Hello folks.
I've been using VLC for a long time to play movies. Truth is, I've never found a better player for this purpose. This programme will play almost anything "out of the box" as it were, and I love it for that reason. Winamp has been my go-to audio player for years and I still use it on Windows 10, but only for music, generally. Especially if I want to watch a film with my girlfriend or another sighted person, VLC is really the only choice. In the days of my Windows XP machine, I would simply adjust the master bass and trebble volume controls in Windows when I was watching a film. I find that to get the clearest audio for dialogue and so on, you need to set different levels than you would for listening to most music. Bring out a bit more of the high mid-range and even trebble sounds, so that sibilances sound more clear and so on. It was only quite recently that I realised that VLC in fact has an equalizer. Of course it does. Why wouldn't it, right? It has a ten-band style EQ like the one Winamp has in its graphic equalizer. Well, the interface is a little weird. You can go to the effects and filters dialogue and use one of the presets. You can then tweak the preset by using the slider controls, which are spaced from bass (left) to trebble (right) on the screen. This isn't as convenient as Winamp's, which you can control directly from the keyboard using the top two rows of keys, but it works well enough. However, if you want to save settings of your own, so VLC will "remember" them, you seem to have to go into the preferences dialog, change the screen to "all" or "advanced" preferences using a radio button, expand the "filters" tab, and enter in a set of values with the keyboard before hitting save. This would actually be pretty cool for me, and I suspect, blind users in general . except, JAWS does not really seem to play nicely with the VLC preferences screen. There are quite a few controls whose purpose I can't even figure out. There are areas of the screen where JAWS does not speak the content at all. The edit box where you enter in the eq values manually is exactly one of those places. I was pretty stumped, but my girlfriend was able to help me and tell me that my cursor was in the edit box. I pasted the eq values I had saved for the clipboard for what I thought might be an ideal setting for vocals/dialogue in films. JAWS did not say a thing. I could not even check to see if the values I pasted had in fact showed up in the edit box. But they were indeed there, and I was able to save them, and watch a hissy, crackly movie from 1932 and it sounded as clear as it's ever going to. Awesome, right? But I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to make this preferences screen work better with a screen reader. Even though I've used it for years, I realise I've really only scratched the surface with VLC's capability. It really is a poweful and adaptable programme and I'd like to learn to tweak it more. I'm really happy that my films are probably going to sound a lot better now, but not so pleased that setting the equalizer the way I wanted (without using a preset) was such a vague, un-JAWS friendly experience. I'm wondering if any seasoned VLC users subscribe to the list, and would be happy to hear of any adjustments or tips they might have to suggest. For your information, I am using Windows 10 with JAWS 18. Cheers. For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
