Well I installed VLC ( formerly called Video Lan Client) today on my installation of fedora 9 and like any other video player it 2 was not working, so here are the settings that worked for me:
1) Go to Settings>Preferences>Check Advanced Options
2)Audio>Output Modules>Select ALSA Audio output >ALSA>Refresh List>Select Device
3)Video>Output modules>Select X11 Video Output
Well Thats about it
Enjoy!!!