Video LAN Client (VLC) Media Player

Platforms: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, etc.

It started off as a project to create a video streaming server and playback client. And originally had Video LAN server and Video LAN client for each of the task. But the crossplatform media player gained popularity and soon the server was reduced to a component of the Media player. It’s a highly capable media player and comes with a lot of features.

Features

Playback rate can be increased or decreased, but unlike Media Player Classic, the audio is disabled during altered rate of playback. Contrast, brightness, colour saturation, etc., of the video can be changed easily. Adding effects to the movie, like blurring, cloning, etc., is an easy task since the menu is easily accessible. VLC packs a streaming server which allows streaming any video from any source, like a tuner card or DVD, over the network. A wizard that makes setting this up easy is what keeps it cool. A stream capture client allows you to save any video streamed over a network, including the Net. An inbuilt video editor and transcoder allows saving part of a file in format of your choice. On the flip side, its menu system is bulkier than MPC, and the seek bar doesn’t work quite well either. It has the annoying tendency to skip predefined parts in a clip, and you have to carefully drag the slider to the desired position.

File > open Directory will add all the files in the directory to the Playlist, which can be accessed from View > Playlist. To alter display settings like contrast, brightness etc., got to Settings > Extended GUI > Video. Enable the settings for the changes to have and effect on the movie.

Under the Extended GUI window you can also find the Audio Equalizer. Here also the equalizer needs to be enabled for the alterations to have an effect. A slicker, but less functional, GUI can be used by switching interfaces from the Settings menu. For routine use, the skins2 GUI is recommended, but it doesn’t remember the setting, so you will need to apply it every time you start it.

VLC offers a lot more functionality than any other media player, that puts it in a class of its own. Its inbuilt video encoder lets you crop those parts of a movie that you like. To do this: while playing the file, go to Settings > Bookmarks option. Add bookmarks at the start and end points of the range you would like to save. You can create sets of start and points that you want to extract. Once all ranges have been identified, select each start and end bookmark pair and click on Extract.

This will cause the transcoding wizard to pop up. You can choose to compress the audio and video or keep the original format. Depending on the audio video codecs chosen, the container format options change. Finally select a location and a filename (an extension is not automatically appended) and then click on save.

The only way to know the progress of the transcoding is to look at the movie progress bar. And there is no pop up informing you that the process has ended, so once the progress bar stops, wait a few seconds more and then assume that the process has completed.

VLC includes a Wizard to ease the transcoding and streaming. The wizard can be opened from File > Wizard menu. In the streaming/transcoding Wizard dialog box that opens, select “Stream to network”, after selecting the relevant option, click on Next and choose the relevant video file.

Next, select the protocol to be use for the stream. RTP (Real Time Transport Protocol) can utilize bandwidth better than HTTP. Select the IP address of the machine you want to stream to. If you want to stream to more than one PC, use RTP Mulitcast and set the IP range accordingly. If you would rather people connect to your IP to see the stream, you can do that by choosing the HTTP protocol. In this case, the stream is available at http://your ip:8080 by default. The port number can be changed, if necessary, in the destination address box.

For streaming there is no need of modifying any other parameters, just click on “Next” till the Wizard finishes. Any person wanting to view the stream can use VLC for the purpose. Using File > Open Network Stream option, the stream can be viewed.

The wizard also helps in the transcoding process. After selecting a file to transcode, most of the steps are similar to the ones described before while transcoding a part of the file.

Media Player Classic

Platforms: All Windows Versions
Media Player Classic is not any normal Media Player bundled with the Windows but an Open Source Product for sure.
Features:
MPC comes with a stand alone executable. The interface unlike most other players is much simple. MPC’s menus are modular, so unwanted components can be hidden. The full screen mode can be configured to include or exclude aids like the control bar and seek bar. You can easily change different properties of the video such as contrast, brightness, colour saturation, etc., provided the video codec allows it. Playback rate can be altered (fast forward or rewind) and audio is supported upto 2x speed.

Playing a video source (file or disk) is easy. Just go to File > Quick Open and browse for the video file. If it is a DVD or VCD that you intend to play, choose File > Open DVD/VCD. The control bar allows you to increase or decrease the play rate. To capture images of the movie, use the File > Save Image option. The image will only be saved in the resolution of the movie and not the window. The File > Save Thumbnail option will give you a single file containing many screen grabs the size and lay out of which can be configured. To customize the interface, play around in the View menu. Enable or disable toolbars according to your choice. You can also use the preset styles under View > Presets. If the video appears too dim, increase its brightness using Play > Filters > MPEG 1 (or corresponding Video Codec) Video Renderer option. You can also increase contrast, colour and hue similarly.

Capturing Video

First select the device, by the File > Open Device option. Next use the View > Capture menu (it will remain greyed till the device is selected) to choose the location and the name of the resulting video file. You can also set the compression options here. When all is set then just click on “Record” and then stop it when you are done.

Streaming Video

MPC allows you to create a streaming video site, since it bundles an HTTP server.
Enable the Web interface under View > Options > Web interface. Here enable the “listen to port” option and add a port number. If you want to prevent others from seeing the results let the “Allow Access from Local host only” option remain enabled. This will only accept requests from the PC you are on. Once you are satisfied with the results you can disable this option, so that others from the network can also watch it.

Now you can play a video or view your webcam in MPC and any person can watch it by connecting on to

http://yourip:<portno>

to watch it.

Converting to DSM (Direct Show Media) Format

You can convert any file that MPC can play into DSM format. For this access the File > Utils menu. Right-click on the DSM converter window and add the file you want to convert. Then click on save as to provide a location and name to the converted file. To start encoding, click on start.

Advantages: An excellent video player which can play anything as long as the relevant codec is installed. Being able to hear audio while altering the movie play rate is also a nice thing. Having add-ons like built in capturing capability and HTTP server set it apart from other free media players.

Disadvantages: In the attempt to reduce the size consumption MPC did away with a very important thing- The help file. Though still for routine use the intuitive interface is easy to handle. If in need the user manual can easily be downloaded from their home page.

Even with all that its still a must have and it automatically gets installed while installing the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack.