VLC is very popular for its ability to play the video content of incomplete, unfinished, or damaged video downloads before the files have been fully downloaded. For example, files simultaneously downloading through BitTorrent or eMule.

Another interesting feature of this player is the ability to use libcdio to access .iso files so that the user can play files on a disk image, even if the user's operating system does not have the capability of working directly with .iso images.

VLC supports all codecs and all file formats supported by FFmpeg. This means that Vorbis, DVD Video and MPEG-4 playback as well as support for Ogg and Matroska file formats work "out of the box". However, this feature is not unique to VLC, as any player, including MPlayer and xine, using the FFmpeg libraries can play those formats without need for external codecs.

VLC media player has some filters that can distort, rotate, split, deinterlace, mirror videos,create display walls, or add a logo. It can also produce video output as ASCII art.

The VLC media player can play high definition recordings of D-VHS tapes duplicated to a computer using CapDVHS.exe. This offers a permanent way to archive freely available shows.

On Microsoft Windows, VLC also supports the DirectShow framework and can therefore make use of third-party DirectShow codecs.

What's New:
CDDA / VCDX plugins:
* Security updates (VideoLAN-SA-0701)