VLC media player VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files, and various streaming protocols. Manually set VLC to use the VA-API acceleration backend in Settings -> Input/Codecs. VLC seems to select VDPAU by default, which is broken for many people. No playback via SFTP of media files names containing spaces. If VLC does not play any videos or audio files over SFTP make sure you have sshfs installed.