VLC crashing on opening

Recently VLC stopped working completely; within a few seconds of opening it will crash without fail, forcing me to 'force quit'. I tried uninstalling VLC and then re-installing the newest version but the problem persists. Whenever I google this problem the same solution always appears...

1) Quit the application if it is running

2) Delete the VLC folder in /Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences

3) Delete org.videolan.vlc.plist in /Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences

4) Delete org.videolan.vlc.plist in /DRIVENAME/Library/Preferences

However this hasn't helped me at all. For a start, when I go into the users folder I cannot see 'library', only applications, documents, downloads, movies etc. which basically stops me going any further, as I can't go on to preferences. I've also tried using spotlight to search for "org.videolan.vlc.plist" but there are no results, and searching for variations of VLC, preferences etc. doesn't seem to offer up anything useful.

Any help with this'd be greatly appreciated as it's become quite annoying and I feel like I'm missing something that other people seem to be able to fix easily. Thanks in advance.