.