Install VLC

What VLC is

VLC is a media player that plays almost anything. Audio, video, DVD, CD and streams from the internet, without you needing to install extra codec packs. The program is free, it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, and it has done the same thing for over twenty years.

For a business, the player itself is not the point. It is that VLC also converts between file formats, records the screen and extracts the audio from a video. VLC lacks a real clipping feature, but with the record button under Advanced controls you can play a file and record just the part you want, as a workaround for clipping. So you do not need to upload the video to a free conversion site of questionable origin, and that habit alone is worth more than it sounds.

Installing on Windows

Go to videolan.org, download the Windows version and run the installer. Click through the wizard with the default choices. The program is in place after a minute and appears as a suggestion when you right-click a media file and choose Open with.

Installing on Linux Mint

VLC is available in Mint's own software manager. Search for VLC and install it, or type this in the terminal:

sudo apt install vlc

That works for most people. VLC is also on Flathub, if you prefer that for some reason:

flatpak install flathub org.videolan.VLC

The Flathub package is maintained by users and not by VideoLAN itself, which is stated on the package page, and it is not always newer than the one in Mint's own repository. Check the version numbers if that is exactly what you want to achieve, instead of assuming that Flathub automatically gives you the latest release.

Three things to do first

1. Play a file and test the spacebar for pause and the arrow keys to skip. It sounds obvious, but VLC is controlled almost entirely from the keyboard, and that is where you save time when editing.
2. Open Media and then Convert. Take a video you already have and convert it to mp4. That is the most common task you will have: the trade show film is in the wrong format and needs to go into a presentation that refuses to play it.
3. Try subtitles. Drag an srt file over the playing window and the text appears. If the film is going to be shown in a booth at a trade show, subtitling is the difference between people stopping and people walking on.

The most common trap

Downloading VLC from the wrong place. Search for the name in a search engine and you get hits on sites that repackage the program and add advertising software to the installation file. Anyone who clicks through quickly gets a new search engine in the browser as a bonus. VLC is downloaded from videolan.org, in Mint's software manager or from Flathub, and nowhere else.

The second most common trap is in the conversion: the result is a file with zero seconds or no sound at all. It is almost always because the wrong profile is selected. Choose the profile called Video H.264 plus MP3 in MP4 when you are unsure, check that the target file has the extension .mp4, and always play the result before you delete the original.