VLC media player

VLC media player
Developer(s)VideoLAN
Initial releaseFebruary 1, 2001 (2001-02-01)[1]
Stable release(s) [±]
Windows, Linux, & macOS3.0.20[2] Edit this on Wikidata / 30 October 2023 (30 October 2023)
Android3.5.4[3] Edit this on Wikidata / 6 July 2023 (6 July 2023)
ChromeOS1.7.3[4] Edit this on Wikidata / 23 December 2015 (23 December 2015)
iOS, Apple TV3.4.9[5] Edit this on Wikidata / 8 September 2023 (8 September 2023)
Windows (UWP)3.1.2 / 20 July 2018 (2018-07-20)[6][7]
Windows Phone3.1.2 / 20 July 2018 (2018-07-20)[8]
Repository
Written inCore: C
GUI: C++ (with Qt), Objective-C (with Cocoa), Swift, Java
Bundled Extensions: Lua[9]
Operating systemWindows, ReactOS, macOS, Linux, Android, ChromeOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, Xbox system software
PlatformIA-32, x86-64, ARM, ARM64, MIPS, PowerPC
Available in48 languages[10]
TypeMedia player
LicenseGPL-2.0-or-later with some libraries under LGPL-2.1-or-later[11][12] VLC for iOS (MPLv2.0)
Websitevideolan.org/vlc

VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS and iPadOS. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple's App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.

VLC supports many audio- and video-compression-methods and file-formats, including DVD-Video, Video CD, and streaming-protocols. It is able to stream media over computer networks and can transcode multimedia files.[14]

The default distribution of VLC includes many free decoding and encoding libraries, avoiding the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. The libavcodec library from the FFmpeg project provides many of VLC's codecs, but the player mainly[15] uses its own muxers and demuxers. It also has its own protocol implementations. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux and macOS by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library; however, this library is legally controversial and is not included in many software repositories of Linux distributions as a result.[16][17] It is available on iOS under the MPLv2.[18]

  1. ^ "15 years of VLC and VideoLAN". Jean-Baptiste Kempf. Retrieved April 15, 2017.
  2. ^ "3.0.20". October 30, 2023. Retrieved October 31, 2023.
  3. ^ "3.5.4". July 6, 2023. Retrieved October 31, 2023.
  4. ^ "VLC - Chrome Web Store". December 23, 2015. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
  5. ^ Error: Unable to display the reference properly. See the documentation for details.
  6. ^ "Official Download of VLC media player for Windows Store - VideoLAN". www.videolan.org. VideoLAN. July 20, 2018. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
  7. ^ "Get VLC - Microsoft Store". www.microsoft.com. VideoLAN. July 20, 2018. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
  8. ^ "Official Download of VLC media player for Windows Phone - VideoLAN". www.videolan.org. VideoLAN. July 20, 2018. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
  9. ^ "VLSub". addons.videolan.org.
  10. ^ "VideoLAN internationalization". VideoLAN. Retrieved April 15, 2017.
  11. ^ "VLC engine relicensed to LGPL". VideoLAN. December 21, 2011. Retrieved April 15, 2017.
  12. ^ "VLC reaches 2.1.2". VideoLAN. December 10, 2013. Retrieved April 15, 2017.
  13. ^ "VLC media player, Index of /testing/". Retrieved February 9, 2018.
  14. ^ "VLC Features". VideoLAN. Retrieved April 15, 2017.
  15. ^ "Contrib Status – VideoLAN Wiki". wiki.videolan.org. Retrieved July 15, 2017.
  16. ^ "libdvdcss – VideoLAN". www.videolan.org. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
  17. ^ Hoffman, Chris (March 2013). "Why Watching DVDs on Linux is Illegal in the USA". How-To Geek. Retrieved February 8, 2020.
  18. ^ "VLC for Mobile". App Store. Retrieved November 16, 2021.