VLC Media Player

by: Chris Page on July 01, 2013

VLC Media Player for Mac is the all-around reliable, works-out-of-the-box media player that you might never have heard of, though that's no reflection on the app, itself.

We installed the latest update for VLC Media Player for Mac on our test machine without problems. We quickly downloaded the DMG, and then copied VLC to Applications, overwriting our previous installed version. As longtime users of this software, we were happy to see that not much has changed. The interface remained the same, with standard buttons for playback, forward, and back. Advanced controls are available for more options, as well. The player supports a wide variety of audio and video formats, natively, meaning no forced installation of third-party codecs to make it work is needed. We tested VLC Media Player for Mac out on a variety of video files such as MOV, MP4, MKV, and AVI, and had no problems viewing any of them. In addition to playing just about every type of media you can feed it, this player also features some tools for editing and recording media. We boosted saturation, hue, and contrast during playback of a video until the color was more to our liking. We were also able to record a video stream, as it came in live, from over the Internet. There are many more features, but for the majority ease of playback is reason enough to use this player.

VLC Media Player for Mac has been the media player of choice for many for a long time, even if it doesn't have the name recognition of other media players. It's versatile, powerful, and easy to use, eliminating video compatibility issues that often plague one player or another.

VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MP3, and OGG, as well as for DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It also can be used as a server for unicast or multicast streams in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

What's new in this version:

With the capabilities of "RinceWind", 2.1.3 fixes numerous bugs, and improves decoders, notably for the new formats (HEVC and VP9) Fixes numerous bugs, notably numerous regressions introduced in "RinceWind" and 2.1.2. Important fixes involve Audio and Video output management on most platforms. Also improves the demuxer and decoders for most formats, and the various interfaces.

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