How do you use VLC to its full potential?

[kargatane]

Hi,

I'm doing a research project on VLC (not sure why exactly as I know next to nothing about networks, learning as I go) and I was wondering if anyone could help me out a bit as I have a question. My project has to do with the internal operations of VLC with respect to performance, especially procedures involved in encoding, decoding, and compressing data for transmission across a network. I've read pretty much all documentation I could find on VLC but I just have a bit of a general question for everyone.

I guess my question boils down to this: What are some of the ways you find useful to customize VLC (i.e., turn certain options on or off, enable certain modules, etc) and for what reason is this useful? Basically I'm just looking for a specific example of how you use VLC to achieve a specific goal, that requires (or is just improved by) more than letting VLC take the default action. I'm hoping for as many answers as possible so I can get a general idea of some common uses.

I really appreciate any help you can give me.
Thanks!

[CloudStalker]

I find it very useful to be able to open more the one running instance of VLC (under Windows).

I use this often so that I can listen to music though one player while I have the second player play a DVD though my TV (for others to watch) while I have yet a third player to watch another video on my computer screen (with the volume muted), and since the S/PDIF signal is being sent directly to the receiver, it does not interfere with the sound being played though my headphones, and vice versa.

There are allot of other uses for VLC, but I’ll have to report on these later. Hope this is useful information.

[kargatane]

For anyone who's interested, a summary of my project can be found here:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgd3thzq_2dfnrb3

My project basically involves writing documentation for one of my professors so he can better use VLC as a research tool, but I think it would be something that would be useful for everyone. I'm planning on making it available online when it's complete (which will be around the end of March or early April), but I could really use as much input as possible.

Thanks!
Kate

[PrometheusG]

I've got a dual monitor setup and like to use the wall filter for movies sometimes.

[SystemXS]

I watch anime a lot, which comes with subs in .mkv files like 50% of the time.
Only 1 subtitle path, so i had this easy trick to automatically display it, so i don't have to urn it on for every episode (watching from bed )

Input/Codecs->Advanced->Subtitle track: 0