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One major disadvantage of VLC is the non-support of forced subs in DVDs. On some DVDs, when Quernya, Klingon, Black Speech etc is spoken, there is a "forced" subtitle track that shows up even if you have the subtitles to "off", and has the english translation.
This is not a problem if english is not your first language (because all the subtitles you want are in your language's subtitle track), but it IS if english is your first language.
So, use the player that came with your OS for DVDs.

Also, VLC doesn't support BluRay menus (VLC can play the video with the help of AnyDVD HD or DVD Fab HD Decypter), but with menus getting increasingly obnoxious and slow, this isn't a major loss.

kurkosdr, on 14 July 2012 - 03:14 AM, said:

Are you talking about the subtitles built into the movie?
They're supposed to be there, and are part of the movie.

Sounds impressive. I think it's one of a kind media player. The best thing it's free and simple to use and lots of cool stuff you can find it here.

I stumbled onto VLC a couple of years back. It has been my favorite. I will use Mplayer on my Mint machine but prefer VCL. My only complaint is that they have changed the way to control playback speed. Earlier editions made it very easy to slow-motion clips. The newest updates aren't as easy to work with.

Sunsmasher, on 14 July 2012 - 02:17 PM, said:

Often enough to be annoying, they're not "part of the movie."

Here has been my experience:
1) If a subtitle track is available, VLC will use it.
2) If more than one subtitle track is available, VLC will use #1 by default.
3) If you manually select track #2, that's the only track that will be seen while the movie is playing.
4) When there is Black Speech in LOTR, for example, it is actually on subtitle track #1. Since nothing else has been entered into this track until this point, nothing is seen until this point.
5) Annoyingly, the English translation of this Black Speech is ONLY on track #1. If you have selected track #2 (step 3), you do not see anything at this point (all other subtitles did not make an entry for this time period in order to prevent double display of text)

If you make no subtitle selection when playing the movie, you will see subtitle track #1 - which contains only the Black Speech (and Elven) translations. When the characters are speaking English, there's nothing in track #1 to display - which means you see nothing. As a result, the subtitles seem to be "part of the movie." However... if you have selected the English track #2 (if you're watching the movie where the ambient noise cannot be overcome by the volume control, for example) - you see subtitles ONLY when English is spoken... and NOT when other "languages" are spoken.

Here is an another example of my experience with VLC:

If the file is on my hard drive, and VLC won't play it.... it's not a video file - despite what the file extension might suggest. Just because the file ends with AVI doesn't mean it is one. VLC can handle a "mislabeled" WMV, MPG, MKV, MP4.... you name it. It doesn't care what file extension it was given. If it is a video file, VLC will play it.

I have seen occasion where a ZIP file was renamed to an AVI. This fact was verified by running GSPOT to identify it. Interestingly enough... if a ZIP file consists of a single video file, VLC often (if not always) will play it. Don't ask me why someone would ZIP a video file (the additional compression is negligible), but I've seen it. If it had been password protected, I could begin to understand it - but they rarely are.

I have hundreds of lossless format audio files (flac) and VLC is my player of choice. Windows Media Player won't touch them. I wish it was a little easier to create playlists, but that's a small matter when considering the overall abilities of this free program.

dose it support minilyrics