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== Overview of the VideoLAN project  ==
VideoLAN was a complete software solution for video streaming and playback, developed by students of the [http://www.ecp.fr Ecole Centrale Paris] and developers from all over the world, under the [https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License] (GPL). 

Originally VideoLAN was designed to stream MPEG videos on high-bandwidth networks, but VideoLAN's main software, VLC media player, has evolved to become a full-featured, cross-platform media player. 

Now the Non-Profit Organisation developing and offering the VLC media player is called: VideoLAN Organisation 

More details about the project can be found on the [https://www.videolan.org/ VideoLAN Web site].

== VLC Media Player  ==
[[File:Interface 2.PNG|thumb|left|194x150px|[[VLC]] 2.0 default interface, [[Windows]]]]
Originally called ''VideoLAN Client'', VLC media player is VideoLAN's main software product. 

VLC media player works on many platforms: Linux, Windows, macOS, BeOS, BSD, Solaris, Android, iOS, QNX and many more...
It supports the following video and audio formats: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4/DivX, h264, webm, mkv, DVDs, VCDs, Audio CDs, wmv and wma.
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It can also play from external sources:
* Satellite.
* Cable.
* Digital TV cards (DVB-S, DVB-T).
* Several types of network streams: UDP/RTP Unicast, UDP/RTP Multicast, HTTP, RTSP, MMS, etc. 
* Acquisition or encoding cards. 
* Webcams and other devices.

VLC can also be used as a streaming server. This feature is described in the [[Documentation:Streaming HowTo|Streaming HowTo]]. 

This guide describes all the playback (client) aspects of VLC media player.

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