Usability Complaints

This page contains some usability complaints for VLC.

Let's start.

• For years VLC has lacked an ability automatically to sense the orientation byte in videos. Please implement this capability, present in every other video player I know of. VLC is the best in all things but this one feature.

• When cloning video for two monitors, fullscreen mode is not available. A cloning system like that of version 1.1.0 would be a lot more useful. The same goes for the wall feature.

• Blu-Ray menus are not available.

• Hard-to-guess shortcuts to operate with the movie. E.g. shift+arrows to rewind. -- it could be greatly improved with arrows-only navigation. => This should be easy to do in the new interface.

• The fullscreen mode is always left between two videos, which is annoying when using playlists. It should only be disabled manually.

• Cannot save a profile for capture device streaming. You must select video and audio device every time VLC is started. And you need to go thru all the Stream Output wizard pages to select output type and destination and encoding. Would be nice to be able to save a capture profile and just load it on the initial Open Capture Device dialog page (thereby skipping the wizard dialogs). This would be a nice productivity enhancement for people who use VLC to stream cameras, etc.

• Playlist sorts using ASCIIbetical order, ie it plays part 1, part 10, part 2. Actually it should sort using human method like part 1, part 2 ... part 10.

• The VLC plugin for Chrome and Firefox does not have the ability to play files behind a password protected source as it does not give the option to enter credentials.

• Launching a new video while another is paused loses the place of the original video. There are a few ways to correct this.

1. If a video is open when you try to open another, VLC could ask you if you're sure you want to start a new video.
2. VLC could allow multiple video windows to be open at once.
3. A tab system could be introduced.
4. VLC could offer to remember your place in the video. If you close a video, or just open another one, you should be able to go back to the video you were playing and see a window offering to restore your position. *best option* Amazon VOD does this now and it's terrific. If I close a window playing a video, and then reopen the video later, Amazon will ask me if I want to start from the beginning or where it was last time.

• Update download shuts down software and currently playing music. Updates could be set to install after program is closed.

Resolved complaints

• Done with Simple_Preferences - Preferences are way too big. You can navigate thru them all the day long and you won't find what you're really looking for.

• Done Non-responsive shortcuts in WX interface. Sometimes they simply don't work (after moving out of the fullscreen). => Qt4 does work the same way ? -- no, seems like it somewhat better in QT4, still to test more.

• Done Unresponsive stop/play. Video stops after some amount of time. -- kinda better in QT4 interface.

• Done Adding/removing a video filter during playback (i.e. enabling de-interlace or switching de-interlace methods), often causes video window to resize.

• Done Changing video aspect ratio disables video filters that have been added during playback (i.e. de-interlace)

• Done VideoLAN is not accessible for blind people. Don't take avantage of the QT accessibility API.

• Audio cannot be pushed to an AirPlay device.