My experiences with it have been exactly the opposite. Sure, it usually plays most files, if something else doesn't go wrong before it gets to that point.
If I play with too many of the options in the prefs, it crashes. If I play with the various de-interlacing options while trying to play a DVD, it crashes. I just tried to use it to preview a video file being downloaded in emule and it locked up my entire system while looping the same second of sound over and over.
Load an MP3 file, select one of the visualizations and VLC takes around 10 seconds for the image to appear. Switch to a different one and the sound starts looping for several seconds while the image switches. Some of them even slow my system down to the point where the mouse pointer lags when I move it. Of course that's if it doesn't just crash, which happens frequently when I try changing any options.
When it finally does play a video, the sound starts immediately, but no image appears for 10-12 seconds. When I close VLC, the sound continues playing for several seconds after the window has closed. In some cases, VLC is still resident in memory and trying to play another file brings my system to a crawl until I manage to kill off the other copy of it. Which brings me to my next point;
A few weeks ago, I happened to acquire two copies of the same movie, one in widescreen, the other in fullscreen. I wanted to compare them side by side, so I opened two copies of Media Player Classic and opened one copy in each one, then shrunk the windows so that they would both fit on the screen at the same time. Both copies played at 100% full speed with no noticeable slowdown of my system. Try that with VLC and you'll get a slideshow in both windows, looping sound and a mouse pointer that lags so badly it takes about 20 seconds just to reach the close button on one of them.
Then there's the fullscreen controls. Every other player pops up a thin bar on the bottom of the screen when you move the mouse down, VLC gives you this;
I won't even go into the fact that before 0.8.0 or so, VLC wouldn't even PLAY any files, at least not without horribly distorted audio and video.
Before anyone suggests it, I have all of the latest drivers that are available for my motherboard, audio chipset and video card, and they seem to work perfectly with every other player I've tried. However I am using WIndows 98SE, so I guess you can blame all the problems on that, despite the fact that every other player seems to work fine (Windows Media Player 6.4, Media Player Classic 6.4.9.0, Real Player 8, PowerDVD 4.0, Nero Showtime 6.something, GOMPlayer 2.1.6.3499, etc).
So, what am I doing wrong? Why isn't VLC the stable, miracle player that it seems to be for everyone else?
