VLC UnRAR plugin – Watch movies in RAR archives without extracting them first

Yesterday we talked  about AutoUnpack – a tool that can help you immensely when it comes to extracting multi part (split) archives. If you are too lazy to even do that, check this software out. ‘VLC UnRAR’ is a plug-in for popular VLC media player. Once installed, this cool plug-in will let you watch movies inside multi part RAR archives (without extracting them first) using VLC media player. In short, it adds capabilities of a RAR player into VLC. Apart from individual movie files, VLC UnRAR supports RAR archived DVD images as well. This plug in is free and supports multiple platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD.

The plugin seems to support multiple versions of VLC media player. I tried it on VLC media player 0.9.8a and it worked well during the short time I tested it. The official page however lists some known issues and troubleshooting information – in case you run into problems check this out.

Features (quoted from developer page)

  • Completely FREE with full source code.
  • Supports multi-volume RAR archives with full support for seeking
  • Supports RAR archived DVD images!
  • No external programs or special launch scripts needed
  • Simple plugin that works with any VLC installation, no separate RAR player needed
  • Platform-independent, binaries available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD
  • No pre-extraction of files, data is read directly from inside the archive when requested

Download & Walkthrough

[Click Here] to download VLC UnRAR Plugin 2009 03 07 – Direct Download

[Click Here] to download the latest version of VLC Media player

[Click Here] for a short installation guide on how to set up the plugin

 

Thanks to our reader ‘Me’ for mentioning this tool in the previous article.