Clay's Blog

I’ve been a user of the fantastic VideoLAN media player and streaming server for years on both Mac and Windows machines. VLC is unique in that it has built-in video and audio codecs for most formats. That means you don’t need to have installed individual codecs or one of the codec packs like K-Lite or Matroska in order to view most formats, including MPEG4 codecs like DivX, XviD, or H.264 (though support for H.264 is still listed as experimental). It even includes support for soft-subs as external files or in wrappers like OGM or MKV.

Now you can bring VLC with you wherever you go on a flash drive. So when you want to show someone that cool video clip on their machine and they don’t have XviD or 3ivX installed, you can whip out your Geek Necklace and play anything you can throw at VLC.

Though VLC is an open source app available on Mac, Windows (includng WinCE/PocketPC),and Linux. The portable version is Windows only at the moment. You can grab it on the Portable Apps website:

Portable VLC

If you have never used it before, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.