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== Overview of the VideoLAN project  ==

VideoLAN is 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 [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License] (GPL). 

VideoLAN was originally 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. 

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

== VLC media player  ==

Originally called VideoLAN Client, VLC media player is VideoLAN's main software. 

VLC works on many platforms: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, BSD, Solaris, Familiar Linux, Yopy/Linupy, QNX and many more...[[Image:Interface1.png|500x500px]][[Image:Main.png|500x500px]]

It can play: 

*MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 / DivX, h264, webm and mkv files from a hard disk, a DVD-ROM drive, and so on 
*DVDs, VCDs, and Audio CDs 
*From satellite, cable or digital TV cards (DVB-S, DVB-T) 
*Several types of network streams: UDP/RTP Unicast, UDP/RTP Multicast, HTTP, RTSP, MMS, etc. 
*From acquisition or encoding cards 
*From webcams and other devices...

VLC can also be used as a streaming server. These aspects are detailed in the [[Documentation:Streaming HowTo|Streaming HowTo]]. 

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

== Getting help  ==

=== Documentation  ===

The VideoLAN documentation is made up of four documents: 

*The ''Play-Howto'' (for which this article is the introduction): The complete guide to the VLC media player. 
*[[Documentation:Streaming HowTo|The ''Streaming Howto'']]: The complete guide to VLC as a streaming server, including practical examples to set up a streaming solution. 
*[[FAQ]]: Frequently Asked Questions about VideoLAN.

The latest version of these documents, in a variety of languages, can be found on the [[Documentation:Documentation|documentation page]]. 

=== User support  ===

There are different methods to get support from The VideoLAN team. For more details, please visit our [http://www.videolan.org/support/ Support page]. 

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