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VLC For iPhone and iPad Returns With Wi-Fi Upload, Dropbox Sync and More
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Half-true.
1, mp4 / m4v / mov files' playback, when you use iOS playback support, are played back in hardware. Unfortunately, VLC doesn't make use of the HW support, resulting in, depending on the video, much lower-speed / higher CPU-usage playback.
2, nevertheless, the method allowing for directly decoding h.264 video streams (without them strictly having to be in a mp4 / m4v / mov container) is private and, therefore, not allowed. This is why only JB players (RushPlayer+ and XBMC) use them.
I'm a huge fan of VLC, and I REALLY want this app to work. BUT so far.... It's not great.
-Terrible audio distortion with .avi files. So much that you can't tell what's being said
-No ftp browsing. (you can copy the ftp and play it from the link, but that's a giant pain)
-Crashes when streaming from ftp about 50% of the time.
-Works great with mp4, and mkv.... WHEN it doesn't crash.
Overall, GoodPlayer is way better than this version of VLC. I'm so disappointed.
-Terrible audio distortion with .avi files. So much that you can't tell what's being said
-No ftp browsing. (you can copy the ftp and play it from the link, but that's a giant pain)
-Crashes when streaming from ftp about 50% of the time.
-Works great with mp4, and mkv.... WHEN it doesn't crash.
Overall, GoodPlayer is way better than this version of VLC. I'm so disappointed.
Ahh I must've skipped over that. Is this a bug or just the nature of VLC? And AC3 and AAC are fine?
2.0.1 is what I downloaded last night before it was pulled. There seems to be something else going on.
I played an MKV fine. Liking this.
Just don't forget that you'll have much better battery life if you use a player with hardware MKV remuxing capabilities. The difference, particularly on an iPhone / iPod touch (with their far smaller batteries) can be two- or even threefold.
Searching finds "VLC for iOS" for me now. Dunno that I'll ever use it but I stashed a copy - I generally use Handbrake to convert video to the native format for hardware acceleration.
guys, here's my full review!
VLC is by probably the best all-in-one multimedia player for both Mac OS X and Windows. It also has (or will also have when Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 are concerned) ports on mobile platforms.
The iOS port, which was released back in 2010, had a stormy history. Shortly after its release, it had to be removed from the AppStore, only to return almost three years later, yesterday evening (AppStore link; free. Note that its official name is "VLC for iOS"). In the meantime, the only VLC version available on iOS was from Cydia, the jailbroken AppStore. The Cydia version of VLC has always been the same as the 2010 (initial) version of VLC.
The removal of the initial version of VLC has understandably caused quite much uproar because people tend to think of VLC as the best of all players, no matter what platform it's running on. This, unfortunately, hasn't been the case of the initial (2010) version actually, it has been one of the absolutely worst players, compatibility-, feature- and efficiency-wise. As I've always recommended in all iOS forums, you simply didn't want to use the then-current (2010) version of iOS VLC because it was plain inferior to the top AppStore players (GoodPlayer, It's Playing, AVPlayerHD, nPlayer, HD Player Pro (currently unavailable), RushPlayer, BUZZ Player HD. etc.) and Cydia (jailbroken) ones (XBMC, RushPlayer+).
![]()
(VLC in the iOS7 AppStore. As with all images in this review, click for enlargened version.)
How much different the just-released, brand new version is? I have some bad news: not much better. While it has indeed been enhanced, it still can't hold a candle to top AppStore players. Basically, if it didn't have VLC in its name, I assume noone would ever download it.
How dare I...?
Why is the new version inferior to alternatives? Well, for the same reasons I have not recommended several AppStore players. The most important of them being the complete lack of hardware H.264 decoding of iOS-native files (mov / mp4 / m4v). You may not immediately notice this on sufficiently powerful iDevice models (at the time, iPad 4 and iPhone 5) or, on older / slower hardware, when playing back lower-resolution videos. However, you'll surely notice the player chewing through the battery really fast after all, software decoding uses the processor of the iDevice quite a bit, resulting in sometimes dramatically lower battery life. On iPhones and iPod touches, when operating with lower backlight, the difference can be even five-fold. That is, you'll have five times better battery life with a player that uses hardware decoding than with one that doesn't. (Please consult section What about software-only playback? in THIS article for a more thorough explanation.)
In addition, the player crashes a lot and is incompatible with some very often used audio formats most importantly, MP3 (and MP2) audio. The latter means a lot of AVI files (which, when not using AC3, generally use MP3 audio), all standard definition DVB .TS files, many MKV files etc. are unplayable. Also, as most streaming radio stations (for example, those of Radioio see my dedicated explanation HERE) use MP3. They won't work either.
Finally, the third most important, major problem with the current version is that it's continuously crashing.
Basically, currently, the only reason you may want to download (and archive) VLC is its support for AC3 and DTS audio. Which, I'm afraid, will be very short-lived. If you in no way can convert the DTS audio track(s) of your videos, you may find VLC useful. However, I still strongly recommend against it: remuxing an 5-15 Gbyte MKV file with Subler or MP4Tools only takes some minutes, and this already includes converting DTS tracks to AAC. That is, try preferring remuxing videos containing DTS audio to using VLC to play them back. The (sometimes vastly) enhanced battery life will make this all worth.
So, how dare I criticize the almighty VLC? Let's face the truth: it's not ready for the prime time and is definitely not recommended. After carefully deciding what you need in a multimedia player (flawless MKV playback? SSA subtitles?) pick a player from the list I've presented above and use it. (Basically, unless you need SSA subtitles or streaming, nPlayer is the safest bet. If you do need SSA, get HD Player Pro instead.)
![]()
(Video list)
Note: this article discusses the now-current, 2.0.1 version. When future versions get released, I'll try to post updates to the article but this all depends on my free time. Keep this in mind if and when new, enhanced versions are released. They may be better than 2.0.1. 2.0.1 is, for the time being, pretty much useless.
Pros and Cons
Let me present you with the usual Pros and Cons section.
Pros
- DTS and AC3 support. This is the single reason you should download and archive the file so that you can still keep DTS support when future versions remove it
- Video filters, playback speed manipulation, and fine seeking.
- Acceptable SSA subtitle support. Note that it can't decode some kinds of SSA subtitles - for example, Japanese kanjis. An example:
![]()
Pay special attention to the area, annotated by a red rectangle, in the upper right corner!
The same vertical subtitle is properly rendered by the desktop VLC:
![]()
and in HD Player Pro, the, currently, best SSA-capable player:
![]()
Note that all similar videos exhibit the same problem; for example, THIS one (originally introduced in my Hi10P playback article)
Cons
- no hardware acceleration support for native formats
- furthermore, to make things even worse, the H.264 decoder is somewhat slower than in top players.
- no MKV remuxing (after all, it doesn't play any kind of video hardware accelerated)
- definitely worse MPEG2 1080i60 decoding support than in several other players
- incompatible with several audio formats; for example, MP3 (see the Hindi track in the Harry Potter test video) and MP2 (European SD DVB audio track). This also renders a lot of AVI files and network streams unplayable because of the distorted audio.
- no Apple CC support (which was easy to predict as it doesn't use HW acceleration / decoding at all)
- very unstable freezes / crashes VERY frequently
- no metadata displaying support
- no support for displaying more than one subtitle at a time
- when audio-only files are concerned, only OGG Audio (OGA) is supported there's absolutely no support for WMA / WAV / FLAC / WV / APE files.
- impossible to resize / relocate / restyle textual subtitles
- no playlists, camera roll / iPod library access, filelist sorting, folders, file renaming
----------
Note that, in many cases, HandBrake is an overkill. If the input video track is H.264 and you don't want to compress it, a simple remuxing via Subler or MP4Tools will most probably do.
VLC is by probably the best all-in-one multimedia player for both Mac OS X and Windows. It also has (or will also have when Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 are concerned) ports on mobile platforms.
The iOS port, which was released back in 2010, had a stormy history. Shortly after its release, it had to be removed from the AppStore, only to return almost three years later, yesterday evening (AppStore link; free. Note that its official name is "VLC for iOS"). In the meantime, the only VLC version available on iOS was from Cydia, the jailbroken AppStore. The Cydia version of VLC has always been the same as the 2010 (initial) version of VLC.
The removal of the initial version of VLC has understandably caused quite much uproar because people tend to think of VLC as the best of all players, no matter what platform it's running on. This, unfortunately, hasn't been the case of the initial (2010) version actually, it has been one of the absolutely worst players, compatibility-, feature- and efficiency-wise. As I've always recommended in all iOS forums, you simply didn't want to use the then-current (2010) version of iOS VLC because it was plain inferior to the top AppStore players (GoodPlayer, It's Playing, AVPlayerHD, nPlayer, HD Player Pro (currently unavailable), RushPlayer, BUZZ Player HD. etc.) and Cydia (jailbroken) ones (XBMC, RushPlayer+).
(VLC in the iOS7 AppStore. As with all images in this review, click for enlargened version.)
How much different the just-released, brand new version is? I have some bad news: not much better. While it has indeed been enhanced, it still can't hold a candle to top AppStore players. Basically, if it didn't have VLC in its name, I assume noone would ever download it.
How dare I...?
Why is the new version inferior to alternatives? Well, for the same reasons I have not recommended several AppStore players. The most important of them being the complete lack of hardware H.264 decoding of iOS-native files (mov / mp4 / m4v). You may not immediately notice this on sufficiently powerful iDevice models (at the time, iPad 4 and iPhone 5) or, on older / slower hardware, when playing back lower-resolution videos. However, you'll surely notice the player chewing through the battery really fast after all, software decoding uses the processor of the iDevice quite a bit, resulting in sometimes dramatically lower battery life. On iPhones and iPod touches, when operating with lower backlight, the difference can be even five-fold. That is, you'll have five times better battery life with a player that uses hardware decoding than with one that doesn't. (Please consult section What about software-only playback? in THIS article for a more thorough explanation.)
In addition, the player crashes a lot and is incompatible with some very often used audio formats most importantly, MP3 (and MP2) audio. The latter means a lot of AVI files (which, when not using AC3, generally use MP3 audio), all standard definition DVB .TS files, many MKV files etc. are unplayable. Also, as most streaming radio stations (for example, those of Radioio see my dedicated explanation HERE) use MP3. They won't work either.
Finally, the third most important, major problem with the current version is that it's continuously crashing.
Basically, currently, the only reason you may want to download (and archive) VLC is its support for AC3 and DTS audio. Which, I'm afraid, will be very short-lived. If you in no way can convert the DTS audio track(s) of your videos, you may find VLC useful. However, I still strongly recommend against it: remuxing an 5-15 Gbyte MKV file with Subler or MP4Tools only takes some minutes, and this already includes converting DTS tracks to AAC. That is, try preferring remuxing videos containing DTS audio to using VLC to play them back. The (sometimes vastly) enhanced battery life will make this all worth.
So, how dare I criticize the almighty VLC? Let's face the truth: it's not ready for the prime time and is definitely not recommended. After carefully deciding what you need in a multimedia player (flawless MKV playback? SSA subtitles?) pick a player from the list I've presented above and use it. (Basically, unless you need SSA subtitles or streaming, nPlayer is the safest bet. If you do need SSA, get HD Player Pro instead.)
(Video list)
Note: this article discusses the now-current, 2.0.1 version. When future versions get released, I'll try to post updates to the article but this all depends on my free time. Keep this in mind if and when new, enhanced versions are released. They may be better than 2.0.1. 2.0.1 is, for the time being, pretty much useless.
Pros and Cons
Let me present you with the usual Pros and Cons section.
Pros
- DTS and AC3 support. This is the single reason you should download and archive the file so that you can still keep DTS support when future versions remove it
- Video filters, playback speed manipulation, and fine seeking.
- Acceptable SSA subtitle support. Note that it can't decode some kinds of SSA subtitles - for example, Japanese kanjis. An example:
Pay special attention to the area, annotated by a red rectangle, in the upper right corner!
The same vertical subtitle is properly rendered by the desktop VLC:
and in HD Player Pro, the, currently, best SSA-capable player:
Note that all similar videos exhibit the same problem; for example, THIS one (originally introduced in my Hi10P playback article)
Cons
- no hardware acceleration support for native formats
- furthermore, to make things even worse, the H.264 decoder is somewhat slower than in top players.
- no MKV remuxing (after all, it doesn't play any kind of video hardware accelerated)
- definitely worse MPEG2 1080i60 decoding support than in several other players
- incompatible with several audio formats; for example, MP3 (see the Hindi track in the Harry Potter test video) and MP2 (European SD DVB audio track). This also renders a lot of AVI files and network streams unplayable because of the distorted audio.
- no Apple CC support (which was easy to predict as it doesn't use HW acceleration / decoding at all)
- very unstable freezes / crashes VERY frequently
- no metadata displaying support
- no support for displaying more than one subtitle at a time
- when audio-only files are concerned, only OGG Audio (OGA) is supported there's absolutely no support for WMA / WAV / FLAC / WV / APE files.
- impossible to resize / relocate / restyle textual subtitles
- no playlists, camera roll / iPod library access, filelist sorting, folders, file renaming
----------
Note that, in many cases, HandBrake is an overkill. If the input video track is H.264 and you don't want to compress it, a simple remuxing via Subler or MP4Tools will most probably do.
I'm starting to agree with Menneisyys on this. Normally, I love VLC. It's my go-to player for just about everything on Windows, Linux, and OSX.
But this?
I hate to say it, but it's not very good. Admittedly, I do like some of the features it sports. The streaming server and remote uploads via web browser are all around excellent ideas. But the video playback? It blows. There's no other way to put it. I've watched fairly high bitrate 1080p MP4's on my iPad 3 via the native app without single judder or stutter. The same video in VLC was a kludgy, low framerate mess. It's a crying shame.
Even the greatest ideas in the world can't save your media player if it can't play your media very well. Videolan needs to give VLC a little more TLC before I'll consider using it.
But this?
I hate to say it, but it's not very good. Admittedly, I do like some of the features it sports. The streaming server and remote uploads via web browser are all around excellent ideas. But the video playback? It blows. There's no other way to put it. I've watched fairly high bitrate 1080p MP4's on my iPad 3 via the native app without single judder or stutter. The same video in VLC was a kludgy, low framerate mess. It's a crying shame.
Even the greatest ideas in the world can't save your media player if it can't play your media very well. Videolan needs to give VLC a little more TLC before I'll consider using it.
See, I don't get why people would put videos that will run in the native player, into 3rd party video apps. I use native player for things that'll work via that, then use VLC for avi or MKV's
The stock Videos client is pretty barebones. Many third-party players support for example invaluable DSP's (e.g., volume boost), playback speed change, external subtitles etc. In addition, it's much easier to transfer / synch videos from / to them, particularly if you synch from more than one desktop.
Again, you will not want to use VLC for MKV's either. Even if you don't realize it at once, it'll result in a far bigger power usage as using a player with HW MKV decoding support (for example, AVPlayerHD, nPlayer etc - check out my dedicated, previous reviews here at MR on their MKV playback capabilities)
Useful and efficient player in the desktop. Hope that translates to the iPhone.....
It doesn't, unfortunately.
----------
As has been mentioned in the last "Cons" row (" - no playlists, camera roll / iPod library access, filelist sorting, folders, file renaming") of my review, the app can't access videos previously synched to the Videos library on the iDevice.
I've had no problems using it over the last day and a half, it's much better than the other apps I tried previously. It can only get better