Tim:
It really bogs down the PC, I've got little chance to open a terminal. You could hammer away on VLC's close gadget and not get noticed. I nearly always have to kill X with CTRL ALT BACKSPACE as about the only way to deal with it.
ToddAndMargo:
Try <ctrl><alt><f2>
do a ps and a kill -9
Then <ctrl><alt><f1> to get back
When I say it bogs down the PC, it *REALLY* bogs it down. Far worse than when an app went mad with the swap space.
If I don't CTRL ALT BACKSPACE fast, that's it, I won't be able to do anything with the keyboard, and hardly anything with the mouse, I'll have to hit the hardware reset button. It rapid-fire tries to reload an unplayable file, in an infinite loop, and everything suffers.