WINDOWS 10 BEST NEW WAY TO PLAY VIDEOS

What you need: Windows 10 Time required: 30 minutes

VLC’S downloadable program has long been our favourite media player. It has now launched an excellent free desktop app for Windows 10 that’s even easier to use. Apart from playing almost any media file format, it arranges your

videos and music, and sorts the latter into categories - including artists, albums and songs. The app lets you create playlists, and pin artists and albums as tiles to the Start menu. Its video player lets you download and add subtitles.

STEP 1

The VLC app automatically imports media files saved in the Videos 1 and Music 2 folders on your PC. If your media files are stored on other folders on your PC, then move them to the relevant folder before installing the app. To install the VLC app, go to www.snipca.com/21758, then click the ‘Get the app’ link. This takes you directly to the app in the Windows Store. Next, click the Free button, wait for the app to download, then click Launch 3 to open it.

STEP 2

The app - which is divided into four categories 1 - will start importing videos, TV shows, and clips recorded on your PC’S webcam 2 . Similarly, it’ll import audio files stored within your Music folder. This can take a few minutes. To watch a video, double-click its thumbnail 3 . Videos you’ve watched will appear in the ‘recommended for you’ section 4 . Next time you play a video in this section, it’ll start from its last-played point.

STEP3

When you play a video, you’ll see a control panel at the bottom. The pop-out icon 1 shrinks the video to a small tile, which appears at the bottom right of your screen. This is useful if you want to watch the video while doing something else on your PC. Double-click the tile to expand it. Click the fullscreen icon 2 to maximise your video. Press the spacebar to pause and play the video. The app also makes it easier to add subtitles. Click the subtitle icon 3 .

STEP4

If you’ve downloaded a movie from the Windows Store, click ‘subtitles’ 1 , then click Download to download its subtitle file. Similarly, if you’ve downloaded a subtitle file from the internet, click ‘open subtitle’ 2 , navigate to the downloaded file (in the .SRT format), then click Open to add it to your video. The ‘player settings’ icon 3 has sliders that let you modify your video playback speed and set how long it takes for subtitles to appear on screen. The lock icon 4 locks all your settings so no one can make changes to them. Click the top-left back button to return to the main section.

STEP5

Click the Music section 1 to see your files sorted into four categories (Artists, Albums, Songs and Playlists). The play icon 2 lets you play all your files or shuffle your playlist. You can also choose to order your files 3 by artist, album or date, then play them. To create a new playlist, click Playlists 4 , click the ‘+’ icon at the bottom right, name your playlist, then click the ‘add to collection’ button. To add tracks to your playlist, click Songs 5 , right-click the first track you want to add, then select your playlist at the bottom.

STEP6

Another useful feature of the VLC app is the option to add artists and albums as tiles to your Start menu. To do that, click Artists or Albums 1 , right-click what you want to add to your Start menu 2 , then click ‘pin artist’ or ‘pin album’ 3 . The only feature that the VLC app doesn’t have is the option to play DVDS and Blu-ray discs. To play those, install the free ‘VLC media player’ PC prgram from www.videolan.org/vlc. ●