[torginus]

Forgive me for my ignorance - but my understanding is that VLC is a frontend for ffmpeg, and even ffmpeg is 'just' a wrapper for hardware video decoders such as NVDEC when viewing supported codecs, like h264/5.

[mastax]

My understanding is that VLC and FFMpeg are both projects which develop in house codecs and also incorporate codecs developed by third parties.