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Suggestion: Switch VLC listing to VLC Portable

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2010 9:45 am
by JohnTHaller
While VLC used to be mostly portable when launched with the commandline switches, this isn't the case any longer. Now, VLC creates APPDATA\vlc and APPDATA\dvdcss on the local PC. It leaves behind ml.xspf, vlc-qt-interface.ini and a font cache file on every PC it is run on. And on every PC without VLC or these files left behind, it will create the font cache when you play your first video in VLC, a process that can easily take a minute or more and leaves the 1-2MB file behind.

So, I'd argue that VLC isn't really portable on its own anymore. VLC Portable is a better choice as it handles all of these directories and files, keeping your font cache as you move PCs and adjusting paths in all of the above-mentioned files so everything continues to work.

Re: Suggestion: Switch VLC listing to VLC Portable

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2010 4:33 pm
by Andrew Lee
Make sense to me. I have gone ahead and updated the entry.

Hope nobody objects too much to that!

Re: Suggestion: Switch VLC listing to VLC Portable

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2010 7:55 pm
by JohnTHaller
Thanks, Andrew. I updated your update as it was a bit off. It was still labeled as VLC and the installation instructions were the URL for the homepage. I also updated the icon to a cleaner version and updated it to a better screenshot.

Re: Suggestion: Switch VLC listing to VLC Portable

Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2010 9:22 am
by webfork
Maintaining this capability has been problematic with the VLC community, some saying its necessary, some not. The bug / feature request ticket.

For anyone who doesn't have access to the previous edits, the old arguments to enable portable mode was "--no-plugins-cache --config=vlcrc".