Handy VLC trick

If you use VideoLAN Client (aka VLC) - and why wouldn't you, it's the best video playing software on the planet - and you are into authoring and copying DVDs (like compiling a disc of your son's favourite TV shows for him to take to his nan's house), here's something I just found out.

If you ask it to, VLC will treat a folder on your hard drive as a DVD - this is something I've known about for a while. What I didn't know about is that it will also happily mount and read a .iso image, so before you commit an image file to disc, you can have a look to make sure your menus work as you want them to, and that the quality is acceptable if you've had to do any compression above and beyond the call of duty.

If you click on the "Open" button and select the "Disc" tab, type the path into the "Customize" combo box at the bottom. There's no Browse button, so if it's a long path, you'll probably want to copy and paste the address. Pay attention to the slashes - being of a Linux heritage, VLC uses forward slashes instead of backslashes, and it also doesn't like a trailing slash at the end of a directory name, if you're dipping into one.

Two examples that work for me (on a Windows box):

dvd://c:/jacksstuff.iso
dvd://c:/dvds/DVDVOLUME

I love unexpected capabilities, and VLC is full of them!