If I had a complaint about VLC, it would be that it needs MORE settings. If a video is picking the wrong default language, there’s no way to set a new default, you’re just SOL and have to swap it every time. It’s amazing that people looked at VLC and said “You know what this needs, less features”, and then you spend forever looking up keyboard shortcuts you’ll never remember.
A few years ago, I found Kaffeine and was so surprised that I never saw a video player before with controls in a collapsible sidebar.
Old screenshot, but this is what it looks like when a video is playing:
It seems like a rather obvious idea, but I guess, it doesn’t get copied much, because most video players don’t have a ton of controls to begin with…
VLC is the one and only.
I guess it’s a weird thing to complain about, but I stopped using VLC because I couldn’t find a way to change the icon theme. The monochrome dark ones it uses by default make all buttons completely blank with catppuccin…
mpv my beloved
For me, its ffplay
ffplay is nice, but mpv has yt-dlp integration, and supports addons (love me some nice sponsorblock integration)
I like how ffplay treats the entire video as a progress bar. I can right-click anywhere to do precision seeking.
It’s also very extensible through bash and other ffmpeg tools. I have it set up as a script on my system that scans the video file first with ffprobe to get the mean audio level of the file, then adjust it based on the universal volume level I have set when it opens with the player, so nothing ends up too loud or too quiet.
Piping yt-dlp output into ffplay is pretty simple too, but I prefer caching downloads to my Video directory first rather than watching them directly from my RSS reader.
yt-dlp also has sponsorblock support, btw.
yt-dlp also has sponsorblock support, btw.
didn’t know that, deff will check it out
My only problem it can’t fully play high quality flacs, still using it tho
I don’t really use my software. I just gawk and marvel at its beauty, its slick form factor, its beautiful rounded curves. /s
What are you, an Apple fan?!
I remember the days where mplayer was the only one that could get through semi corrupt 800MB DivX’es with only minor audio sync problems.
Today, I use MPV to handle the most screwed video files
vlc for the win
