15 ms·

15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

585 points by bpierre 11y ago

orik 11y ago
does network 2000 have any relation to foobar2000?
- tyrust 11y ago
  Your question had me interested, so I looked around a bit and found this forum post from "Peter" [0]: >"foobar2000" is indeed a piece of random gibberish I had to type into "project name" box when creating a new project in MSVC, on the day all this started. IIRC I spent about 5 minutes on thinking about it - I wanted to get things working ASAP rather than worry about the name. That forum profile has a link to Peter Pawlowski's website [1] and has been active since 2001, so I'd like to believe it's really him. [0] - https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?PHPSESSID=j8ru3u6374lh2vvh4gcmpjb965&topic=9784.msg98900#msg98900 https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?PHPSESSID=j8ru3u6374lh2vvh4... [1] - http://perkele.cc/ http://perkele.cc/
dopeboy 11y ago
In the earlier days of mainstream desktop linux (~2005), video codecs were a complete shitshow. VLC was a godsend during those times - it just worked. Still the first thing I apt-get after a fresh install. If you're reading this team VLC, thank you for your work. Ways to contribute to VLC: http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html
- NeutronBoy 11y ago
  Even until the last few years on Windows, codecs were a shit show. You could download codec packs, but it was pretty hit and miss. VLC was amazing - it would open everything, audio just worked, and subtitles just worked.
  - deciplex 11y ago
    CCCP has worked great for me on Windows for the last 10+ years.
    - cdr 11y ago
      CCCP was amazing when it first came about. The last time I wanted to watch something, though, KCP was recommended over CCCP. Things are forever going to be a bit of a mess with playing anime since there's a long tradition of being on the bleeding edge of encoding.
  - markild 11y ago
    Yeah. And ending up playing a game of "useful or malware"
  - elboru 11y ago
    That's true even today, maybe I'm getting old and I don't play much with other tools like I used to do, but VLC is the only one that always "just work".
- Kluny 11y ago
  Quicktime on Mac OS remains a shitshow to this day. I still have not figured out how to use third party srt files for subtitles.
  - Keyframe 11y ago
    You can use VLC on OSX as well. It works great!
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - kapuetri 11y ago
      When watching h.264 VLC consumes lots of CPU when QuickTime doesn't. I don't know why.
      - astrosi 11y ago
        I assume that it is because QuickTime is using your GPU to decode the h.264 but VLC isn't. There is support for hardware accelerated h.264 decoding in VLC; you just need to enable it. I think the option is in Input and Codecs tab in the preferences.
      - guard-of-terra 11y ago
        Maybe QuickTime knows how to leverage hardware decoding?
      - cooper12 11y ago
        You might have hardware acceleration in the Input/Codecs menu disabled.
      - jbk 11y ago
        Try VLC 3.0.0 nightly builds using VideoToolbox or activate GPU decoding.
  - booruguru 11y ago
    I think the srt file needs to have the same name as the main video file and they both need to be in the same folder.
- moonshinefe 11y ago
  VLC has been one of the best bets for a video player and I've used it for years. I've never contributed before though, so I'll gladly do it for their 15th year.
ggambetta 11y ago
VLC is amazing. As a friend put it, "VLC will open everything, even a can of tuna". Thanks for VLC, VLC devs.
seivan 11y ago
Still wished I could have VLC as an engine inside QuickTime or whatever's native to the platform/OS. Is that possible or do you have to source the web for several obscure codecs?
- xufi 11y ago
  I dont think it's possible since it seemed pretty lock down to me. I just always replaced it as my main player since that seemed to be the least hasle free way than mess with the OS featured player to get it to work right
- leohutson 11y ago
  This is a thing already. It's an option as a qt phonon backend in Linux at least, so all qt apps that use it will support any of vlcs codecs.
- lmm 11y ago
  OS-specific things are OS-specific. ffmpeg (the primary backend decoder used by VLC and many other OS projects) is a great cross-platform library that can play most things, but you need some kind of platform-specific wrapper (e.g. ffdshow on windows) to hook it into the OS' native services and make it available inside other apps.
aerovistae 11y ago
fucking amazing software, as good as it gets. kudos.
gregschlom 11y ago
A little know fact about the VideoLAN project is that it was started so that the student organization could justify the need to replace the old networking infrastructure of the campus with a brand new high-bandwidth fiber optics network. They really wanted to deploy a fiber optic network but the school would have never approved it so they thought "OK, we need something that uses a ton of bandwidth, let's make a video streaming app". They proceeded to start the VideoLAN project, with the VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN server, and streamed movies and public television channels to the whole campus. Interesting how it came to benefit everybody. Source: I studied there and had a chat with one of the original creators of the project once.
- BostonEnginerd 11y ago
  I remember this. The Linux User Group on my college campus in 2002 was trying to setup a streaming service using VLC to stream DVDs across the network to all interested parties. Unfortunately the administration forcefully said no. This was the height of the Napster lawsuits as I recall.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dopamean 11y ago
  Over the years when I've opened VLC I've occasionally wondered what the LAN part meant in VideoLAN. I thought it must be something other than Local Area Network. Thanks for sharing.
  - jbk 11y ago
    Yes. It was created to do DVB-S to campus LAN streaming.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  On a related note, VLC's traffic cone icon comes from a club member drunkenly stealing one, which then ballooned into the organization collecting them and eventually inspired the icon. https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=9792 https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=9792
colordrops 11y ago
I love VLC's engine, but have never been a fan of its UI, especially the configuration interface. How well separated are the UI and engine? Building a new UI for VLC seems like a fun project.
- tnigro 11y ago
  You might want to check out VLC for Windows Store. We're trying new UI and user experiences and will release soon an update on Windows 10 with an improved design (cleaner and faster).
  - matzipan 11y ago
    Been sporting it for a while. I wasn't sure if it was official, but nice execution!
  - arm 11y ago
    I’ve had a pretty poor experience with VLC on the Windows Store. I tried it on my tablet (an HP Stream 7) running Windows 8.1, hoping to use it to play the music from my iTunes library (by copying the Music folder in iTunes’ iTunes Media folder from the computer that I use iTunes on to a microSD card inserted in the tablet’s microSD card slot). Unfortunately, it had a number of issues: Issue #1: It seems that VLC doesn’t like the directory structure iTunes uses to store your music (when you’ve checkmarked the option in iTunes to 'Keep iTunes Media folder organized'), which consists of the top level (the 'Music' folder) containing folders named after each artist, which in turn contain folders named after the albums of each respective artist, which in turn contain the actual music files for those albums. The reason I believe VLC doesn’t like this way of having the music organized is because after letting VLC read this music folder, VLC showed the albums in a completely non-sensical way (it was showing duplicate entries for the same album, with tracks in those albums being split between the duplicates (despite the music files containing ID3 tags!)). Issue #2: There’s no way to tell VLC not to search for information on the tracks from the Internet. It shows some of my songs with erroneous album art, etc. My songs that come from actual albums already have the album art embedded, so I don’t need VLC applying completely irrelevant album art to songs that aren’t actually from an album! Issue #3: It’s extremely slow (on my HP Stream 7)! ―――――― I ended up switching over to MediaMonkey on the Windows Store, and while it has a host of issues of its own (it doesn’t show notifications for songs with album art, the UI gets glitchy after using it for a while (stuff like not showing text in the app anymore, so you can’t see your track names… which can only be rectified by closing and reopening it), etc.), at least it actually shows the contents on my Music folder perfectly organized (no duplicates or other such issues), it doesn’t try searching for metadata on the Internet, and it’s actually fast.
SwellJoe 11y ago
I briefly operated an audiovisual services company (that lost a tremendous amount of money, but that had nothing to do with VLC), and after trying loads of players, came back to VLC. It allowed all of the stuff I needed and that many other players (including expensive commercial ones) failed at. It plays literally everything. We regularly had sponsors show up the day of the show and hand me a USB drive with their ad reel on it. With no clue what the format would be, I would always be able to say, "yeah, we can put it in the playlist for tonight". It has excellent playlist abilities, and excellent means of controlling the playlist. Our shows often included multiple sources (live video, sponsor reel, feature, short, trailers, etc.), and being able to manually select the right things at the right times with keyboard shortcuts was great. It actually allows one to kill all on screen displays, and can be reliably configured to always open video on the secondary display (projector) and controls on the primary display (laptop). This is shockingly difficult with every other player I used. They would always have problems getting things onto the right display, or would show some kinda bullshit on the screen. This is particularly true of the DVD and Blu Ray capable players; they're an utter shit show, even if you pay a bunch of money for them. So, thanks! I love VLC bunches. I've donated in the past, and will certainly donate again.
- stordoff 11y ago
  > It plays literally everything In the ten or so years I've used it, I've only come across one file that VLC wouldn't play (excluded DRMed files) - a (possibly malformed) 24hr long MP4 I recorded a few years ago. Pretty much everything chokes on it (VLC crashes straight away), though oddly enough Windows Media Player handles it fine until you try to seek to a different time. I've dabbled with other media players/codecs in the past, but usually end up back at VLC not long after due to its versatility. Impressive stuff.
  - projct 11y ago
    you might be able to reindex or remux this file (save to a new file in the process) to fix it, by the way.
    - 11y ago
thekevan 11y ago
My first reaction was, "Fifteen, shmifteen! When's that Chromecast support you promised coming?" In all seriousness, as they say, VLC just opens everything. Thanks for it!
- mlvljr 11y ago
  Would've added this comment, but Ctrl-F-ed first :)
- jbk 11y ago
  > https://github.com/robUx4/vlc/tree/cc_master_intf_snd2 https://github.com/robUx4/vlc/tree/cc_master_intf_snd2 Should be what you want.
  - thekevan 11y ago
    Thanks but to be honest, I am clueless on how to install it or use it on my Ubuntu machine.
ljk 11y ago
never realized VLC has been around for so long!
- xufi 11y ago
  Yeah amazing isnt it Its a great player
oxide 11y ago
I'll never be able to say enough good things about VLC, it changed the way I interacted with video permanently. I haven't thought about a codec in years. only wish I found it sooner.
douche 11y ago
Maybe there is a plugin or something that provides this, but I wish VLC had a little bit better library management. It gets very tedious trying to import a large library and fix meta-data. I suppose if you go too far in this area, you just end up reimplementing Kodi/XMBC, though.
- jbk 11y ago
  We are exactly working on that. If you see the Android and iOS versions of VLC, they have those library features. It will come on desktop.
ausjke 11y ago
Use it all the time. Thanks for the great project! Wish SRTP can work well someday.
- jbk 11y ago
  Technically, it already should. File a bug report with a sample!
dudul 11y ago
One of the greatest pieces of software I've ever used! I have yet to find a format of video it won't open.
jackfoxy 11y ago
I was very pleased to learn I could delay or advance the audio track on videos where the audio and video were out of sync, but I never did figure out how to save a video with the tracks properly synced and gave up.
coverband 11y ago
I used to promote VLC at every corner, until they dropped the ball on 4K support big time. Even with a good mid-price graphics card, they're unable to utilize the GPU hardware effectively, and if you don't have a good amount of CPU power, the app chokes when it's asked to play 4K video. Ridiculous, since even the integrated Intel graphics on CPUs are now capable of playing 4K without any trouble.
- Laforet 11y ago
  Out of interest, which media player do you use now? Are they cross-platform like VLC?
  - Thaxll 11y ago
    mpc-hc is the best for Windows.
    - mariusmg 11y ago
      SMplayer says hi :)
  - coverband 11y ago
    I still go with VLC out of habit, but switch to MPC to play 4k videos.
  - Kristine1975 11y ago
    mpv is fast and plays just about everything, but it takes a bit getting used to, since its GUI is very minimalistic (by design). Configuration is via text files, and it is scriptable in Lua. Available for Linux, Mac and Windows: https://mpv.io/ https://mpv.io/
- nitrogen 11y ago
  mplayer should be able to use your video acceleration.
- darkr 11y ago
  I can only comment on the Linux side of GPU accelerated video decoding as that's where my experience is: Pretty much _the_ standard for GPU accelerated video decoding is VDPAU, originally an nvidia project, now open source. Support for intel integrated GPUs came a little later in Linux under the guise of VAAPI (technically a subset of VDPAU). ATI/AMD also have a proprietary API called XVBA via their catalyst drivers but I haven't had much interaction with ATI hardware on Linux for a long time. VDPAU allows my 7 year old weedy 1.6ghz atom to play 1080p without breaking a sweat (around 2% CPU usage). VLC lagged behind a lot of other players (e.g mplayer, my personal favourite player; which added support in ~2009 or so), but has had decent VDPAU/VAAPI support since 2.1 (2013?). In the case of VDPAU on nvidia, support for 4K is a hardware limitation (the purevideo chip that actually does the decoding). It's supported on purevideo 5 and later (present on some later fermi and most Kepler architecture cards). It's the same story with Intel. Generally speaking, only Haswell and later architecture CPUs have support for 4K.
noonespecial 11y ago
A client once gave me a lecture about how FOSS couldn't possibly produce software with the quality of commercial and was really just a parasitic element on software development. He pulled up a video talk by some "expert" on the topic. Oh yes, he used VLC. Thanks for the classic "umm.. you know..." moment VLC project.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  the entire linux operating system wasn't enough for him, huh?
  - noonespecial 11y ago
    For this guy, no. He knew nearly nothing at all about linux. His was a windows shop through and through. It was much more powerful to call out a program he knew and used than the nebulous "linux" that he had never seen in action and believed to just be an inferior rip-off of windows 2003 server.
- naasking 11y ago
  > FOSS [...] was really just a parasitic element on software development. That's a weird claim. It's not like FOSS is taking tax money or forcing people to pay for something they don't use. How else could it possibly be parasitic?
  - noonespecial 11y ago
    It was a long convoluted argument. It went something like, "if all of those communists hadn't just made all that stuff for free then lots more people would have jobs building it". Also it all violated patents and was inherently inferior (but by its dastardly and audacious existence, prevented the better commercial stuff from being made). As well as costing the jobs. ??? It was about as coherent as cooked spaghetti.
- kowdermeister 11y ago
  > FOSS couldn't possibly produce software with the quality of commercial Sometimes it's quite true, sometimes it's not, while I dislike extremist opinions probably his problems weren't solved by FOSS :) It depends on the task you want to solve.
harshreality 11y ago
vlc 2.2.1, latest desktop release, has a possible code execution bug relating to 3gp (which doesn't have to be the file extension). Most distros have patched it, but the videolan releases don't appear to be patched since they're 2.2.1 and since the file modification for one mirror of win32 2.2.1 is last April (of course it would be pathologically stupid to release patched binaries without a new release, but it's possible, and they don't appear to have done either). https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2015-5949 https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2015-59...
- dmix 11y ago
  Not many people open random remote video streaming links in VLC...
gesman 11y ago
The most difficult challenge was to survive constant pressures from crapware for bundling deals. Filezilla and alikes succumbed to that long time ago while VLC stand above the crowd. Kudos, hats off and happy birthday!
- jbk 11y ago
  > The most difficult challenge was to survive constant pressures from crapware for bundling deals. We receive 5 of those offers per week, with VLC. And the amounts proposed are very very tempting.
  - na85 11y ago
    >We receive 5 of those offers per week, with VLC. And the amounts proposed are very very tempting. Thank you for not doing it.
  - frik 11y ago
    Please keep staying away from it. FileZilla burned them-self, everyone moved to alternatives
    - dagw 11y ago
      everyone moved to alternatives Like? I want to move to an alternative, but nothing reasonably easy to use and deploy on windows comes close FileZilla for performance.
      - bvr22 11y ago
        client-side, you can use WinSCP, free, supports SCP, SFTP and FTP protocols. You can also use any piece of software on your computer to edit remote files, you juste have to configure file extensions in the parameters (like MSWord for .doc/.docx, notepad++ for .txt/.log/whatever, etc)
        dagw 11y ago
pkroll 11y ago
Since several people have said "it opens everything!" I thought I'd list a couple it doesn't handle: HYMT codec (multithreaded version of Huffyuv, useful for lossless capture of HD) UT Video codec various versions (also a multithreaded lossless codec set, I believe some versions VLC can play... but not the last several), oh and some FFV1 variants (clearly ffmpeg's fault, but still). All the above work fine with MPC-HC on Windows, if you have the codecs installed. VLC is still my player of choice, but as I've used HYMT and UT Video a lot, I've missed having them supported.
- jbk 11y ago
  Send me those files. We should have fixed both in the last version.
  - slazaro 11y ago
    Slightly off-topic: Do you also look for files that play okay, but the audio and video are off-sync? Also, files where audio stops playing when seeking, for a few seconds? That seems to happen a lot to me.
    - jbk 11y ago
      Yes, we do.
  - mistermann 11y ago
    For years I have been infuriated by the window auto-resizing to match the video resolution issue, despite there being a checkbox to prevent resizing. Despite just quickly testing now and seeing that it seems to work (as it has on most prior occasions) I would happily bet a sizeable sum of money that no, in fact it isn't actually working and some future video I open will resize the window to a brazillion x gazillion. I really wish this would be fixed completely once and for all some day.
  - pkroll 11y ago
    Sent to your email (well, links were sent, the files are a little large for email...). Thanks for looking at these!
jrcii 11y ago
I just want to say that VLC is one of the finest pieces of software I've ever had the privilege of running and the contributors to the project should be proud of themselves. It is fast, reliable, and robust. I suspect many who use it don't realize how powerful it is. Its command line interface offers the ability to integrate the automation of complex multimedia processes. It runs everything I throw at it.
juli3n 11y ago
The best French-born software IMHO :)
- masklinn 11y ago
  That's a pretty lofty claim. Remember, Fabrice Bellard is french which makes FFmpeg and QEMU[0] french-born software as well ;) [0] and some other less prominent stuff: http://bellard.org http://bellard.org
janvdberg 11y ago
My favorite VLC story is about this guy from Syria providing patches while being bombed. I heard jpkempf tell his story this weekend at FOSDEM (video isn't up yet). It was featured on HN couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10580208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10580208
why-el 11y ago
By far my favorite VLC feature is when it picks subtitles automatically when they are named the same as the original video file. :)
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
I use VLC every day. A great multi platform app, very useful contribution to the open source community. Keep up the fantastic work.
kowdermeister 11y ago
Is it me only who experiences a rather slow startup time with VLC on Windows 10? Once it's loaded it rocks (as long as I want to watch videos). For music, it's not the best tool, but it does the job.
agumonkey 11y ago
I'm not entirely sure, but it seems that http://formation-debian.via.ecp.fr/ http://formation-debian.via.ecp.fr/, a famous debian tutorial (at least in early 2Ks) came from that school too. That's what made me get into debian without too much pain.
GTP 11y ago
Seems that vlc 3 would have chromecast support. I'm looking foward for that.

585 points by bpierre 11y ago

orik 11y ago

does network 2000 have any relation to foobar2000?

tyrust 11y ago
Your question had me interested, so I looked around a bit and found this forum post from "Peter" [0]: >"foobar2000" is indeed a piece of random gibberish I had to type into "project name" box when creating a new project in MSVC, on the day all this started. IIRC I spent about 5 minutes on thinking about it - I wanted to get things working ASAP rather than worry about the name. That forum profile has a link to Peter Pawlowski's website [1] and has been active since 2001, so I'd like to believe it's really him. [0] - https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?PHPSESSID=j8ru3u6374lh2vvh4gcmpjb965&topic=9784.msg98900#msg98900 https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?PHPSESSID=j8ru3u6374lh2vvh4... [1] - http://perkele.cc/ http://perkele.cc/

dopeboy 11y ago

In the earlier days of mainstream desktop linux (~2005), video codecs were a complete shitshow. VLC was a godsend during those times - it just worked. Still the first thing I apt-get after a fresh install. If you're reading this team VLC, thank you for your work. Ways to contribute to VLC: http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html

NeutronBoy 11y ago
Even until the last few years on Windows, codecs were a shit show. You could download codec packs, but it was pretty hit and miss. VLC was amazing - it would open everything, audio just worked, and subtitles just worked.
- deciplex 11y ago
  CCCP has worked great for me on Windows for the last 10+ years.
  - cdr 11y ago
    CCCP was amazing when it first came about. The last time I wanted to watch something, though, KCP was recommended over CCCP. Things are forever going to be a bit of a mess with playing anime since there's a long tradition of being on the bleeding edge of encoding.
- markild 11y ago
  Yeah. And ending up playing a game of "useful or malware"
- elboru 11y ago
  That's true even today, maybe I'm getting old and I don't play much with other tools like I used to do, but VLC is the only one that always "just work".
Kluny 11y ago
Quicktime on Mac OS remains a shitshow to this day. I still have not figured out how to use third party srt files for subtitles.
- Keyframe 11y ago
  You can use VLC on OSX as well. It works great!
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - kapuetri 11y ago
    When watching h.264 VLC consumes lots of CPU when QuickTime doesn't. I don't know why.
    - astrosi 11y ago
      I assume that it is because QuickTime is using your GPU to decode the h.264 but VLC isn't. There is support for hardware accelerated h.264 decoding in VLC; you just need to enable it. I think the option is in Input and Codecs tab in the preferences.
    - guard-of-terra 11y ago
      Maybe QuickTime knows how to leverage hardware decoding?
    - cooper12 11y ago
      You might have hardware acceleration in the Input/Codecs menu disabled.
    - jbk 11y ago
      Try VLC 3.0.0 nightly builds using VideoToolbox or activate GPU decoding.
- booruguru 11y ago
  I think the srt file needs to have the same name as the main video file and they both need to be in the same folder.
moonshinefe 11y ago
VLC has been one of the best bets for a video player and I've used it for years. I've never contributed before though, so I'll gladly do it for their 15th year.

ggambetta 11y ago

VLC is amazing. As a friend put it, "VLC will open everything, even a can of tuna". Thanks for VLC, VLC devs.

seivan 11y ago

Still wished I could have VLC as an engine inside QuickTime or whatever's native to the platform/OS. Is that possible or do you have to source the web for several obscure codecs?

xufi 11y ago
I dont think it's possible since it seemed pretty lock down to me. I just always replaced it as my main player since that seemed to be the least hasle free way than mess with the OS featured player to get it to work right
leohutson 11y ago
This is a thing already. It's an option as a qt phonon backend in Linux at least, so all qt apps that use it will support any of vlcs codecs.
lmm 11y ago
OS-specific things are OS-specific. ffmpeg (the primary backend decoder used by VLC and many other OS projects) is a great cross-platform library that can play most things, but you need some kind of platform-specific wrapper (e.g. ffdshow on windows) to hook it into the OS' native services and make it available inside other apps.

aerovistae 11y ago

fucking amazing software, as good as it gets. kudos.

gregschlom 11y ago

A little know fact about the VideoLAN project is that it was started so that the student organization could justify the need to replace the old networking infrastructure of the campus with a brand new high-bandwidth fiber optics network. They really wanted to deploy a fiber optic network but the school would have never approved it so they thought "OK, we need something that uses a ton of bandwidth, let's make a video streaming app". They proceeded to start the VideoLAN project, with the VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN server, and streamed movies and public television channels to the whole campus. Interesting how it came to benefit everybody. Source: I studied there and had a chat with one of the original creators of the project once.

BostonEnginerd 11y ago
I remember this. The Linux User Group on my college campus in 2002 was trying to setup a streaming service using VLC to stream DVDs across the network to all interested parties. Unfortunately the administration forcefully said no. This was the height of the Napster lawsuits as I recall.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dopamean 11y ago
Over the years when I've opened VLC I've occasionally wondered what the LAN part meant in VideoLAN. I thought it must be something other than Local Area Network. Thanks for sharing.
- jbk 11y ago
  Yes. It was created to do DVB-S to campus LAN streaming.
wlesieutre 11y ago
On a related note, VLC's traffic cone icon comes from a club member drunkenly stealing one, which then ballooned into the organization collecting them and eventually inspired the icon. https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=9792 https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=9792

colordrops 11y ago

I love VLC's engine, but have never been a fan of its UI, especially the configuration interface. How well separated are the UI and engine? Building a new UI for VLC seems like a fun project.

tnigro 11y ago
You might want to check out VLC for Windows Store. We're trying new UI and user experiences and will release soon an update on Windows 10 with an improved design (cleaner and faster).
- matzipan 11y ago
  Been sporting it for a while. I wasn't sure if it was official, but nice execution!
- arm 11y ago
  I’ve had a pretty poor experience with VLC on the Windows Store. I tried it on my tablet (an HP Stream 7) running Windows 8.1, hoping to use it to play the music from my iTunes library (by copying the Music folder in iTunes’ iTunes Media folder from the computer that I use iTunes on to a microSD card inserted in the tablet’s microSD card slot). Unfortunately, it had a number of issues: Issue #1: It seems that VLC doesn’t like the directory structure iTunes uses to store your music (when you’ve checkmarked the option in iTunes to 'Keep iTunes Media folder organized'), which consists of the top level (the 'Music' folder) containing folders named after each artist, which in turn contain folders named after the albums of each respective artist, which in turn contain the actual music files for those albums. The reason I believe VLC doesn’t like this way of having the music organized is because after letting VLC read this music folder, VLC showed the albums in a completely non-sensical way (it was showing duplicate entries for the same album, with tracks in those albums being split between the duplicates (despite the music files containing ID3 tags!)). Issue #2: There’s no way to tell VLC not to search for information on the tracks from the Internet. It shows some of my songs with erroneous album art, etc. My songs that come from actual albums already have the album art embedded, so I don’t need VLC applying completely irrelevant album art to songs that aren’t actually from an album! Issue #3: It’s extremely slow (on my HP Stream 7)! ―――――― I ended up switching over to MediaMonkey on the Windows Store, and while it has a host of issues of its own (it doesn’t show notifications for songs with album art, the UI gets glitchy after using it for a while (stuff like not showing text in the app anymore, so you can’t see your track names… which can only be rectified by closing and reopening it), etc.), at least it actually shows the contents on my Music folder perfectly organized (no duplicates or other such issues), it doesn’t try searching for metadata on the Internet, and it’s actually fast.

SwellJoe 11y ago

I briefly operated an audiovisual services company (that lost a tremendous amount of money, but that had nothing to do with VLC), and after trying loads of players, came back to VLC. It allowed all of the stuff I needed and that many other players (including expensive commercial ones) failed at. It plays literally everything. We regularly had sponsors show up the day of the show and hand me a USB drive with their ad reel on it. With no clue what the format would be, I would always be able to say, "yeah, we can put it in the playlist for tonight". It has excellent playlist abilities, and excellent means of controlling the playlist. Our shows often included multiple sources (live video, sponsor reel, feature, short, trailers, etc.), and being able to manually select the right things at the right times with keyboard shortcuts was great. It actually allows one to kill all on screen displays, and can be reliably configured to always open video on the secondary display (projector) and controls on the primary display (laptop). This is shockingly difficult with every other player I used. They would always have problems getting things onto the right display, or would show some kinda bullshit on the screen. This is particularly true of the DVD and Blu Ray capable players; they're an utter shit show, even if you pay a bunch of money for them. So, thanks! I love VLC bunches. I've donated in the past, and will certainly donate again.

stordoff 11y ago
> It plays literally everything In the ten or so years I've used it, I've only come across one file that VLC wouldn't play (excluded DRMed files) - a (possibly malformed) 24hr long MP4 I recorded a few years ago. Pretty much everything chokes on it (VLC crashes straight away), though oddly enough Windows Media Player handles it fine until you try to seek to a different time. I've dabbled with other media players/codecs in the past, but usually end up back at VLC not long after due to its versatility. Impressive stuff.
- projct 11y ago
  you might be able to reindex or remux this file (save to a new file in the process) to fix it, by the way.
  - 11y ago

thekevan 11y ago

My first reaction was, "Fifteen, shmifteen! When's that Chromecast support you promised coming?" In all seriousness, as they say, VLC just opens everything. Thanks for it!

mlvljr 11y ago
Would've added this comment, but Ctrl-F-ed first :)
jbk 11y ago
> https://github.com/robUx4/vlc/tree/cc_master_intf_snd2 https://github.com/robUx4/vlc/tree/cc_master_intf_snd2 Should be what you want.
- thekevan 11y ago
  Thanks but to be honest, I am clueless on how to install it or use it on my Ubuntu machine.

ljk 11y ago

never realized VLC has been around for so long!

xufi 11y ago
Yeah amazing isnt it Its a great player

oxide 11y ago

I'll never be able to say enough good things about VLC, it changed the way I interacted with video permanently. I haven't thought about a codec in years. only wish I found it sooner.

douche 11y ago

Maybe there is a plugin or something that provides this, but I wish VLC had a little bit better library management. It gets very tedious trying to import a large library and fix meta-data. I suppose if you go too far in this area, you just end up reimplementing Kodi/XMBC, though.

jbk 11y ago
We are exactly working on that. If you see the Android and iOS versions of VLC, they have those library features. It will come on desktop.

ausjke 11y ago

Use it all the time. Thanks for the great project! Wish SRTP can work well someday.

jbk 11y ago
Technically, it already should. File a bug report with a sample!

dudul 11y ago

One of the greatest pieces of software I've ever used! I have yet to find a format of video it won't open.

jackfoxy 11y ago

I was very pleased to learn I could delay or advance the audio track on videos where the audio and video were out of sync, but I never did figure out how to save a video with the tracks properly synced and gave up.

coverband 11y ago

I used to promote VLC at every corner, until they dropped the ball on 4K support big time. Even with a good mid-price graphics card, they're unable to utilize the GPU hardware effectively, and if you don't have a good amount of CPU power, the app chokes when it's asked to play 4K video. Ridiculous, since even the integrated Intel graphics on CPUs are now capable of playing 4K without any trouble.

Laforet 11y ago
Out of interest, which media player do you use now? Are they cross-platform like VLC?
- Thaxll 11y ago
  mpc-hc is the best for Windows.
  - mariusmg 11y ago
    SMplayer says hi :)
- coverband 11y ago
  I still go with VLC out of habit, but switch to MPC to play 4k videos.
- Kristine1975 11y ago
  mpv is fast and plays just about everything, but it takes a bit getting used to, since its GUI is very minimalistic (by design). Configuration is via text files, and it is scriptable in Lua. Available for Linux, Mac and Windows: https://mpv.io/ https://mpv.io/
nitrogen 11y ago
mplayer should be able to use your video acceleration.
darkr 11y ago
I can only comment on the Linux side of GPU accelerated video decoding as that's where my experience is: Pretty much _the_ standard for GPU accelerated video decoding is VDPAU, originally an nvidia project, now open source. Support for intel integrated GPUs came a little later in Linux under the guise of VAAPI (technically a subset of VDPAU). ATI/AMD also have a proprietary API called XVBA via their catalyst drivers but I haven't had much interaction with ATI hardware on Linux for a long time. VDPAU allows my 7 year old weedy 1.6ghz atom to play 1080p without breaking a sweat (around 2% CPU usage). VLC lagged behind a lot of other players (e.g mplayer, my personal favourite player; which added support in ~2009 or so), but has had decent VDPAU/VAAPI support since 2.1 (2013?). In the case of VDPAU on nvidia, support for 4K is a hardware limitation (the purevideo chip that actually does the decoding). It's supported on purevideo 5 and later (present on some later fermi and most Kepler architecture cards). It's the same story with Intel. Generally speaking, only Haswell and later architecture CPUs have support for 4K.

noonespecial 11y ago

A client once gave me a lecture about how FOSS couldn't possibly produce software with the quality of commercial and was really just a parasitic element on software development. He pulled up a video talk by some "expert" on the topic. Oh yes, he used VLC. Thanks for the classic "umm.. you know..." moment VLC project.

beachstartup 11y ago
the entire linux operating system wasn't enough for him, huh?
- noonespecial 11y ago
  For this guy, no. He knew nearly nothing at all about linux. His was a windows shop through and through. It was much more powerful to call out a program he knew and used than the nebulous "linux" that he had never seen in action and believed to just be an inferior rip-off of windows 2003 server.
naasking 11y ago
> FOSS [...] was really just a parasitic element on software development. That's a weird claim. It's not like FOSS is taking tax money or forcing people to pay for something they don't use. How else could it possibly be parasitic?
- noonespecial 11y ago
  It was a long convoluted argument. It went something like, "if all of those communists hadn't just made all that stuff for free then lots more people would have jobs building it". Also it all violated patents and was inherently inferior (but by its dastardly and audacious existence, prevented the better commercial stuff from being made). As well as costing the jobs. ??? It was about as coherent as cooked spaghetti.
kowdermeister 11y ago
> FOSS couldn't possibly produce software with the quality of commercial Sometimes it's quite true, sometimes it's not, while I dislike extremist opinions probably his problems weren't solved by FOSS :) It depends on the task you want to solve.

harshreality 11y ago

vlc 2.2.1, latest desktop release, has a possible code execution bug relating to 3gp (which doesn't have to be the file extension). Most distros have patched it, but the videolan releases don't appear to be patched since they're 2.2.1 and since the file modification for one mirror of win32 2.2.1 is last April (of course it would be pathologically stupid to release patched binaries without a new release, but it's possible, and they don't appear to have done either). https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2015-5949 https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2015-59...

dmix 11y ago
Not many people open random remote video streaming links in VLC...

gesman 11y ago

The most difficult challenge was to survive constant pressures from crapware for bundling deals. Filezilla and alikes succumbed to that long time ago while VLC stand above the crowd. Kudos, hats off and happy birthday!

jbk 11y ago
> The most difficult challenge was to survive constant pressures from crapware for bundling deals. We receive 5 of those offers per week, with VLC. And the amounts proposed are very very tempting.
- na85 11y ago
  >We receive 5 of those offers per week, with VLC. And the amounts proposed are very very tempting. Thank you for not doing it.
- frik 11y ago
  Please keep staying away from it. FileZilla burned them-self, everyone moved to alternatives
  - dagw 11y ago
    everyone moved to alternatives Like? I want to move to an alternative, but nothing reasonably easy to use and deploy on windows comes close FileZilla for performance.
    - bvr22 11y ago
      client-side, you can use WinSCP, free, supports SCP, SFTP and FTP protocols. You can also use any piece of software on your computer to edit remote files, you juste have to configure file extensions in the parameters (like MSWord for .doc/.docx, notepad++ for .txt/.log/whatever, etc)
      - dagw 11y ago

pkroll 11y ago

Since several people have said "it opens everything!" I thought I'd list a couple it doesn't handle: HYMT codec (multithreaded version of Huffyuv, useful for lossless capture of HD) UT Video codec various versions (also a multithreaded lossless codec set, I believe some versions VLC can play... but not the last several), oh and some FFV1 variants (clearly ffmpeg's fault, but still). All the above work fine with MPC-HC on Windows, if you have the codecs installed. VLC is still my player of choice, but as I've used HYMT and UT Video a lot, I've missed having them supported.

jbk 11y ago
Send me those files. We should have fixed both in the last version.
- slazaro 11y ago
  Slightly off-topic: Do you also look for files that play okay, but the audio and video are off-sync? Also, files where audio stops playing when seeking, for a few seconds? That seems to happen a lot to me.
  - jbk 11y ago
    Yes, we do.
- mistermann 11y ago
  For years I have been infuriated by the window auto-resizing to match the video resolution issue, despite there being a checkbox to prevent resizing. Despite just quickly testing now and seeing that it seems to work (as it has on most prior occasions) I would happily bet a sizeable sum of money that no, in fact it isn't actually working and some future video I open will resize the window to a brazillion x gazillion. I really wish this would be fixed completely once and for all some day.
- pkroll 11y ago
  Sent to your email (well, links were sent, the files are a little large for email...). Thanks for looking at these!

jrcii 11y ago

I just want to say that VLC is one of the finest pieces of software I've ever had the privilege of running and the contributors to the project should be proud of themselves. It is fast, reliable, and robust. I suspect many who use it don't realize how powerful it is. Its command line interface offers the ability to integrate the automation of complex multimedia processes. It runs everything I throw at it.

juli3n 11y ago

The best French-born software IMHO :)

masklinn 11y ago
That's a pretty lofty claim. Remember, Fabrice Bellard is french which makes FFmpeg and QEMU[0] french-born software as well ;) [0] and some other less prominent stuff: http://bellard.org http://bellard.org

janvdberg 11y ago

My favorite VLC story is about this guy from Syria providing patches while being bombed. I heard jpkempf tell his story this weekend at FOSDEM (video isn't up yet). It was featured on HN couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10580208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10580208

why-el 11y ago

By far my favorite VLC feature is when it picks subtitles automatically when they are named the same as the original video file. :)

blisterpeanuts 11y ago

I use VLC every day. A great multi platform app, very useful contribution to the open source community. Keep up the fantastic work.

kowdermeister 11y ago

Is it me only who experiences a rather slow startup time with VLC on Windows 10? Once it's loaded it rocks (as long as I want to watch videos). For music, it's not the best tool, but it does the job.

agumonkey 11y ago

I'm not entirely sure, but it seems that http://formation-debian.via.ecp.fr/ http://formation-debian.via.ecp.fr/, a famous debian tutorial (at least in early 2Ks) came from that school too. That's what made me get into debian without too much pain.

GTP 11y ago

Seems that vlc 3 would have chromecast support. I'm looking foward for that.