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To the best of my knowledge, this site does not provide a means to download the most recent release of the 64-bit version of VLC Portable. When I press the Download button, it always downloads the 32-bit version only.
Or am I mistaken? Is there a way to download the 64-bit version here or at Videolan.org? I've found other sites that supply this, but I'm not sure whether to trust them. How and where can I download an official 64-bit portable version of VLC?
Thanks
We make VLC available as a 32-bit only app as it works on both 32-bit and 64-bit Window as people either move a drive around or sync their cloud folder between computers. The vast majority of users use it as a media player for with the 64-bit version has no real advantage.
If you're using it as a media encoder/converter, it's possible there may be a slight advantage to the 64-bit version. With 7-Zip, for instance, there's only around a 7% performance improvement, but since people often encrypt/decrypt large files where that could make a difference of time and 7-Zip is a small app (8MB for both 32-bit and 64-bit), we do 7-Zip Portable as a dual mode app. VLC is much larger (123MB for just the 32-bit version) and would have no noticeable advantage for the vast majority of users. You can copy in the 64-bit version of VLC downloaded as a zip into VLC Portable and replace the 32-bit version if you're doing a ton of media encoding/converting to use that instead.
Some additional details on how 64-bit apps fit into portable apps: https://portableapps.com/node/24371
I appreciate your detailed reply! But here's what I've done instead, which certainly appears to work correctly:
I used the normal installer from PortableApps.com. Then I replaced the 32-bit executable file it created on the portable drive with the non-portable 64-bit executable I had installed earlier. I also replaced everything else which had a filename in the portable folders that matched a filename in the permanent (i.e., non-portable) folders.
When I then ran the VLCPortable.exe file in the PortableApps root folder, it correctly launched the 64-bit version which worked perfectly. I used "Process Hacker 2" to confirm (1): That the full path to the running executable was indeed pointing to the 64-bit portable executable, and confirm (2): That the running binary executable was indeed the 64-bit version.
Since this was so extremely easy to set up, it doesn't seem -- to what must be my minuscule mind -- to make any sense at all that a 64-bit PortableApp version of the VLC portable installer would be difficult or pointless to create. No sense at all.
As discussed elsewhere, having a 32-bit and a 64-bit version is confusing for the majority of users that have no idea what that means. That's why we do combined apps that handle it all automatically. Plus, two packages is twice as much work for me. And, as mentioned above, the 64-bit version provides no advantage to the vast majority of users that use it as a media player.
Thanks for your assistance John, although I have to mention that there are cases where the 64 bit VLC application, when working with 64-bit audio production software like Reaper, is necessary to function correctly.
As Reaper is a manual portable app without support for PA.c Format automation, you can also manually download the 64-bit VLC zip and point Reaper to it for use as a plugin. If Reaper were a proper PA.c Format that allowed users to automatically update and integrate it with the platform, we'd probably offer VLC as a plugin for it or incorporate it into a dual mode VLC player. Unfortunately, Reaper's publisher is uninterested.
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