VLC Player is one of the most popular open source (released under GPL) and free media player (encoder). Ubuntu 11.10 (code name : oneiric ocelot)- has banshee installed as the default media player. So if you want to play a video file then you need to install VLC – all in one media player. it has lot of advanced features. VLC has been the part of videoLAN project. VLC is good not only in playing files from your hard disk but also from your DVD/CD, network streams, capture cards. One of the best thing about vlc is that – it’s cross-platform and available not only for Linux based operating systems such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse but also for Mac OS X , Windows (vlc for android is under development – soon, you will be able to enjoy vlc on android too).

vlc isn’t installed by default on Ubuntu 11.10, but it’s available in official package repository so it’s very easy to install it. You can use Ubuntu Software Center (it’s one of the most popular Application in software center – rated as 5 star (out of 5)) or terminal, But in order to play any mp3 files or a video file such as avi, flv etc you would have to install some restricted plugins/codecs. libdvdcss library is required if you want to play encrypted DVD’s (most proprietary dvd uses CSS(content scramble system)). The latest version for Ubuntu/Linux is vlc vs 1.1.11.

vlc-player-snapshot on Ubuntu 11.10

Installing VLC Media Player on Ubuntu 11.10

Open Terminal and execute the following command(s)-

sudo apt-get install vlc

Now, you’re recommended to install ubuntu restricted extras and other libraries/codecs/plugins to start playing media files (audio/video..)

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Then, install libdvdcss2 for playing encrypted DVD’s

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

[ If you’re getting any dependencies problem then run sudo apt-get -f install  ]

Now you’re ready to enjoy music/movies with VLC player – just right click on media and select ‘open with vlc media player’. That’s All.

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5 Comments

  1. I’m having an issue where the audio is out of sync.  Totem plays fine, but VLC is out of sync. 

    Ideas?  I’ve tried resetting the preferences, even though I’ve changed nothing.  Tried purging/reinstalling.  And I don’t want to adjust the sync every time I play something.

    Besides this I’m loving 11.10 with Gnome Shell.

    PS – Funny…I was trying to watch Big Bang Theory just like the image… 🙂

  2. I have tried and installed all as mentioned but as soon as I insert dvd,,, it keeps spinning for few seconds and nothing happen. not even dvd icon comes on desktop. all Audio Cds works without any problem… is there anything else need to be done? I have same issues with Ubuntu 10.04, so I don’t know what else to do?

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