My Review Of VLC

[SteelCrysis]

I gave VLC a try today, because I was sick of PotPlayer taking a while to automatically detect updates, and I was attracted to the customization that VLC provides. It didn't work out.

• VLC's default interface is a little too small for those of us with 4K monitors
  
• VLC's custom skins don't use the same window size settings that the default interface uses, meaning that you can set the default interface window size to be whatever size you want, but the custom skin will always default to a small window size when you open, and will not stay at a larger size if you adjust the size, close VLC, then reopen it
  
• The addons management menu doesn't seem to work, so you have to install custom skins by manually putting them in the right folder
  
• Needlessly, there are two different ways to switch between skins, either a clunky process through Preferences that requires you to manually restart VLC, or a much easier but not obvious process through a menu that is accessed by right clicking
  
• Fullscreen videos at less than my monitor's native resolution didn't work, and only resulted in the video being blown up and shifted to the upper left hand corner of my monitor
  
• I only tried 1 4K video on VLC, and it hitched repeatedly, in contrast to PotPlayer, which handled it with ease
  

In conclusion, I'm sticking with PotPlayer. It may have its automatic update issue, but at least it works and it works superbly.

[dmcowen674]

Interesting, I only have used VLC because never heard of PotPlayer. Will give it a try.

[SteelCrysis]

I've just tried VLC 3.0.0 32-bit (the previous version I tried was 2.2.8 64-bit). It fixed the issues of the interface being too small for 4K, fullscreen videos not working well, and that one 4K video hitching. It's definitely a big improvement, and I'll be keeping VLC.

[dmcowen674]

I saw an article that the new VLC supports Chromecast as well.

[SteelCrysis]

[SteelCrysis]

I tried the 64-bit version of VLC 3.0.1 and had some issues with stuttering. So I went over to the 32-bit version of 3.0.1, and all is well.