BeAmazed
VLC!
Discussion
The extra volume was always a treat
Meanwhile billion dollar companies can't even implement a useful volume slider (looking at you, YouTube Music and your terrible, linear volume control, that's basically an on/off switch)...
Google fails at doing many things right.
Thats because their primary business is to serve advertising, not to offer you a good media experience or a search engine or whatever. And this is actually true, their primary income and service is online advertising - everything else just rides on top of that.
And yet, it would cost them practically nothing to implement better features, and in turn would they not make more profits from more users if they did?
Like why not just hire an intern to make the volume slider better?
Why? Because they don't need to. Thats why.
What are people going to do? Stop using youtube?
Correct me if I'm wrong but the other commenter was discussing Youtube Music, which is its own mobile app separate from the Youtube app.
And last I checked you had to pay for Youtube music services, or at least to get the best experience from the app. So better product -> more users willing to pay for it -> more profit.
How does this make sense to you? Surely a company that lives off advertising wants to provide a good UX so that their user base remains healthy. Not to say google's UX is excellent, but it's wrong to say they're too greedy to care about it
Why would they? They don't need to.
Go ahead. De-googlefy your life. Linus tech tips made a video about it. Do not use google services, youtube, android... etc. So on and so forth.
Hell... Don't even do that. Just stop using youtube completely for everything. You'll quickly realise that there really aren't alternatives to watch/upload videos to... like there are but not really.
That is why google doesn't need to provide anything to us users. We aren't their customers - the companies buying advertisements are. They only need to provide good enough user experience that the average mass of people who do not set up a pihole linux server in arduino to which they connect via vpn which blocks all advertising in the universe use the services and get exposed to ads. The fact we are on reddit and know what UI/UX means already sets us to a demographic which google doesn't care about. They don't care about our opinions, they know we block the ads in whatever means we can even if the UI was perfect or whatever. I know I would and I am sure you would. We do not represent the majority.
However.... Are the Mas and Pas on facebook going to? Are the kids on tiktok going to? Are the people who don't even care to understand their devices going to block the ads? They wont... They don't care enough to do so.
I gave up TV like 12 years ago, haven't owned one since, because I thought whats the point of it when it shows nothing but ads all the time. Well... TVs are still being sold. TVs with native adsystem installed as smart functions. People still watch TV. Lots of people still use facebook and see all the fucking ads... etc.
As long as the system is barely functional enough to compature the majority of advertising targets... Then it is good enough. Because lets be honest... My mom isn't going to learn another phone that the samsung they got. My grandma isn't going to start to fuck around with the apple devices to block ads on the facebook app. People doom scrolling on whatever app in the bus ain't gonna do that, they'll just deal with it.
Oh don't be ridiculous Google not only fails at doing things right, their stupid strategy of redundant teams and projects means that they fail at the same thing in lots of unique ways across multiple implementations of software with the same functions. Efficiency!
Not true! Sometimes Google does do things right! Then their project managers siphon resources and redirect them onto a dumber project and gradually abandon development until it’s fallow. Then have another PM come up with the brilliant idea to replicate it with a feature-incomplete project with a horrible and unintuitive UI that pisses everybody off (YouTube Music), and finally kill the better product after confusing users with the inferior dupe (RIP Play Music)
Or better yet—take a product that was beloved and ahead of its time and replace it with absolutely nothing! (RIP Reader).
Or take an initially groundbreaking product, drag it along for 15+ years, add nothing but a reskin, ignore all the power users’ feedback, and withhold simple features like RCS (Google Voice). Bonus points if you spend gobs of money on an advertising campaign to take a fat dump on a competitor for withholding that very feature!
Hey now, none of that matters anymore. Once every dollar the company makes is spent on Gemini it will finally save everything else. All the engineers can be fired and Gemini can just make everything anyone needs. Easy!
Oh, my dear, shitty youtube music.
Takes songs from various uploaders, so the volume is a mess. But refuses to implement a fucking equalizer.
"Oh, you only listen to country music and looked for a country song called 'Lone Star' which you have already searched 100 times? Fucking loser, here's the same shitty search query, good luck lol"
"Oh, you wanted to listen to a song that we already have in the database in a polished radio version? **** off, here's the VEVO censored version with 30s of silent intro and a jumpscare in the outro"
"Oh, you listened to Italian folk music, but your playlist ran out of songs? No worries! Here are the top 10 Italian rap songs of the moment, fuck off with your shitty music tastes"
"Want to stream your songs to your VA speaker? What a fucking loser, you need a screen for that, we hate peasants like you"
Like, they've got the basis for a kickass platform that could easily dethrone Spotify, but they decided to take a lot of effort to make the experience as awful as it can be
Holy shit this is so accurate.
The loudness differences are so annoying, as are multiple uploads of the same song, YT even has a stable volume feature for the videos but not music (although it kinda doesn't work on video as well, but at least they're pretending to try).
As for the multiple songs, I actually like that there's concerts/live versions, remixes or covers on there but having the same song 3 times just with different quality/loudness just shouldn't happen if you have a system that can copyright strike your video if someone whistles a Disney song in the background.
YouTube Music and your terrible, linear volume control, that's basically an on/off switch)
so I'm not crazy and it is "decibels are actually a log scale and human sound perception is weird" strikes again situation! Thank you for confirming my frustration with YouTube Music
I haven't tested it or anything but if a volume slider only really changes volume in the first 10% that would be my first instinct, no matter what the cause is, it sucks big time, especially since there's no (official) desktop app so if you want to control levels with an external program (like EarTrumpet for Windows) you'll have to turn down the volume for the whole browser.
Yes there's a PWA, but since it's just a glorified browser window with no extra features or settings, it might as well not exist.
I had to install an extension to fix that YTM volume slider shit. So freaking annoying
You can’t find a volume you like without it?
The first volume notch just above mute is too loud in a lot of situations.
Tidal volume slider works like a champ tho.
That’s true, like when discord or game audio is at a good level, YouTube is insanely loud in comparison even right above mute
I love YouTube music, but the volume slider on PC is so trash. Even the quietest option is absurdly loud.
I cant tell you the number of times I've found a good 123Movies film that I wanted to see and the maxed out volume was like a church mouse.
I cant recommend enough a 3rd part volume browser extension. I have one that lets me put any tab up to 600% volume. It gets a lot of use
And don't sleep on the audio compression effect. This is the perfect fix if your film suffers from whisper whisper BOOM BOOM
I turned that on windows wide
Love that feature. Deals nicely with "theater audio". You only really notice a problem if you go very sharply from BOOM BOOM to quiet whispers
I do so love watching the arguments online about how it's your audio systems problem, then seeing a group of people with proper audio systems coming in saying they're configured but still suffer the same issue. I still say it's because those things are expected to be heard at above normal level audio so the whispers are still low but within your ability to decipher but the booms are high enough you can feel them, and I'm not setting my audio to that level, I don't like to watch that way and my neighbors don't need to hear everything I do just so I can hear dialog.
Man it has so many features I don't even know half of them.
It can take screenshots and auto save them
Advance the video 1 frame at a time
You can export videos into frames
You can load up videos from the internet and stream through VLC
You can stream yourself online with it
You can screen record with it
You can strip audio from video
Opens a fuckload of different file formats
I THINK you can convert files to different formats
These are just features I've used, I know it has a ton more.
You can also turn it into a streaming server and serve videos inside your network to smart TVs etc. No big deal today, but was really cool in the early 2010s.
It can stream from a series of rar files that are still downloading. But it's MPC-HC with MadVR you really want
Not sure why anyone would need that now, but I'm old enough to remember why that's an awesome thing to have.
I still don't understand how it works. Are all software capped at "allowable" 100% volume, while VLC bypasses it to "hardware-maximum" 100%?
Let's look at what 200% volume would do:
If for example the loudest point of the original signal only hits 50% of what your speaker can do, then the software can just double all values and it'll be twice as loud. (ignoring non-linear scaling effects)
If the source is louder than that, then everything that was above 50% loudness will all be at 100% in the end. The signal gets "clipped". This will usually subjectively sound louder, but at the expense of degraded audio quality as some information gets lost. If that's just a few seconds of high volume in an otherwise quiet track, it may still be worth it to you.
Of course the program can't make the actual speaker any louder than it is. Imagine if VLC plays audio that has a tone at 1kHz at 50% Volume and 2kHz at 100% Volume. Now if you set your audio level above 100%, the 1kHz tone will get louder, while 2kHz will stay at the same maximum value.
So if you could set volume to "infinity", the audio would just clip at every frequency. This feature is kinda pointless with a normal recording, but it's very useful if somehow all frequencies are lower than they should be.
More like the software boosts what the audio track is presenting. So if it's saying play this as boom it'll now play it as BOOM
If it's already as loud and as saturated as it can be I'm guessing you'd start to hear distortion instead(or maybe it's smart and doesn't do anything, I'm not sure), but if it's just a quiet track/video/whatever then there's plenty of room to make it louder without you noticing problems
Is this a hidden feature?
The volume bar defaults to 100% but can go up to 125%.
You can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to control the volume too.
Can go up to 200% I think, definitely over 125%
Seems like you can change the setting by going to tools > preferences > all settings > main interface > qt > max volume displayed
You can change this value to be up to 300.
100% it was 200%
The creator of VLC media player refused tens of millions of dollars in order to keep VLC ads-free. Dude deserves a statue.
I see VLC statues everywhere. Mostly on the road.
And ever since winrar started to nag everyone to buy subscription I stopped seeing stacks of books.
I'll never not use winrar
Why not 7zip?
I started using NanaZip for Windows 11 installs cause it uses the Windows 11 context menu, and its pretty much a fork of 7zip
I just reverted the Windows 11 contextual menu to the old one.
I prefer PeaZip because I like Pea Soup more than Nana Soup.
What's wrong with Nana's soup?
There's urine in it
Doesn't have the cool icon though. /s
Firefox, VLC, and 7-zip should just come standard with computers.
You mean the free program thats asks for you to pay for it? Just click no???
lmao
ROFL
Also in Glasgow on a very special statue!
Touché
'We're on a mining ship, three million years into Deep Space. Can someone explain to me where the smeg I got this traffic cone?' - Lister
Okay that was pretty good man
I knew they are lying when they say no ads.
Outstanding
And sometimes on top of horses
people be like "you woulda made so much money if you included ads" then he's just like "if there were ads, no one would use it"
Most software would sell out for profit, but VLC stayed true.
Is there a single example of a multimedia player going from open source to closed source for a lump of cash? I don’t even mean it is necessarily something bad, but I don’t know such cases either.
Can you even do that? What's stopping somebody from forking an older version b4 it went closed source?
You can’t for the very reason you gave. Plenty of open source software has tried to pull the changing to a more restrictive licence trick and been overtaken by community lead efforts based on the last code under the old licence.
There's another reason, especially if it is under a copyleft license.
As far as I understand, third party contributions to a copyleft-licensed product are provided under that same license. Unlike in professional development situations, where the developer transfers the intellectual ownership of the code they write to their employer, contributors remain owners of their code. And copyleft licenses allow the product to be used and modified freely, providing the resulting product is licensed under the same agreement.
Which would mean the maintainer simply doesn't have the legal right to close the source. It'd require the permission of every copyright holder that contributed, and that absolutely will not happen.
The point is that he received offers for 10s of millions from people who wanted to buy it in order to put in ads, and he refused.
Even if everyone had stopped using it, he still would have made bank.
He makes more by having a massive user base of VLC and then selling services and tools around VLC through his for-profit company, VideoLabs.
Which is extra ironic, since most of VideoLabs profit is through buying other IP's and generating licences and royalties.
Edit: Im both dumb and wrong. Oops. Sorry.
I think that’s actually a different VideoLabs. That’s “VideoLabs Inc” and looks extra fucking scummy.
The one I’m talking about is a standard “custom services and consulting” firm that just specializes is multimedia solutions built around VLC.
It’s a legit and above board business, but it’s still for profit as hell.
Looks like you're right. I was always under the impression they were related companies.
He should have taken the money, then used it to build a new player. But one that could handle prores files in .MOV containers this time.
ProRes is developed by Apple. Found your problem. Apple is notorious for keeping you in a walled garden, they don't want you using VLC. Steve Apple himself likely put a stick in those bicycle spokes so you're blaming the wrong guy here.
>Steve Apple
Lol
Apple really did keep the doctor away in Steve's case
the entirety of the modern web disproves this
No, he actually deserves donations over a statue.
He got one at my college library https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/C%C3%B4ne_de_L%C3%BCbeck_INSA_Lyon.jpg
Is that like some sort of parking cop school? Why would a school have a statue of a giant cone.
Okay so it's actually pretty hard to find anything about this online, but from what I could gather:
Initially I though it might actually be a nod to videolan since the founders are french, but they studied in paris, not lyon.
This is a statue by the artist Lilian Bourgeat known for producing gigantic version of everyday items.
It was originally installed at the Centre de Création Contemporaine to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of its contruction.
It was vandalised several times and moved afterwards.
I do not know how it ended up in front of the library in lyon.
This is stitched together from several short machine translated news articles and blog posts, so take it with a grain of salt.
[deleted]
The monthly VLC post is already out ? Damn, only took 8 days this time x)
For real, even the comment section feels like something I've already seen lmao
Annoying, right?
Bots
They're french 🥖
I’m sure s/he has an amazing career and makes a great salary.
He does now, but when VLC was created and decided it would be free, he was a 20 year old university student
Also plays many broken video files (partially downloaded videos) that won't play with other apps. Also strips audio from videos easily to make mp3 from video files.
Sorry, I am a complete technoignoramus, but how does one go about this?
Media -> Convert / Save
The shortcut is CTRL-R.
Add the video file you want to convert to MP3, then pick your destination folder and submit. That's it.
Thank you very much.
separate audio from video.
Ok this is a game changer.
I'm too used to Media Player Classic.
7zip too
Yeah, 7z is awesome
7z is the first to install.
At this point, why? Windows can unzip files natively now, I haven't used 7zip in years (except for a random mod that used the .7z extension still)
Because it handles all the formats not zip only.
You should read that back to yourself.
And winrar too. It seems that dezipper are based by nature.
Yeah winrar is not on the level of 7zip. Like yeah it's pretty based to not lock out the program after the free trial, but it's even more based to just give the program for free
winrar feels like it fell off hard after the early 2000s era, hardly ever see a .rar file anymore
Meanwhile seeing .7z files everywhere
For some reason .rar are still widely used in the german piracy scene.
Honestly, it's even MORE based to force corporations to pay for what individuals can use for free. That way, you both make money AND support free ownership for personal users.
begware
PeaZip is a [subjectively] better UI for 7-zip
Wow, thank you. I love the look of this. I know 7zip is THE program for zip/compressed folders these days but I've never liked the UI.
Just open source software in general
nanazip on w11+
VLC best
And it got no competitors
MPC-HC
yeah, i dont want to harsh the VLC vibe, but mpc-hc is so much better
With MadVR it's the best thing ever if you have a oled screen. Full hdr10 support, build in upscaling that's waaay better then what's in your old tv (but now you can use both if you want to). Offers an amazing smooth motion to change 30 fps in to 60 fps. 12 bit color support. Man even Dolby vision works with it.
Potplayer is even better with its great interface. It also supports MadVR
Am I missing something ?
The homepage of MPC-HC says:
"MPC-HC is not under development since 2017. Please switch to something else."
Download it with the K-Lite Codec Pack. Makes it the best video player imo.
MPV is a competitor.
It just works. With VLC, I've never been able to get HDR working correctly.
I use MPV, but I'd hardly say "it just works". It generally requires a good amount of configuring through text files, which is its main weakness as well as its strength (highly customizable).
You can use the mpv.net version for a friendlier interface on windows.
mpv.io >>>>>
There is a tons of competitors, it's just that VLC is way above the game.
In what way exactly?
Like whatever you want, but there's nothing about vlc thats somehow special in 2025.
Many other free and open-source players exist now that are at, and exceed feature parity with vlc.
Something like MPV is significantly more customizable in funtionally every way to vlc.
VLC is in no way above. It's in the upper field. MPC-HC is one of the top players. Not sure how subtitles on VLC are nowadays, but they sucked for years, which is the reason I switched.
Potplayer blows it out of the water though. On features, on playback quality, on subtitle options and the interface looks way better too. Whenever I get VLC opened, it just feels like windows media player from windows XP with a few more features. Potplayer is the main reason I'm not switching to Linux as there's just nothing like it.
Ahuh. MpcHc for me. Vlc is slow as shit.
Haruna is close on Linux, comes by default in Bazzite OS (fedora based)
All of three times I've used Linux, VLC was pre-installed
PotPlayer for me, but only because VLC had that huge security issue that took months to repair, and I got used to PP (heh)
BS Player is pretty good. Finds subs by itself.
vlc has a plugin for that, dunno if it works worse than bs player for the purpose, but I've had some inconsistent results with it.
real ones know mpv >>> vlc. IINA on mac.
This. The amount of options and shaders available make it the superior option for high quality playback (especially for HDR). Just not super beginner friendly.
However I'll still give VLC some respect as one of the OG players that is still getting updated.
Personally I like Media Player and Microsoft Edge, I say this of my own free will, my family is totally isn't being held hostage by Microsoft. Please do not send help.
Did you try mpc-hc ?
I never try, i only success
Also plays 8K Videos which windows media player can't
Absolute GOAT!
Man when I first started using VLC and I didn't have to download some sketchy codec to watch something it was such a game changer
It does have issues with playing high bitrate 4K+ videos without it getting a bit of frame stutter on some systems. Lots of issues reported online on that which can sometimes be fixed deep in settings.
My only annoyance with VLC... Never have found a fix that completely fixes it on my system. Besides swapping those videos to mpv player which always works but has way less options.
The fact you can delay audio already makes it better than 99% of other media players.
VLC does not support using your GPU to uncompress someting like h265, which otherwise uses tons of cpu power. A 4k Udh hdr10 blu-ray on VLC will max out my entire cpu but with mpc-hc it uses 15% of my GPU.
Really? I always get stuttering when I try to play a 4k video...
Why can’t Windows do so?
Cause it’s not as good as VLC
It would need more codecs (some of which of VLC are likely breaching licenses but they don't sue cause its free)
I ain’t watching that
you should, it's brilliant
Except it can't. It crashes the moment you try.
And the thing is buggy as hell and unstable in its latest release.
That’s traffic cone!
VLC - Very Large Cone
The king
Plus it has on a little hat at Christmas.
VLC is my "is it officially Christmas yet?" barometer
Dont forget to donate if you can
I wish this was higher
The VLC logo is a symbol. It’s a huge cone in the rectum of all of that bastards.
VLC my beloved
And it takes whatever format you throw at it.
throw .pdf at road cone
opens
Easily the best movie player
[removed]
Yeah, kinda weird post for this sub
When VLC’s multitasking skills put your computer to shame
Did anyone ever set up a donation fund for this guy?
And also : french
Legendary is a synonym for French actually
Those peeps deserve more credits tbh.
They are the best of us.
Winrar
VLC
Irfanview
Firefox
I switched from Irfanview to XnView MP a while ago. I should compare them again.
Also switched to K-Lite Codec Pack from VLC
The only thing that is bad, is that the pc UI looks old. They should update it so that it kinda looks like the mobile version
I am using VLC for 2 decade already, back in the days I had enough looking for codecs found VLC early build in ~2004 it's the only software I will ever use for video/music. I use it on all my devices, I play all my mp3 locally, I refuse using DRM streaming crap.
Jean-Baptiste Kempf is the goat
"pas mal non c'est français" - Orson Wells, La classe américaine
Literally used VLC on my morning commute today. Still the goat.
VLC is always my first download on new laptops.
How do you use VLC to play bluray? I cant figure it out easily
I prefer the older interface of VLC rather than new one
I agree that VLC is an absolute legend.
But MPC-HC x64 with K-Lite Codec Pack is my true love.
You don't need codec packs anymore man. What you want is the updated fork of mpc-hc and MadVR.
VLC mobile for ios doesn't understand folders. I put two folders of OST, VLC mixes them together and sorts songs from both folders as if they were in the same folder.
MPV is better. VLC is not capable of playing dual subtitles.
PLUS U HAVE THE OPTION TO FAST FORWARD OR REWIND A VIDEO BY FRAMES !
I wasn't sure if this would pop up. There seems to be a bit of controversy about VLC not adding this because it wouldn't work properly across all devices it runs on.. so instead they implement it for none. Meanwhile MPV does a fantastic job of it.. even YouTube player does it.
I'm confused. Do you mean scrubbing by individual frames? I swear I do that often.
I just had to Google that to confirm.
You can scrub forward frame by frame, the default shortcut being 'E', but not backwards; it's just by time. Strange that.
One feature does not make a program. It's like saying VLC is better because it has chromecast support or it can convert video fileformats natively.
A fair point. MPV is a better choice for me personally.
VLC also has terrible HDR support.
Why would someone require dual subs?
Learning a language, or if someone watching just doesn't understand the spoken language and the original or different language subs are playing
That makes sense. Thanks a lot!
Did you find this post really amazing (in a positive way)?
If yes, then UPVOTE this comment otherwise DOWNVOTE it.
This community feedback will help us determine whether this post is suited for r/BeAmazed or not.