VLC MEDIA PLAYER

VLC Media Player is a long-time open-source favorite, and the latest version is also the first to be out of beta development. It's not the only option for free video playback, but it's one of the best, and the feature updates in version 1 make it well worth the upgrade.

Users can now get frame-by-frame advancement, granular speed controls allowing for on-the-fly slower or faster playback, and live recording of streaming video. The toolbars are fully customizable, so you can have only the buttons you need in the interface, there's AirTunes streaming, and there's better integration in Gtk environments. Along with the improvements, VLC continues to offer robust support for a wide range of video and audio formats, including OGG, MP2, MP3, MP4, DivX, HD codecs like AES3, Raw Dirac, and even support for playing back zipped files.

The default interface is still a stripped down player that belies VLC's functionality and features. Skinning can fix that quickly, but behavior can still be a bit unpredictable depending on the quality of the skin. VLC's open-source foundation and community ensures that it evolves quickly and often, with new features and fixes released frequently. Overall, VLC Media Player is a must-have application for its ability to open just about any type of video file you throw at it.

Features

Simple, Powerful and Fast

Plays everything, Files, Discs (DVD, CD, VCD, Blu-Ray), Webcams and Streams

Plays most codecs with no codec packs needed:

MPEG-2, H.264, DivX, MPEG-4, WebM, WMV player

Completely Free, 0 Spyware, Ads or User Tracking

Works on most platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix...

Media Converter and Streamer

DOWNLOADS

VLC Installation Guide for Windows

Run the downloaded vlc executable file.
You should see this window, select your favourite language then press OK:

In the next window, simply click on Next:

Now, to accept the GNU GPL license and continue with the setup, clic on Accept:

Now, to be able to see videos inside your web browser select Mozilla plugin and ActiveX plugin, then click on Next:

You can edit, eventually, the path where to install the software, then clic on Install:

After the end of file copy, it will appear this window, you may deselect Run VideoLAN VLC media player, then click on Finish: