In the sample Qt app, is uses "--plugin-path=plugins\\" as part of the parameters. In my development environment (MSVS2008), I changed the path so it can find it elsewhere and changed it to something like "--plugin-path=C:\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\plugins\\". It all worked just fine. I then tried changing it so the last directory is something else, such as "vlcPlugins" or "plugin1" and it crashes. In this case, _vlcinstance = libvlc_new(nargs, vlc_args); always returns NULL. If I check for an error message, that is also NULL. I even tried it running VLC.exe from the command line. The first time I tried it, it crashed. I also tried "--plugin-path=C:\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\" wondering if it added "plugins\\" if it did not end with that, it does not seem to. Does it not allow the final plugin directory name to be anything other than "plugins"?
I have thought about contributing to LibVLC or even VLC itself, but so far have not found the information that I need, such as .pro or .sln file. Not even the full source code. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place.
P.S. Incidentally, I am using the SDK as provided with the VLC download on Windows, version 2.0.1.