And jeez what happened to it anyways? It actually used to be pretty decent back in the 98/XP/7 days :(

  • Wanderer@lemm.ee
    1071·
    7 days ago

    VLC represents what the internet could have been and what it should have been.

    Wish we could start again with a new internet.

    • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
      84·
      7 days ago

      It’s because Jean-Baptiste Kempf is a GOAT and said “non” to fuck-you amounts of money to sell out VLC.

      I don’t know if I’ve had the strength to say no to that much money and obviously, that kind of cash has corrupted all but a few bastions of what makes the Internet an awesome place.

      Shoutout to Raymond Hill of uBlock Origin fame and all those supporting the lists it depends on. Some many adblockers sold out (including the original uBlock) but he champions on making the Internet a remarkably better place when used. Dude even refuses donations (says list maintainers deserve it more).

      • reksas@sopuli.xyz
        4·
        6 days ago

        Best way to reward them would be to be like them. I’m sure they too long for world where people act with integrity

      • madcaesar@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 days ago

        So serious question, why not take the money, become ultra rich, then immediately start a nonprofit to recreate VLC Origin

        He gets to be rightfully rich, and he funds and protects a free project.

        • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          In those times there had been more than one popular free app that suddenly started installing crap on user’s machines.

          I guess he just didn’t want to become attached to junkware being installed on people’s machines.

          I don’t have the details but may they wanted to buy the source code from him and close it?

        • bairy@feddit.uk
          2·
          5 days ago

          I would imagine whoever bought it would write a clause to say he can’t create anything similar in future.

        • ShunkW@lemmy.world
          1·
          5 days ago

          Because people would immediately call him a sell out. And because it then would be the property of whatever company, and he could be tied legally from recreating it.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
      121·
      7 days ago

      I hadn’t thought of it in these terms. Sometimes, someone says something profoundly true and you just have to stop and reckon with it. Fuck RealPlayer and all the other crap (RealPlayer may have been the first (popular) app to deliberately trick people into enabling stuff (hidden checkboxes)). What if capitalism hadn’t happened to the internet.

  • Tin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    75·
    7 days ago

    Windows Sound Recorder used to open literally anything - text documents, pdfs, images, executables, DLLs, and attempt to play them as audio. Photoshop files make especially interesting noises through it. I used to use it for samples. Got some great noisy stuff that way.

      • Tin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        7 days ago

        I have the album I made with them! Some of the tracks are solely composed of Sound Recorder playing non-audio files, but every track contains samples created that way. The quality isn’t the best, this is a CD rip because I’ve long since lost the original files, but since it’s experimental industrial noise, the audio quality doesn’t hurt much I guess.

        https://soundcloud.com/themachinal/sets/the-machinal-disturbance

    • ShunkW@lemmy.world
      12·
      7 days ago

      I used to do this with audacity. It’s fun to open an image, and apply some audio filters to it, then export it. Makes for some interesting photo fuckery results.

      • Tin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 days ago

        Oh, I didn’t know audacity would do it. Well I know how I’m wasting time at work the rest of this week…

    • Whateley@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      5 days ago

      I used to write dark ambient and noise records as a hobby. I got some of my best samples from that method.

    • Irelephant@lemm.ee
      8·
      7 days ago

      I cant remember the command now, but there was one on linux which let you play anything, I remember /usr/bin/ls sounded nice.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
        4·
        5 days ago

        Looks like your right, included by default:

        MPEG-4, H.264, H.263, VC-1, Windows Media Video (WMV), DV, VP8, Motion JPEG

        Then they have add-ons in the store, the HEVC I believe said was a dollar to use on 10 devices with that account. that’s terrible

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    13·
    5 days ago

    Everything is a .wav, you just lack the frequency hearing range.

    Back when /dev/dsp existed, you could pipe any data to it, and it’d treat it like PCM data. Wav files sounded like they were supposed to. Everything else sounded like… well, also like they’re supposed to, i guess.

  • Lasherz12@lemmy.world
    42·
    7 days ago

    I still find it strange that windows media player classic consistently works better than every new media player they’ve introduced since. It seems like if you make OS’s you cannot simultaneously make a good media player, eg. Quicktime/itunes/wmp/groove

    • pufferfischerpulver@feddit.org
      15·
      7 days ago

      TBF iTunes is a terrible player but made the shit loads of money so I guess they achieved what they set out to do.
      And I would argue iTunes is the reason for newer media player versions being shit since of course MS saw that there was money to be made and tried to do the same.

      • Lasherz12@lemmy.world
        3·
        7 days ago

        Very true, unfortunately if something makes money other companies will line up to copycat even if the real product is licensing they don’t have full access to.

    • ouRKaoS@lemmy.today
      8·
      7 days ago

      I had somehow forgotten all about the existence of QuickTime, and now I’m having flashbacks of the Wild West Web and Real Player…

    • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
      3·
      6 days ago

      It works better because everything else is geared towards maximum monetization to the direct detriment of the user and the UX. Those alternatives suck simply because “working better” on its own is financially worthless to those selling this shit.

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
      21·
      7 days ago

      Everything that Microsoft has tried to improve has ultimately gotten worse. I recently installed Windows 2000 in a VM to install a similarly old game and it was kinda jarring how well it just worked and how much it didn’t suck compared to a fresh install of Windows 10 or Windows 11. Obviously there were some very dated concepts especially related to networking (it clearly was designed for a world where a lot of people only plug their computer into a phone line for dial-up, or just directly place their desktop on the internet with a public IP, and letting it listen to a DHCP server and connect to an existing network was weirdly obscured)

  • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
    14·
    6 days ago

    Had to install VLC last week because the Windows player didn’t have the codec to play a video someone sent me from their smartphone. Seems like a pretty common use case to not have figured out…

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
    14·
    6 days ago

    That’s the logo for a multi-billion dollar corporation’s built-in media player for their flagship OS? It looks like one of my side projects.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
    14·
    7 days ago

    mpv: those files have some exotic image format, they’re not videos. Here is your dia show with your custom upscaling shaders.

  • daggermoon@lemmy.world
    16·
    7 days ago

    For real though. I have yet to find a file VLC can’t play. I have some old 8-bit .au files that play perfect. It even supports really obscure proprietary codecs from 20 years ago.

    • LucasWaffyWaf@lemmy.world
      3·
      7 days ago

      VLC is the only android app I’ve found that still supports tracker MODs, absolutely required for my music listening.

  • coaxil@lemm.ee
    71·
    7 days ago

    You can rawdog the libavcodec far more robustly via ffplay, vlc def struggles on a decent amount of media still.

    • portuga@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 days ago

      First time I hear of someone having problems opening whatever format in vlc. I mean if there’s a program that reads each an everyone of them it’s VLC

    • cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de
      24·
      6 days ago

      Are you on linux and are describing this issue where VLC cannot be reopened after exiting without logging out and logging back in?

      • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Windows. And nah it’s more like while playing any given video file there will be moments where it looks as if the video is corrupted or something. Strange video artifacts that affect the entire viewport. The issue isn’t actually in the file, as the spots are random upon playback. These were all h.264 mkv files I had trouble with so maybe the issue was with that codec but at the same time that’s the most common codec used for encoding entertainment media for playback. Moving those files over to an iPhone and playing them with infuse worked flawlessly.