VLC Media Player

VLC media player is a free and open-source cross-platform multimedia player and framework developed by the VideoLAN project, playing most multimedia files, DVDs, audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. Originally developed by students at Ecole Centrale Paris in 1996 and released as open source in 2001, VLC has been downloaded over 6 billion times and is available on virtually every computing platform. Key features include: codec support (plays virtually all video and audio codecs including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, H.265, AV1, VP9, AAC, MP3, Opus, FLAC, Vorbis, AC3, and DTS without requiring external codec packs), container formats (MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV, WebM, FLV, OGG, WMV, ASF, TS, and over 50 others), disc playback (DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, VCD, SVCD, Audio CD, and Blu-ray with menu navigation), streaming protocols (RTP, RTSP, HTTP, HTTPS, MMS, UDP, IGMP, and Icecast for receiving network streams), network streaming (act as a streaming server to broadcast video over the network using HTTP, RTP, and RTSP protocols), subtitle support (DVD, DVB, text, ASS, SSA, VTT, SRT, SUB, and closed captions with synchronization, scaling, and color adjustment), video and audio filters (deinterlacing, sharpening, debanding, audio equalizer, compressor, spatializer, and custom filter chains), recording (record from webcam, desktop, or network streams to file), playback control (variable speed playback from 0.25x to 4x, frame-by-frame navigation, A-B loop, and custom bookmarks), extensions (Lua scripting for custom interfaces, metadata fetchers, and playlist parsers), and cross-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Apple TV, ChromeOS, and Tizen).