Trial Director and VLC Media Player are completely different software programs, but both can play multimedia files. Trial Director is a courtroom presentation program. It has a built-in video and audio player and can also present documents. VLC Player is a video player and can only play videos.
If you are deciding between the two for an upcoming court hearing, here are some factors to consider.
Cost:
VLC is a free and open-source cross-platform multimedia player and can be downloaded here: https://www.videolan.org/
TrialDirector is free for Federal Public Defenders and Community Defender staff members. CJA panel attorneys can purchase TrialDirector at a discounted price.[1]
Ease/Needs:
If you only have a few specific videos or clips that you want to play, VLC can be sufficient because it allows you to clip, bookmark, and save videos in any file folder. VLC will also let you pause the video and play it frame-by-frame, jump to a specific pre-marked point in the video, and play videos with external subtitles.
If you want to have all of your documents and multimedia files available to you within a single program, anticipate wanting to make on-the-fly annotations (callouts, highlights, markups) while playing a video, or plan on showing two videos side by side or a video and a document together, then TrialDirector is the way to go.
You could also opt to use both programs—TrialDirector for documents and VLC for videos.
Specific Functions:
Below is a comparison of some of the video specific capabilities of the two programs:
Regardless of which program you choose to use, it is critical to check out the setup in the specific courtroom you will be in to make sure that the proper connection is available, that audio connections work, that videos play properly and that everything works as you expect it to. Troubleshooting before your hearing or trial will ensure that everything goes off without a hitch and that evidence is presented cleanly and effectively.
[1] https://www.fd.org/litigation-support/cja-panel-attorney-software-discounts