The VideoLAN Forums

It's hard to find help for settings and use of VLC, or for any other media player for that matter. You have a wide choice of settings, but with a lot of these choices you haven't the faintest idea what they mean. DSP video plug-in, for instance. What the hell is that and when should you use it? What's the use of offering all these choices if the majority of the users don't understand what they mean? Living in France, I research on the web in French, German and English but can't find much help in any language. And what about Windows 7? Does VLC need particular plug-ins or settings for this OS? No mention about this in "Help" nor on this forum.

If you don't have any idea about what those options are about, it is probably that they aren't meant for you.
There is a reason why they are 2 sets of preferences...
Moreover, you have the wiki for explanations.
Finally, VLC works on Win7, you don't need anything.

It's hard to find help for settings and use of VLC, or for any other media player for that matter. You have a wide choice of settings, but with a lot of these choices you haven't the faintest idea what they mean.

Similar topic here

I suspect it would be better to ask about contributing in a limited way to a wiki for users (not developers).
Getting the wider community to contribute to something like that is probably the only way to get documentation given the resources available.

Merci, Jean-Baptiste for your answer. "If you want an answer to your question, just be specific and verbose." I suppose you mean "not verbose". So I'll try again:
Using a netbook with Windows 7 hooked up to a HDTV with a HDMI cable my videos (Mpeg2 HD) are good using Windows Media Player but slightly jerky (saccadés) with VLC. Color and audio are better with VLC but it is not fluid or smooth enough. Grateful for any suggestions.

Great. Your CPU is not fast enough for VLC decoder.
If you have a nVidia card, you can try VLC 1.1.0 GPU decoding.

Yes indeed, Jean-Baptiste, I didn't think of that. The HP Compaq 311c does have a NIVIDIA ION card and test reports are excellent for video, but the processor is weak (N270), so I'll follow your advice and try the earlier version of VCL.

1.1.0 works fine with ION