Article: Things you didn’t know VLC media player can do

VLC media player (also known as VLC) is a highly portable free and open-source media player and streaming media server written by the VideoLAN project. It is a cross-platform media player, with versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BeOS, MorphOS, BSD, Solaris, iOS, and eComStation.

VLC media player supports many audio and video compression methods and file formats, including DVD-video, video CD and streaming protocols. It is able to stream over computer network and to transcode multimedia files.

VLC used to stand for VideoLAN Client, but since VLC is no longer simply a client, that initialism no longer applies.

For most people, VLC is the favorite media player because it plays everything they throw at it without hiccups. No hunting for codec. But VLC can do a lot of other things as well. Find out how many of these listed below you knew, and how many you did not.

1. Rip DVDs: VLC includes a basic DVD ripper. You probably would never use it when there are better DVD rippers available, but it helps to know that you can in fact, get a decent quality DVD rip with VLC. To rip a movie follow these steps:

• Go to the Media menu and choose Convert/Save. Click on the Disc tab.
• Here you can adjust the Starting Position and rip only specific titles or chapters.
• Enter file name making sure to end with .MPG, and start ripping.
• Click Save. 

2. Record videos: With the new VLC, you can record videos during playback. The record button is hidden by default. To see it, click on View>Advanced Control. The record button will now appear. Clicking on the button while playing a movie or video will start recording. Clicking again will stop recording.

3. Play RAR files: Do you know VLC can play videos zipped inside RAR files? They play like normal video files and you can even use the seek bar. If the RAR file is split into several files, no problem. Just load the first part (.part001.rar ) and it will automatically take the rest of the parts and play the whole file.

Tutorial: Decimal to Binary Converter in Java

Today, we will try to create a Java program that enables the user input a DECIMAL number then it will convert to its BINARY equivalent value. If you remember, I posted a tutorial about a Java program that converts a decimal number to its octal value (you can read here). There are lot of sites from the Internet that you can download the program source code but in this tutorial, I made my own code which is based from the rules in number system conversion.

To do this, we will again follow the rules in converting. Here are the rules in converting decimal to binary:

1. Get or write the whole decimal number and serve as the dividend.

2. Use the base of the Binary, which is 2 as the divisor.

3. Proceed to Division operation.

4. The quotient and the remainder will be written on the other side whether 0 or 1. If the quotient is a whole number, the write 0 in the remainder, else if the quotient is a decimal number, then write 1.

5. Get again the quotient and divide into its base, repeat step # 4.

6. Repeat step # 5 until the quotient will be zero.

7. Write the remainder from bottom to up, to form the binary equivalent.

The Output:

 

Now, as you can see the figure above, the user enters the Decimal number 25, then the program provides a number conversion simulation table that explains the process or concepts of the rules stated above. Rule # 7 indicates the final binary equivalent of the decimal number where the program must read the remainder from the bottom to top.