Can a video file corrupt your media player?

I use VLC for everything, and the other day I downloaded a video, played it, and the longer it went on the more glitchy it got. It got so screwed up I couldn't even finish watching it.

I figured it was just a corrupted file or something went wrong while downloading. But now other videos that I have on my computer, ones that I never had an issue with before, are starting to do the same thing. VLC will freeze up, or the audio will just randomly stop working, or it gets ridiculously glitchy.

So my question is as stated in the title, can a video file corrupt your media player somehow? I'm going to remove VLC and reinstall it, hopefully that will work. I'm just curious as I never had problems before watching that one movie, and after that, almost all of my other files are having issues playing.

I doubt the video file corrupted vlc, but maybe something corrupted your computer, and that's whats making it run like crap possibly..

reply to post by DeVIAS


I had thought about that, ran the usual checks and what not. My computer is running great as always, it's just playing videos on VLC that is an issue.

I just thought it might be some new sneaky way the copyright nazis are fighting against torrent users.

hahah true, they would love to corrupt whatever they could get their paws on..Sounds dumb...but did you try rebooting your computer? ...or try reinstalling vlc or repairing it..

Also, wherever you get your movies, I suggest you do it from sites where you can read the comments from other people that downloaded it first so you know what your working with..I never download anything unless it has a few comments on it or from a trusted uploader

Originally posted by DeVIAS

Also, wherever you get your movies, I suggest you do it from sites where you can read the comments from other people that downloaded it first so you know what your working with..I never download anything unless it has a few comments on it or from a trusted uploader

That's very good advice. I get my movies from KAT usually, and read the comments before. Everyone else said the file was great, so I don't know, it's very odd.

I did a reboot, reinstalled VLC, and it seems to be working fine now. I really want to download that file that seemed to cause the problems, as it's one of the few torrents I could find for it, and it was decent quality, but not a huge blue ray sized file. I'm just a little worried about doing that, however.

ive had a few vids go glitchy on VLC, usually i run CCleaner and reboot. thats always worked for me.

I dunno whether it VLC player or what but many of my audio and video files either just dont paly or they skip long in fits and starts, go slider jumps from one end to the other in two or three jumps. I use anti viris, Uninstall and reinstall VLC, downloaded new edition of VLC etc etc to no avial.

Originally posted by James1982
So my question is as stated in the title, can a video file corrupt your media player somehow?

yes, definitely possible, since the player is open source, the coding on "how to read the media file" is open to everybody to check, if somebody target you, they can manipulate the file that gonna be read by the player and modify whatever they wish.