Is VLC Video Player good or bad?

[Mazor]

I literally see almost no difference between the two screen shots.
...
There is a small difference yes, but absolutely nothing worth caring about, let alone making a big deal out of.
...
Now I see why people have problems with VLC - they are the equivalents of "audiophiles" for video

I can't even be sure whether you are trolling. If you'd be saying that according to you there is only a small difference in quality I could definitely accept it, as I believe that's partly a matter of taste. But if your claim that there is almost no difference at all in those two images (i.e in colors etc) is serious then that would indeed be an indication that you do have impaired vision. Take a look again and tell me if you are honestly unable to tell that the VLC image is considerably darker, this should be something anyone could easily tell.

Regarding the quality difference in this particular image it becomes most apparent when you look at the darker black parts of the guy's shirt. You can easily see the VLC screenshot showing a lot of boxes, something which becomes more or less annoying depending on what is displayed (as DarkStriker pointed out earlier, one thing that low quality stands out a lot for is clear skies, which low quality can make look really bad).

On a smaller note, you shouldn't make any decision on whether VLC vs other media players is a "videophile"-only issue you should have a look at more screenshots with varied content. This particular screenshot can at most be used as an indication of there being or not being a huge difference, not a definitive answer. Besides, perceived lower quality is just one of several reasons people argue against the use of VLC.

 

[Sicklyboy]

So I got some screenshots ready.
http://screenshotcom...mparison/123980
Tools > Codec info here: http://i.imgur.com/jZ3JD.png
There are those dark blocks almost everywhere on the shelf in that picture, but the thing I noticed first was: Why can't it even display the colours properly? The background colours look washed out (everything lost its saturation), not to mention the artifacts at the sides block out some of the video and there is excessive banding.
VLC has improved over the years (from way back when a certain fansub group crashed VLC with a bug they found in the subtitle renderer), but it is apparantly still too broken to be used to display videos. At least I didn't get a green screen.

Please do not use VLC unless it's your last resort.

That artifacting is still there between both players. It's made ever so slightly more apparent with the slight color change that VLC applies.

 

[Arras]

So I got some screenshots ready.
http://screenshotcom...mparison/123980
Tools > Codec info here: http://i.imgur.com/jZ3JD.png
There are those dark blocks almost everywhere on the shelf in that picture, but the thing I noticed first was: Why can't it even display the colours properly? The background colours look washed out (everything lost its saturation), not to mention the artifacts at the sides block out some of the video and there is excessive banding.
VLC has improved over the years (from way back when a certain fansub group crashed VLC with a bug they found in the subtitle renderer), but it is apparantly still too broken to be used to display videos. At least I didn't get a green screen.

Please do not use VLC unless it's your last resort.

I love how VLC turns everything darker except for that single green bottle to the left of the bright blue one; it gets lighter instead. Also, what artifacts? I don't see anything different between the two except for the slightly changed colours.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Also, how do you know it's not MPlayer showing the colors incorrectly?

 

[SifJar]

I can't even be sure whether you are trolling. If you'd be saying that according to you there is only a small difference in quality I could definitely accept it, as I believe that's partly a matter of taste. But if your claim that there is almost no difference at all in those two images (i.e in colors etc) is serious then that would indeed be an indication that you do have impaired vision. Take a look again and tell me if you are honestly unable to tell that the VLC image is considerably darker, this should be something anyone could easily tell.

They are slightly darker. Not considerably so. To the point where the images could be told apart side by side, but I most likely could not look at one isolated, after having seen both previously, and say for sure which it was. Furthermore, I am confident my vision is near perfect.

 

[DarkStriker]

I had experiences with VLC. While VLC does play a lot of formats, the controls were hard to manage.
Maybe I should try again, though...

Rofl. There exist other players that play MORE formats than the VLC. Its overrated really.

 

[Mazor]

They are slightly darker. Not considerably so. To the point where the images could be told apart side by side, but I most likely could not look at one isolated, after having seen both previously, and say for sure which it was. Furthermore, I am confident my vision is near perfect.

I disagree with what you're saying but to be fair I guess peoples' definition of what is a considerable difference varies greatly. Out of curiosity, can you tell the difference between PAL and NTSC image?

 

[DarkStriker]

They are slightly darker. Not considerably so. To the point where the images could be told apart side by side, but I most likely could not look at one isolated, after having seen both previously, and say for sure which it was. Furthermore, I am confident my vision is near perfect.

I disagree with what you're saying but to be fair I guess peoples' definition of what is a considerable difference varies greatly. Out of curiosity, can you tell the difference between PAL and NTSC image?

Better resolution. There. Except for the not noticeable FPS limit, then PAL wins in all ways in terms of resolution, aspect ratio. Everything.

 

[SifJar]

They are slightly darker. Not considerably so. To the point where the images could be told apart side by side, but I most likely could not look at one isolated, after having seen both previously, and say for sure which it was. Furthermore, I am confident my vision is near perfect.

I disagree with what you're saying but to be fair I guess peoples' definition of what is a considerable difference varies greatly. Out of curiosity, can you tell the difference between PAL and NTSC image?

No idea. When playing an imported US DVD on a PAL TV via WiiMC, will the signal be converted to PAL or displayed as NTSC? If the later, then no, I see no real difference. But then I have not compared PAL and NTSC images of the same source content (e.g. any US DVDs I have watched, I have not watched PAL versions).

 

[Mazor]

They are slightly darker. Not considerably so. To the point where the images could be told apart side by side, but I most likely could not look at one isolated, after having seen both previously, and say for sure which it was. Furthermore, I am confident my vision is near perfect.

I disagree with what you're saying but to be fair I guess peoples' definition of what is a considerable difference varies greatly. Out of curiosity, can you tell the difference between PAL and NTSC image?

Better resolution. There. Except for the not noticeable FPS limit, then PAL wins in all ways in terms of resolution, aspect ratio. Everything.

Note: PAL60 which has been used on consoles for the last decade has no "FPS limit" different than NTSC.

No idea. When playing an imported US DVD on a PAL TV via WiiMC, will the signal be converted to PAL or displayed as NTSC? If the later, then no, I see no real difference. But then I have not compared PAL and NTSC images of the same source content (e.g. any US DVDs I have watched, I have not watched PAL versions).

TVs don't convert between the two, so if you get color at all your picture is displayed in NTSC. But that you see no difference between import DVDs specifically (especially when not directly comparing the same DVD) doesn't really say anything, I was hoping you would have played some import game. The whole point of my question was that personally I think that PAL and NTSC are about as different in color as MPC-HC and VLC in that screenshot and that there is a noticable difference between PAL and NTSC in games is something people can generally easily tell from the colors if they see a game they play a lot in the other format from what I've experienced.

 

[tajio]

I use VLC Media Player for every video files that I have, but I use Media Player Classic for 10-Bit (Hi10p) files.

 

[SifJar]

TVs don't convert between the two, so if you get color at all your picture is displayed in NTSC. But that you see no difference between import DVDs specifically (especially when not directly comparing the same DVD) doesn't really say anything, I was hoping you would have played some import game. The whole point of my question was that personally I think that PAL and NTSC are about as different in color as MPC-HC and VLC in that screenshot and that there is a noticable difference between PAL and NTSC in games is something people can generally easily tell from the colors if they see a game they play a lot in the other format from what I've experienced.

Nope, only played imports on DS and PSP, which I don't think have the different formats?

 

[Archenyte]

There is nothing wrong with liking VLC (I used to use it on my ancient computer that couldn't run MPC-HC), but to say that the vlcsnap looks fine is wrong. Both players are free (except MPC-HC takes a bit longer to set up properly), so why not switch to a player that can actually show you the video correctly? It's never a bad idea to upgrade if it doesn't cost you anything.

If you can't see the colour differences, I don't know what to say. The second picture looks off everywhere. You don't even need to look for the differences. The bartender looks as pale as a ghost, it looks like someone turned down the lights; and those red, blue, and green wine bottles look lighter for some reason. Brushing off QUALITY as "slightly darker" even though that's already a huge problem by itself? I seriously hope you don't do this.

I love how VLC turns everything darker except for that single green bottle to the left of the bright blue one; it gets lighter instead. Also, what artifacts? I don't see anything different between the two except for the slightly changed colours.

The artifacts are mostly in the background. Most of them are just darker versions of the ones in MPC-HC (making them very noticeable compared to how closely you'd have to look for the ones in the MPC-HC screenshot), but there are some extra blocks lying around that were not in the original video. Some are on those glasses in the background as well.

 

[Rydian]

So I got some screenshots ready.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/123980
Tools > Codec info here: http://i.imgur.com/jZ3JD.png

BOTH IMAGES HAVE THE SAME ISSUES.
Of course there is a brightness difference. If that's what irks you, you can change the settings in the player.

Anyways as was said, the brightness difference simply makes the already-existing video flaws more apparant. I brought BOTH images into photoshop to prove it.

Here's the VLC image showing the blocking on the shirt, which is easily visible since it crosses a visual threshold into black (compared to the outer colors).

Now, here's the other player, normally. There's the same blocking (because the video file contains the blocking), but there's not much contrast so it's not very visible since it's from a shade of grey to another shade, so it's understandable why people who aren't very sensitive to gradient changes would think the blocking doesn't exist here.

So to show it's there, here's the same image but with 50% contrast so you can see the blocking exists because it's in the original video file.

The flaws are in the actual video file. WELCOME TO COMPRESSED MEDIA. The reason it's so much more visible in VLC is due to the default brightness/contrast. Read up on these subjects to learn more, and tweak the settings in one player to match another if you don't like seeing the flaws that exist in the video file itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision#Mathematics_of_color_perception

If you don't ever want to see this stuff, then only deal with video files that have never been put through any sort of lossy compression (and good luck with getting popular media like that).

EDITEDIT: Edited the wrong post. XD Fixed.

 

[FAST6191]

Grunt grunt ugg real hairy chested bastards use graphedit or GraphStudio.

That over

Klite- I admit I have not checked it out in a while but my main problem with codec packs of old including klite so I tended to suggest people avoid it was they tended to have redundant stuff bundled and tended not to have great configs.

CCCP- I mainly use it as ninite installs it nicely although I did go manual before ninite made me lazy. MPC-HC and I guess formerly MPC were and are my video players of choice until I hit XBMC (which usually means I am looking at a projector or similar situation and a "10 foot UI" is needed).
CCCP and MPC-HC rarely drop the ball with subs either unlike VLC which these days usually works but is a bit spotty on occasion. I will not Haali splitter and VSfilter flank it as well as FFdshow which can make up for a lot.

Codecs to encode are not really such a problem as most others are now command line and/or expect avisynth. I admit I do still have some VFW stuff installed (and especially since CCCP and ffdshow dropped the cheap and cheerful encoding side from the main installs).

VLC- is the world better for having it? In a world where windows media player exists is that even a valid question?
It has pretty decent streaming support (more so than most until I hit proper streaming stuff and I can rarely be bothered with that- it has allowed me to get in on streams that are at breaking point (e3, c3 congress, some nasa and LHC stuff) where others fell short but I am not sure I want to attribute that to VLC just yet) and works better with some broken MKV stuff without rejigging options or actually fixing it. It is fairly portable, quite light touch on systems in terms of registry and what have you and usually not that resource hogging so it can win a spot as a secondary player. Were it not for the portable/light touch and streams thing I would call it a nice entry level player with no compelling reason to have it installed if you otherwise know what you are doing and are not too lazy.
Speed wise... most people have not graduated to full 1080p or better H264 of the ultra high profile and settings persuasion yet.

Can't say I install it on client machines though or even really have it on my USB drives of wonder. It could win a place on it though if I felt I needed such a thing.

DVD region free... oh do not make me install anydvd (or I guess dvd43 if I am in a mood for pain) or properly rip the thing.

 

[raulpica]

I'll just take this, and leave it here:

VLC is the most compatible with these files.

>VLC
I ran a video file through VLC the other day, gotta love this program man, shits amazing.

Tell me about it.

I'll stick to MPC-HC thanks.

*leaves thread*

 

[Mantis41]

Before we had decent codec packs VLC was the only way to ensure all video formats played without issues. Now we have proper codec packs regularly updated VLC is only really needed as a player and these days there are better alternatives depending on your tastes.

 

[Sicklyboy]

They are slightly darker. Not considerably so. To the point where the images could be told apart side by side, but I most likely could not look at one isolated, after having seen both previously, and say for sure which it was. Furthermore, I am confident my vision is near perfect.

I disagree with what you're saying but to be fair I guess peoples' definition of what is a considerable difference varies greatly. Out of curiosity, can you tell the difference between PAL and NTSC image?

Better resolution. There. Except for the not noticeable FPS limit, then PAL wins in all ways in terms of resolution, aspect ratio. Everything.

Note: PAL60 which has been used on consoles for the last decade has no "FPS limit" different than NTSC.

No idea. When playing an imported US DVD on a PAL TV via WiiMC, will the signal be converted to PAL or displayed as NTSC? If the later, then no, I see no real difference. But then I have not compared PAL and NTSC images of the same source content (e.g. any US DVDs I have watched, I have not watched PAL versions).

TVs don't convert between the two, so if you get color at all your picture is displayed in NTSC.

If you're talking about a TV converting a PAL image to an NTSC one, then you're right.

But that's not remotely necessary when the TV can display both just fine. My TV, cheap Vizio one, has no complaints about showing NTSC and PAL formatted video signals.

 

[Mazor]

If you're talking about a TV converting a PAL image to an NTSC one, then you're right.

But that's not remotely necessary when the TV can display both just fine. My TV, cheap Vizio one, has no complaints about showing NTSC and PAL formatted video signals.

Not sure what part of my post you are addressing and what your point is. I simply said that SifJar is indeed not watching a PAL image for his NTSC DVDs on his european TV (that obviously also handles PAL) because no conversion from NTSC is done. As long as he gets color at all for his NTSC DVDs that means the TV handles NTSC and NTSC is being displayed.

 

[Archenyte]

Rydian, that's wrong because this isn't just a brightness issue. The colours themselves are off.

What does it take to convince you that it doesn't display the video properly? The video in VLC is too dark in some areas while being too light in others. Of course there are flaws in the video (that's why people choose 10-bit over 8-bit), but VLC displays the video with flaws that are not in the encode itself. I'd like you to try adjusting the brightness of your player and try to get the exact same result as in MPC-HC.

These problems are quite apparant in other posts in this thread. The screen shot comparison I linked to earlier of Bakemonogatari was a perfectly normal video (8-bit H264), but you chose not to accept it. There are many problems with VLC, but you wanted to ignore them and instead attacked me (and not only showed me incorrect evidence, but showed evidence that VLC still sucks because it takes flaws and makes them even bigger). Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to uninstall VLC, clear it from my registry, and leave this thread. Enjoy VLC.

P.S. VLC is only good if you're streaming videos (and not music), which is not the best option if you can download the video anyways.