I can’t understand why such a great program avoids a few “reset” buttons in the Adjustments and Effects panel — individual reset buttons for each effect tab, and a “Master Reset” that would restore default values to all audio and video effects at once.

Given the absence of convenient reset buttons, here is what you can do to reset all or particular effects, without losing customizations of other effects, or your custom hotkeys, etc. VLC saves such adjustments to a plain text file called vlcrc, located at \Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\vlc\. The file is without extension: you need to right click on it and send it to the Notepad, or drag and drop it to any plain text editor you like.

Open also the Effects panel of VLC to make sure what the name of each filter is. For example, in case you need to reset contrast, gamma and brightness adjustments, just delete the “Image properties filter” and the “Direct3D9 adjust filter”. Filter sections are separated with descriptions inside brackets. The Image filter is described as [adjust] # Image properties filter. Delete everything under this label (i.e., contrast, brightness, hue, saturation, gamma and brightness threshold. To make sure saturation also returns to its default state, delete the adjustments contained at the [d3d9_filters] # Direct3D9 adjust filter.

This way you can reset all problematic effects without losing your hotkeys or anything. Otherwise you can delete the whole file and let VLC create a new one, or use the VLC media player – reset preferences and cache files shortcut that is available in the VLC folder of the Start Menu.

Enjoy!