Personally, I'm with Curtis on this one.  I have never liked VLC's Windows application implementation.  It just seems to me to be insanely complicated compared to any one of a number of other options.  Now, mind you, if you need some of the myriad features that come with VLC, it's wonderful, but if all I'm doing is playing and/or ripping CDs, Windows Media Player is just so much easier for those tasks.  It still ships with Windows 10.  I just set up a Windows 11 machine here at home the other day so I'll have to check whether it's still hidden "in the bowels of Windows 11" just like it was in 10.

For anyone new to VLC I strongly suggest you open Help in the Help Menu then go to the links given at the very outset of their help file.  I am copying and pasting the pertinent section from that Help here:

You can find VLC documentation on VideoLAN's wiki website.

If you are a newcomer to VLC media player, please read the
Introduction to VLC media player.

You will find some information on how to use the player in the
"How to play files with VLC media player" document.

For all the saving, converting, transcoding, encoding, muxing and streaming tasks, you should find useful information in the Streaming Documentation.

If you are unsure about terminology, please consult the knowledge base.

To understand the main keyboard shortcuts, read the shortcuts page.

Help

Before asking any question, please refer yourself to the FAQ.
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If you consult one or more of the above noted sources, you can and will find almost anything one could need to know about VLC and how to use it.  There are resources aimed at the new user through the expert level, so choose accordingly.  The FAQ is something that should be looked at.

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Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H2, Build 19044  

Science has become just another voice in the room; it has lost its platform.  Now, you simply declare your own truth.

       ~ Dr. Paul A. Offit, in New York Times article, How Anti-Vaccine Sentiment Took Hold in the United States, September 23, 2019