It used to be Mac OS X didn’t come with any applications to play VCDs. Only DVDs, using the Apple DVD Player. When Apple released Mac OS X 10.3, Panther, the latest version of Apple Quicktime that shipped with it was endowed with the ability to read the .dat files contained in VCDs. Using Quicktime required a user to locate the .dat files in a VCD and open the files individually. This quickly becomes tedious as full length movies are usually shipped as 2 VCDs.
VideoLan Client (popularly known as ‘VLC’) an open source initiative is the ideal VCD viewer on any mac. In fact, VLC is being continually developed to run on the following platforms as well:
- Windows
- Debian GNU/Linux
- Familiar Linus
- SuSe Linux
- Mandrake Linux
- Yopy/Linopy
- Red Hat Linux
- BeOS
- Fedora Core and;
- Zaurus
VLC comes loaded with features, in the latest version 0.8.1 some of the latest and most often used features include:
- VCD/DVD playback and various streaming protocols
- playlists with standard play/repeat one/repeat all functions
- an 10 band graphic equalizer with preamp and preset functions
VLC is an essential application in the arsenal of any discerning mac user. As a bonus, since VLC is an independant application that does not install into Mac OS X’s libraries, it also doubles up as anexcellent alternative to viewing DVDs from various region codes without sacrificing one of the 5 limited region code settings you can change on Apple’s DVD Player before it locks on the 5th and final region code setting.
In fact, there have been reports that on some occassions VLC succeeds when certain DVDs refuse to play on Apple’s DVD Player.