I used VLC for many years without issue, but eventually it became unstable on my system and then wouldn't even launch, even after a fresh re-install. So to share something with others who may be looking for an alternative, MPC-BE with madVR and LAV audio decoder is amazing. I had some issues with MPC-BE out of the box: video tearing and muffled dialog during movies. madVR improves video rendering performance and LAV audio improves audio decoding.
The only way I can make sense of it, is that they must build VLC against a modified Qt distribution, or something they just never update.
I've totally switched to SMPlayer and MPV.