VLC media player is the most used media player in the digital world and the main reason behind this is its versatility to support different media formats. Apart from the wide range of media format support, VLC has an edge over other media players as it is open-source software and has a simple and powerful user interface. Even though there are millions of users who are using VLC player every day to watch movies or listen to songs, there are only limited people who really know the actual power of VLC. And, one of those powers includes its capability to play YouTube videos in the VLC media player.
VLC can also be used to play videos from YouTube and other media streaming sites. If you’re a regular YouTube user, you’ll know how limited is YouTube’s default media player and moreover, it requires Flash installed in your PC to work. If you watch YouTube videos on VLC, you can enjoy all your favorite shortcuts while watching the videos. However, there are some disadvantages like no annotations and closed captioning in the VLC player. Anyway, besides playing videos from YouTube, VLC can also record your computer’s screen.
So, if you want to try this amazing VLC feature, follow the instructions below to play YouTube videos in VLC media player.
Steps to Play YouTube Videos in VLC
First, let’s change some preferences in your VLC player to get the most out of your YouTube experience on VLC. Once we are done with the settings, it’s just a copy-paste of the YouTube URL to play the videos.
- Open VLC media player and navigate to Tools » Preferences
- In the left pane of Preferences, select the All radio button of the Show Settings to show all the settings at once.
- Now select the Input/Codecs option in the left pane and click on the Preferred Video resolution drop-down list to select the video quality. You can choose according to your network speed or leave it to default.
- In the left pane, click on stream output and change the Stream Output Muxer Caching to 1500 ms (if not already 1500 ms). You can also tune this value to the desired level that gives you a good buffering experience.
- Copy the YouTube URL you want to view and then directly paste the URL in the VLC window to play the video.
- If it didn’t work for you, press CTRL+N to open the Network Streaming dialog box in the VLC. Paste the URL in the URL box and press OK.
That’s it. You can watch your favorite YouTube videos in VLC media player with all the controls.
