Dibakar Ghosh is a tech journalist at How-To Geek, where he focuses on Linux, Windows, and productivity tools. His goal is simple—help readers at every skill level get more done with the tech they use every day.
He began his writing career in 2016 with WordPress tutorials, later moving into digital marketing, where he spent years reviewing complex tools for marketers. His work has also appeared on Authority Hacker, where he’s shared in-depth guides on digital workflows and online productivity. That experience now shapes his journalism, blending analytical depth with practical, real-world advice.
When he’s not writing or testing software, Dibakar is usually watching movies or playing video games. He’s a huge Christopher Nolan fan and a strong proponent of the theater experience. In gaming, he has sunk hundreds of hours into Insomniac’s Spider-Man series, Returnal, Prototype, Darksiders, and Final Fantasy titles.
You’re probably using VLC as your default media player. It plays basically anything you throw at it, and it’s been doing that reliably for over two decades. That said, playing media is only a fraction of what the app is capable of. The developers have spent years turning it into a genuine Swiss Army knife for all things audio and video.
Unfortunately, most of that work goes unused and unnoticed because nobody clicks past the play button. But I want to change that today. Here are three awesome VLC features I think everyone should know about and use on the regular.
VLC has a built-in media converter, and it's better than most of the free media converter apps and websites people tend to use in a pinch. You can access it by going to Media > Convert/Save from the menu bar. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl+R.
This opens a new dialog box asking you to select the file or files you want to convert—yes, you can bulk-convert files as well. Once you’ve made your selection(s), click the Convert/Save button. On the next screen, you’ll see your source at the top and a few options under Settings. Select Convert, then use the Profile dropdown to select the format you want to convert to. You’ll find multiple video formats, audio-only formats, and low-resolution video presets that are perfect for saving space.
If you want more control than the presets provide, click the wrench icon next to the Profile dropdown. That opens the full profile editor, which gives you more granular control over:
Once you’ve made your picks, click Save. Back in the Convert dialog box, select the destination file—the location and name of the converted file—and click Start. VLC will start converting your audio or video file.
VLC will use the normal playback slider as the progress bar for the conversion.
Sometimes you might want to cut a small 30-second clip out of a long video to send to someone. Typically, one would use a dedicated video editor for this, but that’s just overcomplicating a simple task that VLC can easily handle for you.
Simply open the video you want to cut in VLC. Then, from the menu bar, go to View > Advanced Controls. A new row of buttons will appear above the regular playback controls. This includes a record button, a snapshot button, a loop button for repeating between two points, and a frame-by-frame button.
To take a clip, seek to the point where you want the clip to start, hit Play to start playback, and then click the Record button. When playback reaches the end of your intended clip, click the Record button again to stop. And that’s it. VLC will automatically save the clip to the Videos folder on your computer.
This isn’t a replacement for a video editor. There’s no timeline, and you can’t stitch multiple pieces together. But then again, most people don’t need any of that. They just need to pull a section out of a long video, and this does exactly that.
This is arguably one of the most useful features in VLC that I’ve rarely seen talked about. Basically, it lets VLC on your PC broadcast a video over your local network so that you can watch it on your phone or laptop.
To use it, open VLC and go to Media > Stream. Add the file you want to stream, then click Stream at the bottom. The next screen just confirms your source, so click Next. Now, for the New destination, pick “HTTP” and click Add. VLC shows you the port the stream will be served on, which is 8080 by default. You can keep it or change it to something else if you already have another app or service using that port. Next, use the Path field to give the stream a name. Something like /video or the name of the file works fine—you’ll need this in a minute.
Click Next to get to the transcoding options. Check “Activate Transcoding” and pick “Video – H.264 + MP3 (MP4)” for maximum compatibility. I’d also recommend clicking the wrench icon and switching Encapsulation to MPEG-TS, which I’ve found to be better for streaming. Once you’re done, click Save, then Next.
