Videolan Player is the best player around, and it kicks every other players ass.
It can play almost sadistically corrupted video and audio. You can check out the source too.

Get it here
[The 0.8.4 version]

The idea of making a skin was born when I saw a page about writing skins in XML for VLC.So after downloading the few skins on the site and seeing how it was done, I realized that it was perfectly simple.[NOTE: My stupid monitor doesnt do colors very well !]

1. Read the page about making skins.

2. Download a vlt file, change its extension to .tar.gz and unzip.

3. Observe the theme.xml file.

4. Crib about how you can make a better skin.

5. Plan a layout for the skin.

• This is what takes the longest.Its very easy to miss a few important buttons.
• Better make a sketch of what its supposed to look like.
• Look at skins for other players to see whats good and whats not.

6. Make the skin in GIMP, [ok ok, or Photoshop],It takes some getting used to, but it is free!

7. GIMP stuff:

• Increase the undo level
• Make a base version without any effects [like mouseover or pressed], if something screws up, you can always get back to this.
• Search for plugins to do what is needed, perhaps with a little tweaking.
• Use the selection tools wisely, do NOT feather the selections as VLC might not handle alpha values != 0,1
• Make a sample button and load it in an existing skin to tr it out.
• Make the initial images larger than you intend to use them, you can always scale them down, the effects look crappy if applied on a small image
• The buttons can be made using webdings or other symbol fonts, [unless you want to make custom buttons]
• Make sure the buttons are each in a separate layer
• Too many colors hurt the beholder.

8. Select the places where the buttons should be in the file and save the selection to a channel.

9. Once the image looks ready, scale it down.

10. Cut out the buttons into separate files and and export to png files.

11. Paste the other branches [pressed, mouseover] into the image and cut out the images with the SAME mask.This ensures that all the buttons are the same size, and you dont spend hours aligning them.

12. Get some free fonts from the net appropriate to the theme.

13. Write the xml file to load the buttons.

• Get the window priorities right, or dragging the window will have terrible results.
• Do write the tooltip text.
• Dont forget to add close and resize buttons where needed.

14. Zip the files to tar.gz

15. Rename to vlt

16. Test the skin [with debug interface of VLC]

17. Remove any thing buggy.

• Missing/ Open tags
• Missing files
• Typos
• Tooltip text
• Adjust the Font size/color to be visible

18. The Initial positions for the skin can be found by just aligning the bars as you like, and then check the advanced skin tab.The window positions are in brackets.

19. Play around with it till you lose interest.

Download the skin here