In a rush, but here are some pointers

$ ps | grep '[v]lc'

That grep won't match the grep itself, so no need for the grep -v to remove it

However, the big gun for finding processes, and killing them, are these two:

$ pgrep vlc
$ pkill vlc

I know these commands are enabled on the old R&D images that I'm still running on my old devices, not sure if it's in the released shell.