What can VLC do?

This area of the wiki contains a list with the possibilities videolan gives you. It was made to help ppl better realize the potential vlc has. Some entries will simply mention the possibility, others try to explain how to do it as well. Let me start by apologising for my horrible spelling, but i hope you will be able to decipher the texts anyway :)

Mediaplayer

Play DVD/SVCD/VCD iso's / Images

If you have a DVD/SVCD/VCD packaged inside an image/iso file vlc can play this without you having to mount it or extract it in anyway. You can simply chose open file and pick the iso file. This is true for the standard .iso and .img files, not if its some proprietary format which is specific to a certain program (For example NERO's .nrg)

How to enable/use subtitles

Before you try to enable subtitles make sure the subtitles you have are in a format that VLC can read! You can find the list of compatible subtitle formats here. If VLC has detected any sort of subtitles available, you will be able to turn them on under the menu: Video->Subtitles track->Track 1

Auto detection of subtitles files uses a 'fuzziness' logic which you can specify. If this is wrongly specified you may end up with more subtitle file options than really exist or miss some that are provided. By default it allows any file in the right place which exactly matches the video name and may have some extra characters. If you are not seeing the number of subtitle options you expect you might want to allow more 'fuzziness' by changing the preference in video/subtitles/subtitle autodetection fuzziness where help is available if you 'hover' over the field.

If you mainly use .srt subtitles or .sub, you can get them turned on automatically when they are detected, by setting the Input/Codecs->Advanced->Choose subtitle track to 0, it will automaticly turn on the subtitle track. You can also experiment with the Choose subtitle language on the same page. But if u experiment a bit with the settings u should be able to get subtitles turned on automatically.

Note: On Mac OS X, the "Video->Subtitles track" menu item is permanently disabled for some reason. You must manually specify the location of the subtitles file in the "Subpictures" pane of the preferences.

Playing windows media files

VLC should be able to succesfully play both audio and video in wma and wmv 1 and 2, for the newest version (wmv3) only the windows version of vlc will be able to play it, since no opensource implementation of wmv3 have been made so far, so the windows vlc plays it by using the windows api. DRM files however can not be played on any OS.

How to adjust picture brightness/colors/contrast..

If you are using the wxwindows userinterface:

You can adjust the typical values to tweak the picture of your video source by turning on the extended GUI. This is done in the menu: Settings->Extended GUI. That will give you some extended control options for the video picture as well as an equalizer for the audio.

If you use Mac OS X or a skinned version of VLC: You need to enter the preference menu: Settings->Preferences. Once you have the preferences window open you go to: Video->Filters->Image adjust. Here you can adjust the different values. Note before they take effect you need to turn on the "Image adjust" filter in: Video->Filters

How to control the aspect ratio of the video

If ur source has a wrong aspect ratio (AR) or you wanna adjust the sources AR to your displays, you can tell vlc to override the source AR, and stretch or squeeze etc to get another AR.

If u use the cmdline you can control the ar by passing "--aspect-ratio x.xx". Where x.xx is an integer.

If u use the GUI, you can adjust the AR in the preferences dialog under video, in the field "Source aspect ratio".

I would advise you to use numerical values although the format 16:9 is also supported. Here follows some common AR's:

Fullscreen: 1.33 or 4:3 Widescreen: 1.78 or 16:9 Typical dvd: 1.85 Cinemascope: 2.35

Streaming - client

Listen to online radio

You can ofcourse always simply find a link to a radiostream and then open it as you would any other network stream in vlc. But if u would like to browse a list of online radios, you can try the list of shoutcast radio stations vlc can download for you. First you need top open the playlist window: View->Playlist. Once you have the playlist window open chose: Manage->Service discovery->Shoutcast radio listings. After 10 seconds or so the playlist should have become populated by radio station entries. You obviously require internet access for this to work! If you want the stations sorted alphabetically, you can chose: Sort->Sort by title. Also note shoutcast have many thousands stream availeble, per default in 0.8.2 250 stations are downloaded, this can be changed in the preferences under: Playlist->Service discovery->Shoutcast. Note that the more stations u want to add, the longer delay u will see when the station list is downloaded parsed and added to the playlist. Also note you should see 2 "Folder nodes" in the playlist under shoutcast called Genres and bitrate where the stations will be listed under their respective areas. Note that most stations claim to be multi genre, so a station might be listed under both Top40, pop and rock.

Streaming - server

VLM

The VLM is the Video On Demand part of the VLC streaming server features. It lets u setup a bunch of entries and then let users ask for those streams and it then gives them to the users, it has ALOT of possibilities and i will try to cover them all here.

You can devide VLM entries into 2 general categories VOD and broadcast entries.