There's work going on (since 2016) to port the parsers to Rust[1]. I believe that a few already are written in Rust, and it'd be great if some Rust folks would help out with the effort.
GP isn't saying that VLC is unsafe, but rather that C (which VLC is written in) tends to be unsafe. Seeing as MPV is also written in C, it's absolutely the same in that regard.
[1]: https://youtu.be/YTy_JOxGOd4