To be fair, it's the number two crasher for the same reason Safari is the number one crasher.
VLC is very stable nowadays, but just like Safari tons of people use it, and people ask it to process really random and broken data without batting an eyelid. Broken or corrupted video? VLC will play it. Half downloaded file in some obscure format? VLC. Bittorrent download that only got to 75%? Yes, VLC will play it (glitching through the missing parts).
That does result in crashes, because unlike say, QuickTime which will simply refuse to play something if it doesn't like the cut of it's jib, VLC will attempt to play anything and everything you throw at it. Just like Safari will attempt to render any data you throw at it.
Great point. VLC is my go-to application for playing just about everything, but especially files that are broken or corrupted. I love when it offers to repair the video.
VLC crashes reasonably often for me. More than anything else (besides Mail.app after Lion came out, which kept crashing while typing emails... ugh. and still does, but rarely). The cause is watching videos at 2x-3x speed and then skipping around in it quickly (usually with the 1 min jump forward command a few times).
Maybe the video files I'm watching suck, but it shouldn't crash when seeking or playing just because the data sucks.
On a related note, sometimes the sound breaks. You hear a popping sound and to fix it you have to do stuff like slow the video down then change the volume. Then it fixes itself then go back how it was.
This seems to be related to particular videos, presumably they suck in some way. But it still shouldn't happen. Or at least it should fix itself automatically without me having to do the equivalent of punching the TV to get it to try again.
I can deal with sounds getting garbled here and there when playing at high speed if it can't keep up for some reason, but it shouldn't stay broken indefinitely until I manually fiddle with the playback speed and volume and maybe pause/unpause. That is VLC's fault. Glitch the broken parts but then stop glitching afterwards please. That's how visual issues work (sometimes some frames are screwed up but it fixes itself at the next keyframe I think).
Maybe higher speed playback is an area that receives little attention and I guess it can't be the cause of most VLC crashes since most people never use it. But still, please don't tell me VLC is stable. And there's no reason bad data should cause crashes or indefinite non-recovery from glitches.
(However, it has gotten more stable over time. It used to crash considerably more, and there was a nasty bug when a video ended in fullscreen mode (crash? i actually forgot) which they have fixed, albeit by wasting about 5 seconds of your time in video ending mode with no way to exit it or use your computer, before it goes back to window mode or accepts commands.)
I agree in part, but is it too hard to prevent the entire player from crashing when it encounters bad data? I'd much prefer a frown-face icon like chrome for a crashed plug-in to a crash of the entire player.
VLC is very stable nowadays, but just like Safari tons of people use it, and people ask it to process really random and broken data without batting an eyelid. Broken or corrupted video? VLC will play it. Half downloaded file in some obscure format? VLC. Bittorrent download that only got to 75%? Yes, VLC will play it (glitching through the missing parts).
That does result in crashes, because unlike say, QuickTime which will simply refuse to play something if it doesn't like the cut of it's jib, VLC will attempt to play anything and everything you throw at it. Just like Safari will attempt to render any data you throw at it.