Is VLC Worth the Effort?
 

I'm build servers that will, among (lots of) other things, provide video and audio recordings (as links in DSpace). Of course, it doesn't matter what flavor of multimedia is on the server (generally, mplayr works just fine) but I'm wondering if the work of downloading, installing and maintaining some 24-ish required libraries and utilities is worth the effort for internal use? Maybe for my own use, too, although I don't do a heckuv lot of video or audio watching or listening, might be a good thing for meetings and presentations or some such.

Is it worth it?

I use Alien Bob's VLC package and find it to be a wonderful multimedia application. It works very well indeed. :)

http://slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/vlc/

+1.
I use VLC for both audio and video.
Alien Bob's package is all self contained, so you don't need those other "24-ish" packages.

I find mplayer sufficient for my needs, except for dvd's which IMO xine still seems to be better at.

Honestly, even downloading, building and installing 24 dependencies isn't that bad if you do it with an sbopkg queue.

Well, sounds good -- got it, installed it, now all I have to do is figure out how to use it! :study:

Onward and upward,

Thanks.

Why duplicate the effort? Eric's VLC is perfect.

+1

The only thing i always installed in addition to Slackware default was just a proper MPlayer backend (SMPlayer or UMPlayer).

I am using an AlienBob package too. Perfectly!

Enough screwing around with source for now (I've got a lot of stuff on my plate at the moment).

Downloaded and installed Alien's packages, installed, tested, music, video, viola!

Happy camper so far, thanks to all (especially Alien!).

Agreed, Alien Bob's VLC package is bullet proof. I am still amazed when I look at the slackbuild and think about ho much work he must have put into it.

:hattip: to Alien Bob from yet another satisfied VLC user.

I prefer MPlayer/mencoder, but that is mainly a matter of preference. For that matter, whenever it is worth to compile or install a VLC package is a matter of how much you do like VLC or dislike MPlayer.

Nothing to stop you using both VLC and MPlayer (not necessarily at the same time, though). Dragon Player (default with KDE) isn't bad, either. The more, the merrier. :)