This is a known problem, it occured when making the video behaviour in skins mode more stable, I think it'll be changed in the next version. Until now, use a skin that provides a video control, like the default skin.
Next version will have it, and those who wish to test it can already download a recent vlc1.0 nighly builds.
fyi, a new parameter (--no-skinned-video) must be explicitly set. (either 'vlc --no-skinned-video' at command line or an item to uncheck in preferences/all/interfaces/skins). Default behaviour still sticks to the xml file description (no video tag, no video window)
Probably because it takes more time to load the skin than the default interface
Yes, skins takes longer to load than the default interface :
- the default interface (qt4) is loaded anyway (all dialogs are provided by qt4 in the background).
- skins must unzip .vlt file and parse the xml file (theme.xml) every time a user loads a new skins.
Certainly, some caching would be desirable.
This depends on which skin you use, but of course at the moment skins cannot provide the full functionality of the default interface
Functionalities depend a lot on skins developper. Yet, many features no available at the interface level are still accessible through hotkeys (something all interfaces skins, qt4 ... have in common)