vlc - Man Page

the VLC media player

Examples (TL;DR)

Play a file: vlc path/to/file
Play in fullscreen: vlc --fullscreen path/to/file
Play muted: vlc --no-audio path/to/file
Play repeatedly: vlc --loop path/to/file
Play video from a URL: vlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

Description

This manual page documents briefly the VLC multimedia player and server.

Options

VLC follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-'). For a precise description of options, please use "vlc --help".

The complete list of VLC options depends on what plugins are installed because they automatically add their own options. Please use "vlc --longhelp --advanced" for a complete list of available options.

Items

VLC recognizes several URL-style items:

*.mpg, *.vob, *.avi, *.mp3, *.ogg, *.opus: Various multimedia file formats
dvd://[<device>][@<raw device>][#[<title>][:[<chapter>][:<angle>]]]: DVD device (for instance dvd:///dev/dvd). The raw device is optional and must have been prepared beforehand.
vcd://[<device>][@{E|P|E|T|S}[<number>]]: VCD device (for instance vcd:///dev/cdrom).
udp://[@[<multicast address>][:<local port>]]: UDP stream, such as one sent by VLS or another VLC. Usually "udp://" is enough.
http://<server address>[:<server port>]/[<file>]: HTTP stream
rtsp://<server address>[:<server port>]/<stream name>: RTSP Video On Demand stream
vlc://<command>: Execute a playlist command. Commands are: pause (pause execution of other items), and quit (close VLC).

Environment Variables

The following environment variables may affect VLC:

DISPLAY: The X11 display server address.
http_proxy: The HTTP proxy server URL.
OSSAUDIO_DEV: The default audio output device, used by the OSSv4 output plugin.
VLC_DATA_PATH: The directory containing VLC run-time data files (e.g. /usr/share/vlc).
VLC_PLUGIN_PATH: An extra directory to load VLC plugins from.
VLC_VERBOSE: The level of verbosity for log messages (0: silent, 1: error/info, 2: warning, 3: debug).
XDG_CACHE_DIR XDG_CONFIG_DIR XDG_DATA_DIR: The directories to store user cached data, user configuration files and user data files respectively.
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR XDG_MUSIC_DIR XDG_PICTURES_DIR XDG_VIDEO_DIR: The directories to fetch or store user text files, downloads, music, pictures (i.e. snapshots), and video respectively.
XDG_SESSION_COOKIE: The unique identifier of the desktop session, used by the PulseAudio output plugin.