Sure enough, testing the most common file types, you will find that VLC leaves Windows Media Player in the dust. But what about rare formats? Is it capable of playing any audio and video file format out there?

This article will shed some light on the true capabilities of the VLC media player. I will reveal which file types it really supports and highlight some interesting features that, due to its simplistic interface, you may never have discovered.

How Come VLC Media Player Needs No Codecs?

Well, it does need codecs! However, it comes with nearly every codec built in. The developers did all the work, so you don’t have to worry about it. The question is, why don’t more developers follow this brilliant strategy of making life easier for the user?

Does It Really Play Everything?

VLC does handle an impressive amount of media and input formats. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that not every codec is included and hence not every file format supported. The list of supported formats reveals, for example, that it lacks support for some Indeo Video codecs. You can check out all supported input media, input formats, video formats, audio formats, and more on the VLC Playback Features page.

To be fair, it should be said that the Indeo codecs are proprietary, meaning they are not freely available. Besides, Indeo has become almost meaningless since the late 90′s. Intel essentially stopped developing and marketing it a decade ago. Subsequently, the codecs still come with several security vulnerabilities that likely will never be fixed. Taken together, it’s no wonder that there is only limited support for the corresponding files.

OK, Spill The Beans, What Else Does It Not Play?

There really isn’t a lot that VLC does not play. However, there are some exceptions. Let’s have a look at the facts for the three most popular operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Input media

VLC supports all  standard input media, including audio CDs, video CDs and DVDs, even DVB. Yet, it doesn’t play everything. The limits are as follows:

• DCCP / RTP Unicast: supported only in Linux
• SVCD: partial support only
• DVB: plugin required for EyeTV on the Mac
• MPEG encoder: not supported on the Mac
• Video acquisition (webcam): only partial support for iSight on the Mac
• HD-DVD and BluRay: not supported (details)

Input formats

Whether you want to play mpeg, avi, ogg, wav, or flv files, VLC rules them all, with a single excpetion: Real media files are only partially supported across all operating systems.

Video formats

All popular and a lot of mediocre and rare formats are supported. As mentioned and explained above, the only exception are files requiring the Indeo Video 4/5 codec.

Audio formats

Again, all popular formats are supported. And as indicated above, the only party pooper is Real Audio. It’s listed as only partially supported because the Sipr codec playback is not supported. Also Midi files have not been tested on the Mac.

For even more information, head over to the VLC Playback Features page.

What Else Should I Know About VLC?

Ok, so it only plays almost everything, but that definitely puts it light years ahead of any other free media player currently on the market. If that isn’t enough to convince you, have a look at the all of the additional perks that come with VLC. You probably had no idea they were there. Here is a list that will make your jaw drop:

• playlist support.
• subtitles support.
• increase or decrease playback speed.
• support for screencasting (recording the desktop).
• streaming of live, unencrypted content to a monitor or HDTV.

• in file audio and video bookmarks.
• enhanced audio and video effects.
• playback of damaged, incomplete, or unfinished video files.
• access media files within .iso disk images.
• DirectX Wallpaper and Direct 3D Desktop modes for video playback.
• playback DVD’s regardless of region coding (RPC-1 firmware drives only).
• portable version available.
• free and open source.

Does that sound like a deal?

Conclusion

The VLC media player undeniably is the most versatile free media player out there. Not only does it support almost any file format, it also comes with an impressive collection of useful and entertaining extra features. Nevertheless, it’s a compact little program with a very uncluttered and easy to use interface. Best of all, it’s free and open source. What else could you possibly ask for?

Are you crazy about the VLC media player now? Check out our other resources:

• VLC Media Player Is Now Available On All iOS Devices by Steven
• 3 Free Media Players that Support GPU Acceleration [Windows] by Matt
• Kantaris ““ A Great New Media Player Based On VLC by Simon

Looking for alternatives? Another player that comes with native support for popular audio and video files is KMPLayer. It is also discussed in the article  Top 5 Free Media Players For Windows. However, it is only available for Windows. For some more comments, have a look at this question on MakeUseOf Answers: Which media player is the best?

Did you ever encounter issues with VLC Media Player? If it’s not your favorite media player, then what is?

As for other video files – times evolve. The same filesize that allowed us to watch mediocre quality AVIs in the past, now allows us to store HD 720p MP4s. Technology moves on, and so should you.

Converting your video files isn’t always easy. Although, more free apps that can handle the job hit the market every year, there are a lot of technical gibberish involved.

If you want to know what you’re doing in the process, read on for a section-oriented guide with some easy-to-grasp, practical information about the concept and the different factors of video compression. Video Converting in a nutshell, if you will.

Video Containers

Video Containers are what most people use to differentiate between various video files. You should know most of these by their names. The most popular ones include:

• AVI
• MPEG / MPEG-4
• MKV
• RM / RMV
• MOV
• WMV

The container is designed to store the different data types. These include audio, video, and sometimes even subtitles. They’re like the boxes in which we put our candy, or the cars in which we drive our kids around. There’s a great comparison of these container formats and their respective restrictions on Wikipedia.

Note that the biggest difference between these containers lies in the support they give for underlying bits of information. Different containers provide support for different audio and video compressions. Some will enable the inclusion of multiple audio, or subtitle tracks, where others will allow only one, or none at all. If you want to add subtitles to an AVI or WMV file, you might have to burn them into the picture.

Video/Audio Codecs

The real difference between most video files relies less on the used container (and if so, only by means of restriction), but more on the video or audio codec – what’s in the box. The video codec defines how the information is processed. Some of the most popular video codecs include

• DivX / XviD
• h264 / x264
• FFMPEG
• Theora

You should remember that the content, or the way the content is stored is not always defined by the container, although it’s often limited (e.g. some containers support multiple audio streams, whereas AVI only supports one). As a result, there are several different available combinations between containers and codecs.

Different codecs make for different sound or picture quality in relation to file size. The most famous and most often used are the AVI containers, with the DivX or (free) XviD codec (but between you and I – they’re a tad outdated and have a horrible quality/filesize ratio).

I highly recommend using the uprising x264 codec (which has a delicious quality/filesize ratio). You can use it with a MKV container if you’re planning to use multiple audio and subtitle tracks, or else with a MP4 container. The MP4 container only supports one video and audio layer, but has a higher support rate and can be played on iPods, PSPs and most of the newer mobile phones as well.

Bitrate

A bitrate defines the speed of the data transfer. In terms of video, this means more data is included in a shorter audio/visual interval.

Most often, you can leave the bitrate as is, or play a little with it if you’re the adventurous type. Higher bitrate means a bigger datastream, so for the ultimate quality/filesize ratio, your bitrate shouldn’t be too low (which removes people from your car), nor too high (buying a bigger car than you actually need).

In a lot of applications, it’s also possible to calculate the bitrate of a movie by providing a target size. This allows you to get the best quality out of your video, while staying under a set file size.

Multiple Passes

This is pretty self-explanatory. Multiple passes defines how many times the application will process the entire film to reach the end result. These days, a two-pass encoding is standard.

Obviously, when working with multiple-pass encoding, it will take longer to convert your video. If your system’s equiped with a quad-core processor, this won’t be the most of your worries, but with an older computer, you’ll better run it at night or when you’re off to the pub.

Conversion Tools

There are a lot of applications that will do the job and MakeUseOf has reviewed some great, free ones in the past. Be sure to check out Handbrake – which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux – if you want to convert your DVDs to video files. For file-to-file conversions, take a look at Will Muellers Top Free Media Converters For Windows or Varun’s article on Linux video convertors.

We hope you’ve learned from this guide, and will be able to process your files to a format that’s easier to handle and share. If you found this article interesting, be sure to check other MakeUseOf articles on movies, converting and surrounding topics, like how to add subtitles to your movies.

If there’s anything you want to ask, or anything you want to share with us or your fellow MakeUseOf readers, the comments section below is open for everyone with a keyboard and a social mind.

Using Grab Tube’s Web Converter you can convert any online or downloaded video (.flv, .mp4, .3gp, .avi) and using their service, convert it to MP3, 3GP, AVI, FLV or MPG. This is really useful to grab a friend’s youTube video and throw it on your phone to share.

Let’s see how it works”¦

First we browse on over to http://www.grab-tube.com/converter where the converter lives and you will see a screen that looks like this:

The URL bar at the top of the screen let’s you simply paste a URL of an online video to download. Drop down the format next to it and hit the download button.

You will see the next screen with links to download the file to your computer. With the file, you can then use the service to convert it to another file type.

Click the link to download the file and save it to your computer.

Then after you have the file on your local machine, click the logo at the top of Grab Tube to take you back to the home page. Once there, browse to your file, choose the format to convert it to and hit the Convert file! button below.

Once the conversion is complete, you will get a link to download the newly converted video, like you see below. Now, you can do what you need to with it! Enjoy.

Do you have another method of doing this? Well then, what are you waiting for?? Share it with us in the comments!

With so many video formats and too little time to organize our video files, we need an easy-to-use and intuitive video converter that handles all our video files on the go. Let us look at 5 of the best freeware video converters that will keep your video collection a little less insane. For converting other files, you can choose an online file converter that were covered earlier.

Quick Media Converter

Quick Media Converter is a powerful freeware video converter that handles all current formats such as FLV, AVI, DIVX, XVID, MPEG 1-4, iPod/iPhone, Real Media, and M4A. In addition, this whale of a free video converter allows you to record videos from your DV camera or webcam in the classic AVI format and convert the file to any format you need.

Quick Media Converter has two modes. The Easy Mode gives you quick access to all conversion options available in an all-in-one interface. Once you have your video file or folder loaded, just click the file that you want to convert and select the conversion format that suits you. The Expert Mode is less intuitive but it gives you full control of video conversion options like codec rendering, aspect, bitrate, FPS, audio synchronization, and recording volume.

Super Video Converter

Super fits the bill for a simple, no-frills interface that converts videos on the go. Super is actually a shell for different command line conversion scripts. Super handles a large number of video formats like 3GP and 3G2 for mobile phones, ASF, DIVX AVI, MOV, MPEG, flash video, real media, PSP video, and more. Super also handles audio conversion for those who want to extract their videos and rip the audio out for easy listening. Super handles large files quickly, and you can find the settings easily making it convenient for users to set their options and start converting.

Any Video Converter

Any Video Converter is perfect for your younger mother/ brothers/sisters who do not want to be bothered with the myriad of options and just want a fast solution that gets the job done while looking good doing it. The converter handles all popular video files with batch-convert and user-defined options. Any Video Converter also has a dumbed-down interface to make video conversion as simple as possible, although it can handle advanced video conversions if you tinker behind the interface and experiment with options.

MediaCoder

Mediacoder is an open source video converter which works on a large variety of formats. New features, conversion options, and conversions formats are constantly being added to support newly-released devices. Mediacoder dubs itself as the “swiss army knife for media transcoding””¦ simple, quick, and does everything that it is asked. Mediacoder gives straightforward tools that you won’t easily find in other converters like video compression, extracting audio from video files, and repairing corrupted or partially downloaded video files.

Format Factory

This full-featured converter allows conversion to and from popular formats including video formats for PSP, iPhone, and other video formats. The conversion options are easy to find within the interface and you can even perform batch conversion options for mobile video, pictures, audio, DVD videos, and more.

If you can find other freeware video converters hotter than these, just hit the comments button and share them with the MUO community. Cheers!

What do you do?

Weep openly?

Seek help?

Or how about fixing the problem for yourself? Why not try to repair broken avi or other video file? What an awesome idea!

Let’s see how we can do that with a free tool called DivFix++. I have been using an older version of DivFix++ that was simply called DivFix since way back when. Let me tell you this is a solid application that can save you many hours of heartache. Word up!

You can download the executable here (another application that DOES NOT NEED TO BE INSTALLED!). The zip file is available as a direct download from here. It is tiny weighing in at 742KB. I always keep this little guy on my memory stick!

After downloading and running DivFix you will see a screen that looks like this:

You will see you have options to choose your output directory, log file and of course your source file. Then you have check boxes to keep your original file intact, cut out bad parts and log your results. You can also choose your language from the preferences button on the bottom.

If your AVI file simply will not let you move around it freely, then the index is flucked up and can be easily corrected by stripping the index. When you do this make sure the check boxes for cut out bad parts and keep your original file intact are unchecked.

You can copy your video file to another location before you start to be on the safe side.

After clicking “Strip Index” the operation is almost immediate.

Try opening and moving around your file now! Sweet! Now to skip to the good parts!

Using some automagical features DivFix++ can fix corrupted video files as well. So not only you can use it to repair broken AVI files but fix just about any corrupt video file. Just select your video file and hit Fix…

Let it do its work and when it is complete, more likely than not, you will have a beautiful working PRON video file again! That’s right and all without a working knowledge of techno video nonsense! This is a program for every normal Joe Schmoe.

Let us know how it works out for you and if you have another similar free tool that you use and prefer…

Don’t act like you don’t know how or where…

I am going to be packing ‘em up and putting them away for storage.

But that shouldn’t mean I can’t have access to any movie I own at any given time…

Right?

Well for a long while, if you wanted to rip DVD’s that meant you needed to know how to decrypt your DVD’s and then you needed a little geeky know-how to convert those “vob” files and other crap to something playable.

Times they are a’ changing because this little free application called bitRipper includes a de-crypter and a converter in one package. That means throw the DVD into your DVD drive and click START RIPPING!

It is that easy. It’s easy enough for your mom to do it. For real!

If you don’t believe me, go check it out for your self. Grab the installer direct from here or visit the author’s homepage here.

My download did not require a registration code but the author does include this on the download page:

If your download requires entering username and regcode, please use the following ones:
User name:

Registration code:

bitRipper also has advanced configuration modes available where you can get at some settings but the two best features are the included DVD decrypting and On the fly writing.

On The Fly DVD Writing does not require you to use almost 5 gigabytes to rip your dvd before burning the AVI. That’s right it converts video on-the-fly, copying data and writing it to your AVI file at the same time.

bitRipper was originally commercial software when I first came upon it but it is free now and occasionally updated. The author points out that he has added these features in the recent past:

• Ability to control the ripping process system priority
• Internal video bitrate calculator to fine-tune the compression level
• Authorization support for protected discs
• Episodical discs support (multiple DVD tracks containing multiple parts)
• Support of the most of video export formats including AVI, MPEG, DivX
• Reduced installation package, maximized stability and reliability

bitRipper is an amazing find and a regular part of my DVD ripping activities! Give it a shot.

What do you use to rip your DVD’s? Something as easy and free? Put me on it in the comments.

I know there are dozens if not more Youtube downloaders out there but this one is really different. Let’s quickly go over some of its features.

1. Cross Platform

The program is available for Windows (both XP and Vista), Mac and Linux PCs. So it can be installed pretty much everywhere.

2. Download more than one video at a time

As you would expect from any other download manager it can download several files simultaneously. In the screenshot below you can see that I was downloading 4 videos at the same time.

3. Built-in video converter

xVideoServiceThief comes with integrated video converter which can convert downloaded videos to AVI (Windows), WMV, MPEG 1/2, MP4 (Apple iPod), 3GP (mobile phone) and MP3 formats. For more advanced users there are optional settings to control the output video resolution, audio sampling and video frame rates.

The really cool thing about it is that it can be fully automated. You simpy enter the URL of the video you want to download and xVideoServiceThief will then download, automatically convert it to the selected video format and store it in the specified folder. Sweet.

4. Supports 50+ Video Websites

xVideoServiceThief can handle videos from 50+ video sharing sites. I have successfully tested it with videos from Youtube, Dailymotion, Google Video and some other popular video sharing sites. Other than a couple of errors with Metacafe videos there were no problems whatsoever.

The full list of sites xVideoServiceThief can download videos from:

* 123video
* 5min
* aBum
* Aniboom
* Bebo
* Blip
* Boingboing TV
* Break
* Broadcaster
* Caught On Video
* Ceknito
* CinemaVIP
* Clip4e
* ClipFish
* Dailymotion
* Dumpalink
* GameSpot
* GameTrailers
* Glumbert
* Google Video
* GodTube
* LiveVideo
* Lulu TV
* Metacafe
* MySpaceTv
* MySpass
* MyVideo
* Sclipo
* Spike
* Stage6
* Tu.tv
* Tudou
* Video.ca
* VideoLeak
* Yahoo Video
* Yikers
* YourFileHost
* YouTube
* YouTubeIslam
* Zaable
* ZanyVideos
* ZappInternet
* Zedge
* ZippyVideos
* Zuuble

Other Cool Features

* Pause/resume downloads (though the pause/resume feature doesn’t work for all websites)
* Session Manager: Save/Restore your download lists
* Keeps a list of all downloaded videos (Date + Title + URL)
* Control which websites are allowed and which websites must be blocked.

Download xVideoServiceThief.

Do you ever download online videos? What software or websites do you use? Let us know in the comments.