VideoLAN is a non-profit organization that developed the popular open-source multimedia player VLC Media Player to play various video and audio formats across different operating systems. VLC is highly customizable, supports many codecs and encrypted DVDs, and has a large community of volunteers who develop add-ons and provide support. Though facing competition from other media players, VLC remains very popular with over 2 billion downloads due to its cross-platform capabilities and ability to play most multimedia file formats.

1. Assignment 2 - Open Source Tool
(not intended for developers)
Filipe Silva Nº81466
Teacher: Prof Doutor Carlos J. Costa

2. • VideoLAN is a non-profit organization which develops
software for playing video and other media formats
• It originally developed two programs for media streaming
VideoLAN Client and VideoLAN Server, but most of
the features of VLS have been incorporated into VLC,
with the result renamed VLC Media Player
• VideoLAN project is lead and composed of a team of
volunteers
• General Public License for all projects

3. • VLC is a cross-platform multimedia player and streaming
media server that plays most multimedia files as well as
DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming
protocols
• Available for most operating systems
• Very customizable
• Uses many codecs from the libavcodec library
• First player to support playback of encrypted DVDs on
Linux and macOS by using the libdvdcss library

4. Downloads by version and by OS
There are no statistics for GNU/Linux, iOS, Android, Chrome OS
or Windows Phone as most downloads for those platforms are
made through distributions or app stores.
Total (since 0.7.2) 2.200.932.344 242.525.109 5.658.655 2.449 .16.108
Data updated on Thu, 09 Nov 2017
●Version ●Windows ●Mac OS X ●Source code ●Total
●2.2.0 ●14 699 903 ●1 886 486 ●101 004 ●16 687 393
●2.2.1 ●180 901 682 ●16 859 313 ●105 940 ●197 866 935
●2.2.2 ●21 091 561 ●6 426 760 ●1 279 ●27 519 600
●2.2.3 ●7 606 877 ●2 516 549 ●7 640 ●10 131 066
●2.2.4 ●173 167 162 ●15 433 348 ●121 538 ●188 722 048
●2.2.5.1 ●2 636 969 ●1 385 861 ●6 624 ●4 029 454
●2.2.6 ●97 653 847 ●6 530 866 ●69 950 ●104 254 663
Feb/2015

5. Source code
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-sources.html
http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=summary
Written in Core: C
GUI: C++ (with Qt), Objective-C (with Cocoa)

6. System requirements
No special requirements
Setup/Install
Install and Uninstall (simple)

7. Help and Support
Every user support is provided by volunteers doing it in their free
time
https://forum.videolan.org (+100.000 members, avg 150 online)
https://wiki.videolan.org
https://www.videolan.org/support/

8. https://www.videolan.org/contribute.html

9. VLC Add-ons
It counts with more than 100,000 registered users and 2.6 million
unique visitors each month.
https://addons.videolan.org

10. Pros over developing modules in-tree
• Compilation is a lot faster
• You can use your own version control system, or even none at all
• The copyright license does not need to abide by the requirements of the
VideoLAN association for inclusion in VLC
• The source code does not need to be provided, reviewed and accepted
by the VLC developers
• The release schedule is independent of VLC releases
• Different programming languages can be used at least in theory
• The module can use software libraries that would be inadequate for
VLC to depend on

11. Cons over developing modules in-tree
• The VLC developers will not review the code
• VLC translators will not take care of localization for the module(s)
where applicable
• The module(s) cannot be distributed through the videolan.org website
and use the VideoLAN infrastructure such as the bug tracker and the
build bots
• The module(s) will only work with the particular VLC (major) version
that it has been compiled for
• The module(s) will only work on the particular operating systems and
architecture that it has been compiled for

12. Demo
Features and Add-ons

13. SWOT Analysis
• Few updates (2.2.6 May 2017)
• Standard appearence
STRENGHTS
• Not all media players can read many
features
• Open Source market growth
• Users are used to other media players
• Some features may be confusing for
“starter” users
• Free and Open Source
• Very big community
• Easy setup
• Nice add-ons
• Customizable
• Reads most formats
• Many features WEAKNESSES
OPPORTUNITIES THREATS

14. Bibliography
• https://www.videolan.org/videolan/
• https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html
• https://www.videolan.org/vlc/stats/downloads.html
• https://wiki.videolan.org/Hacker_Guide/How_To_Write_a_Module/
• https://addons.videolan.org