VLC — The Complete Guide: A Player for Every Format, Frame-by-Frame Review and Quick Conversion
VLC from VideoLAN is an open-source (GPL-2.0) media player that plays almost anything: MKV, MP4, MOV, discs and network streams, without installing codecs. It is free for any use, with no ads and no user tracking, and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
VLC media player
VideoLAN
An open-source media player that plays almost every video and audio format, with basic file conversion, no ads and no tracking.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Unusual formats — recordings from security cameras, drones and test equipment.
- Frame by frame — single-frame stepping and slow playback to study motion or a moment of failure.
- Frame snapshots — save a frame as an image for a report.
- Quick conversion — one file to another format through Convert/Save.
- Network streams — watch an IP camera feed from an RTSP address.
A tip for reviewing test footage
During playback the E key steps one frame forward, and the Video menu lets you take a snapshot of the current frame. That way you pull a sequence of images of the failure moment for your report with no extra software. Limitations: conversion is basic, with no convenient batch processing and little control over settings, and there are no editing tools.
Related tools
For conversion and compression with full control — HandBrake. For automatic processing of many files — FFmpeg. For cutting a section out of a recording without quality loss — LosslessCut.
HandBrake
HandBrake team
Compress and convert large video files — screen recordings and site videos down to a shareable size.
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FFmpeg
FFmpeg project
A command-line engine for encoding, converting, cutting and compressing video and audio in almost any format, and the basis of most free video tools.
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LosslessCut
Mikael Finstad
Cut and join video without re-encoding — fast and with no quality loss, for drone footage, inspections and recordings.
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Shutter Encoder
Paul Pacifico
An FFmpeg-based video, audio and image converter with a graphical interface, render queue, subtitles, lossless cutting and hardware acceleration.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
The player every engineering computer should have: it opens almost any file and is enough for basic review of test footage and the occasional conversion.