The VideoLAN software originated as a French academic project in 1996. It also gained distinction as the first player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on Linux and macOS by using the libdvdcss DVD decryption library however, this library is legally controversial and is not included in many software repositories of Linux distributions as a result. It also has its own protocol implementations. The libavcodec library from the FFmpeg project provides many of VLC's codecs, but the player mainly uses its own muxers and demuxers.
The default distribution of VLC includes many free decoding and encoding libraries, avoiding the need for finding/calibrating proprietary plugins. It is able to stream media over computer networks and can transcode multimedia files. VLC supports many audio and video compression methods and file formats, including DVD-Video, Video CD and streaming protocols. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple's App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS and iPadOS. VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. GPL-2.0-or-later with some libraries under LGPL-2.1-or-later VLC for iOS (MPLv2.0) Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, Chrome OS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, Xbox system software GUI: C++ (with Qt), Objective-C (with Cocoa), Swift, Java
VLC player offers support for the following audio formats: MPEG Layer 1/2, MP3 - MPEG Layer 3, AAC - MPEG-4 part3, Vorbis, AC3 - A/52, E-AC-3, MLP / TrueHD>3, DTS, WMA 1/2, WMA 3, FLAC, ALAC, Speex, Musepack / MPC, ATRAC 3, Wavpack, Mod, TrueAudio, APE, Real Audio, Alaw/µlaw, AMR (3GPP), MIDI, LPCM, ADPCM, QCELP, DV Audio, QDM2/QDMC, MACE. VLC media player, as it's now called, began to exist around 1996 as a project from the École Centrale Paris consisting of a client and server designed to stream videos. VLC player is a cross-platform media player, so it's also available for macOS, Linux and Android. VLC media player is compatible with all versions of Windows, including Windows 11. VLC Media Player has grown its user base over the years thanks to its simplicity, wide support for a variety of formats, and features which allow all sorts of video manipulation and enhancements. It supports many new devices inputs, formats, metadata and improves most of the current ones, preparing for the next-gen codecs. VLC media player is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays most multimedia files as well as discs, devices, and network streaming.