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As usual, please don't hesitate to ask questions about VLC, VideoLAN or related projects (x264, dav1d, libbluray...) Disclaimer: VideoLAN president
by jbk 6y ago
As usual, please don't hesitate to ask questions about VLC, VideoLAN or related projects (x264, dav1d, libbluray...)
Disclaimer: VideoLAN president
- londons_explore 6y agoHow do you fund your work? Have you had to take a pay cut to work on VLC compared to working on similar commercial tech?
- jbk 6y ago> How do you fund your work? Have you had to take a pay cut to work on VLC compared to working on similar commercial tech? VideoLAN does not make any money outside of donations. I have a startup, called Videolabs since 2013.
- phreeza 6y agoWhy the traffic cone?
- colejohnson66 6y agoWhat's the history behind using a traffic cone as a logo?
- dmd 6y agoWhy not ask something that isn't in the Wikipedia article?
- muizelaar 6y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20201125184135/http://nanocrew.net/2005/06/23/vlc-cone/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201125184135/http://nanocrew.n... for those who don't want to dig through wikipedia.
- colejohnson66 6y agoAll I get is that it's an "in joke" of sorts that has just never changed. What I'm asking is: is there anything more than that? Such as: why hasn't it changed (not that it should)?
- jbk 6y agoThis story involves drinking students and internal jokes :)
- rhplus 6y agoIt was created by a group of students at an urban university in a country where the legal age to drink alcohol is 18. Such conditions often lead to collections of traffic cones.
- stormdennis 6y agoSo if it had been made 10 years earlier it might have featured a traffic cone AND a shopping trolley!
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoVLC is the best program I have ever used. Dumb joke: When it turns 21, what would be the drink that VLC would like?
- gspr 6y ago> Dumb joke: When it turns 21, what would be the drink that VLC would like? VLC is French, so it's been drinking great wine since it was 18 ;-)
- kgwxd 6y agoThe legal drinking age in France is 18 :)
- nolok 6y agoIt's the buying/selling age. There is technically no legal drinking age in France, but rules about minors (parent responsability under rule of "common sense", parent must be present if under 16, illegal to have the minor drunk no matter what). Eg your parents giving you a small glass of champagne at new year when you're 12 is legal.
- nolok 6y agoThere is no minimum legal drinking age in France*, the limit is only for buying/selling. * illegal to get a minor drunk no matter the age, parents must be present if the minor is under 16, minor is under parent supervision and responsibility in any case (source : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%82ge_l%C3%A9gal_pour_la_consommation_d%27alcool#Europe https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%82ge_l%C3%A9gal_pour_la_co... )
- amir734jj 6y agoHow was VideoLAN started? I remember "Media Player Classic" and "K-Lite Codec Pack" were popular back then and when I installed VideoLAN and it blew my mind. Extremely fast, no buffering and very lightweight. I am 26 but I have been using VideoLAN as long as I can remember. The best media player.
- jbk 6y agoThe video at the end of the press release explains the story. But in tl;dr: form: Ecole Centrale Paris campus network was managed by students. In 1995, they wanted a faster network, to play video games, and upgrade from their Token Ring network. The Univ did not want to pay so they went to see partners, and one said "put the satellite feed on your network to justify the need for a better network. We'll pay for it, instead of having 2000 dishes and decoders.". This PoC "Network 2000" was a success. Some students restarted the project in 1998 and called it VideoLAN. In 2001, VideoLAN and all the software projects (Server, Client, network, libraries) became GPL. VideoLan Client became VLC. Community added Windows, macOS support. In 2008, I created the VideoLAN non-profit to escape the university and make VLC grow.
- a-dub 6y agowas "network 2000" multicast? how similar/different was it to xing streamworks (commercial multicast mpeg suite from that time)?
- jbk 6y agoIt was an ATM backbone, but the routers did not support mcast. So they cheated to do multicast on a non-multicast network.
- Debug_Overload 6y agoThank you guys for the great work! VLC is just great.
- rootsudo 6y ago2008 makes sense, about the time where k-lite codec pack and media player classic started to be eclipsed! Wow. Thank you for the best video player out there, for all those exciting, strange and exciting codecs!
- gspr 6y agoThank you, the organization and of course the maintainers of all this wonderful software that you maintain! I recently tracked down and reported my first bug in one of the projects and the maintainers made the experience an absolute joy! To the question: I keep hearing from my younger peers that they don't see any value in out-of-browser software. To me, that's their loss. But if this attitude is prevalent, do you feel you are having a harder time attracting talent than say 10-20 years ago? Merci encore une fois !
- jbk 6y ago> But if this attitude is prevalent, do you feel you are having a harder time attracting talent than say 10-20 years ago? A lot lot lot harder than in the past. You have no idea...
- gspr 6y agoAre you worried about the VideoLAN projects going forward? Should other foundational free software projects be worried too?
- jbk 6y agoA bit, to be honest. Which is why we're doing some professional work to fund it.
- FabHK 6y agowow, I had no idea indeed. Interesting (and dispiriting) to know. (It is frustrating already that when you say that you program, a certain kind of youngster asks "frontend or backend?", and when you say neither, they say knowingly, "oh, fullstack!" (>_<) )
- paulz_ 6y agoHey jbk just wanted to take this chance to say thanks! VLC has been year over year some of the most consitently good software I've ever used. Thank you for all the hard work I'm sure goes into making a killer product.
- kome 6y agoI love VLC! Thank you for your work.
- einpoklum 6y agoThe VLC player is incredibly popular. And a bunch of libraries that are part of the project are also pretty well-known (less so by end users I suppose). But - I have rarely, if ever, seen uses of: * VideoLAN Server * VideoLAN Bridge * VideoLAN Channel Switcher The press release doesn't focus on them much, either. I don't see them on the project page. Can you describe what happened with them? Also - how you've chosen projects you've started more recently (like multicat or the VLMC editor)?
- jbk 6y ago> Can you describe what happened with them? They are dead. VLS features are now done with DVBlast. The other are useless with modern networks.
- dantheman 6y agoCongrats!
- zests 6y agoWhat happened internally when you discovered that you were given a false severe grade CVE? I remember seeing many articles suggesting users uninstall VLC. https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-13615 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-13615
- jbk 6y ago> What happened internally when you discovered that you were given a false severe grade CVE? Nothing, but we knew it was going to be a shitstorm. Clickbait articles are very annoying. As for the CVE system, it's utterly broken and idiotic.
- saagarjha 6y agoHey now, CVEs are fine; it's CVSS that is totally broken.
- glenstein 6y agoWoah, I didn't realize it was false! I remember hearing about that at the time. I had installed VLC at work (generic office, non-tech industry that just uses windows office software) and was worried I might get in trouble, so I uninstalled it.
- dedosk 6y agoWould you port VLC UI from Qt to something like Electron or some other web-based solution? I hope not, but checking in terms of UI toolkit trends and solutions...
- jbk 6y ago> Would you port VLC UI from Qt to something like Electron or some other web-based solution? No. We're moving some parts to QML, but that's C++ (and the part that are JS are moving to C++ in Qt6)
- jbaber 6y agoSimplement: merci!
- gostsamo 6y agoCan you add to VLC a support for reading subtitles with the os screen reader? Currently only PodPlayer supports that after KMP turned into an adware. Also, if you can offer native accessibility support would be much better for screen reader users. Currently, I need an extension for NVDA to use the VLC player.
- jbk 6y ago> Can you add to VLC a support for reading subtitles with the os screen reader? it's already doable. But it does disable the display of subtitles.
- Bayart 6y ago>Currently only PodPlayer supports that after KMP turned into an adware Potplayer became adware too...
- devindotcom 6y agoCurious whether there are/were plans for a VLC-lite that eschews the many more advanced features (transcoding, streaming, etc) and focuses purely on playback with as little overhead as possible? Maybe I missed this discussion already but as much as I love VLC sometimes it feels like I'm using a semi truck to drive to the store and back.
- jbk 6y agoTechnically, most of those features are only in modules, and you can remove most of those already and have a functioning VLC. We don't remove them, because besides disk space, they don't take any CPU or RAM of the user.
- soheil 6y agoI wish the upload to iPhone UI in the browser looked better, the page that loads when navigating to http://iphone.local http://iphone.local It's hard to know what has already been uploaded to avoid duplicate uploads. It works great on my local wifi though. Additionaly is there any plan to incorporate youtube-dl in VLC for iPhone? It would be super beneficial to be able to download an entire YT playlist for offline consumption with VLC instead of first downloading it on a computer and then transferring the files to VLC on a mobile device.
- jimduk 6y agoWas working with the x264 crowd fun or exasperating or ...? Video-encoding is such a polymath topic (compression, perception, optimisation) and that code was so smart. I clearly remember mb-tree coming out and x264 quality/bitrate performance changing from good to supergood, and reading Dark Shikari's check in note about taking the implicit dependency graph and using it to propagate the relative quality of the blocks and it was a 'wow' moment. Also the Loren Merritt quote page still holds up well http://www.x264.nl/developers/Dark_Shikari/loren.html http://www.x264.nl/developers/Dark_Shikari/loren.html . Thank you
- jbk 6y ago> Was working with the x264 crowd fun or exasperating or ...? Pretty fun, tbh.
- ksec 6y agoI really wish Dark Shikari and Loren Merritt had continue to work on x265 or some other video encoder. 80%+ of all Video on the Internet are still on H.264 / AVC. And vast majority of them are encoded through x264. Their contribution to Video Encoding can not be understated.
- plorkyeran 6y agoThe issues related to commercial licensing of x264 probably ensured that Dark Shikari would never want to work on video encoding things again even before she burned out and quit software development entirely a few years later.
- mpfundstein 6y agowhat kind of person is Dark Shikari actually? Didnt know she is female. Where is she from? Is she employed somewhere or a freelancer???? I just wonder because she is such a legend but internet knows NOTHING. Bit like Satoshi...
- ksec 6y ago
- akvadrako 6y agoWhy doesn't VLC have good support for casting? I mean LAN is in the name - I shouldn't have to use a half-baked Chromecast solution that's proprietary, can't be a server and can't display most subtitles.
- jbk 6y agoBecause Chromecast is not done for push, but for pull. And because noone cares enough to fix it, I would guess...
- jimmaswell 6y ago> Chromecast is not done for push, but for pull. What does this mean?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Moru 6y agoPush = you at the computer pushing something to the TV. Pull = you at the surfpad, pulling from the computer.
- akvadrako 6y agoCasting is all about push
- rakoo 6y agoNo, your chromecast downloads and runs a webapp, and you give instructions about what to play from your computer/phone. That's hlw you can play a webradio and turn off your phone for example
- akvadrako 6y agoThat's an implementation detail and doesn't say anything about casting in general.
- barkingcat 6y agoWant to thank you and your team for such an great piece of software!
- Damogran6 6y agoThanks for continuing to produce a clean, pain-free, DRM headache free, lightweight, awesome product.
- jdofaz 6y agoAny word on AC-4 support? It was the first thing I threw at VLC that it couldn't play. :D
- jbk 6y agoUnder development
- ACS_Solver 6y agoI just want to say thank you. VLC remains one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. It just works, and while I mostly use it as a simple player, any time I needed some more advanced features, they were also there. Most unusually, VLC doesn't get worse with time like so much modern software does. No bloat, no ads, no removal of settings, no inexplicable UI redesigns for the sake of redesigning. Truly the gold standard of software.
- rakoo 6y agoFirst of all, thank you for VLC, for choosing the GPL, and for being one of the too few examples of French excellence in tech ! I can only sympathise with stories in Grandes Ecoles involving "found" cones :) What's coming for the next 20 years? Are there any challenges that the VideoLAN project has unique expertise on that it can bring out ?
- aantix 6y agoWhat are the best settings/codecs for upscaling video to 4K in real-time? Or is there a post-processing solution to upscale video for VLC? I've seen some impressive neural net solutions for upscaing, but they haven't been open source.
- astrange 6y agoI'm not sure open source really applies to an ML model, I suppose you can obfusticate it to "close it". Regardless, prior art here is open source (http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Nnedi3 http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Nnedi3).
- jbk 6y agoIn VLC 4.0, we'll add RAVU, NNEDI3 and a few other to upscale.
- jorvi 6y agoAre there any plans for an UI refresh? I've seen people on macOS switch to IINA in droves because the interface looks very slick and modern (yet functional!). I understand VLC is not in the business in chasing the latest UI fad, but the first thing people who don't know VLC notice about it is how archaic it looks.
- jbk 6y ago> Are there any plans for an UI refresh? yes, for 4.0
- jimmaswell 6y agoWill the old interface remain as an option? I'll be pretty disappointed if I wake up one day and the classic VLC interface is gone.
- RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 6y agoAre there plans to sandbox / harden VLC against security vulnerabilities? While my jolly roger days are long gone, and virtually all media I play are from trusted sources, VLC probably ranks top 5 by attack surface among the software I run regularly.
- jbk 6y agoYes, there is a big project on that those days :)
- RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u 6y agoThank you. In the link in your reply to a sibling thread, you asked for donations, and I'm happy to oblige. I know you're based in France, but is there a U.S. non-profit entity I could donate to (e.g. SPI)? The reason being that $WORK will match my donation, but sadly VideoLAN is not on the approved list.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoThe problem could also be solved by putting vlc itself in a sandbox. There is no reason a media player should have direct access to all of your files anyway. I wonder if the flatpak for vlc is set up with strong sandbox rules.
- jbk 6y ago> The problem could also be solved by putting vlc itself in a sandbox It cannot, no. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409234
- DonHopkins 6y ago>Probably do a multi-process media player, like Chrome is doing, with parsers and demuxers in a different process, and different ones for decoders and renderers. Knowing that you probably need to IPC several Gb/s between them. Chrome and other browsers and apps, and drivers like virtual webcams, and libraries like Syphon, can all pass "zero-copy" image buffers around between different processes by sharing buffers in GPU memory (or main memory too of course) and sending IPC messages pointing to the shared buffers. That's how the browser's web renderer processes efficiently share the rendered images with the web browser user interface process, for example. And how virtual webcam drivers can work so efficiently, too. Check out iOS/macOS's "IOSurface": https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iosurface https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iosurface >IOSurface Share hardware-accelerated buffer data (framebuffers and textures) across multiple processes. Manage image memory more efficiently. >Overview: The IOSurface framework provides a framebuffer object suitable for sharing across process boundaries. It is commonly used to allow applications to move complex image decompression and draw logic into a separate process to enhance security. And Android's "SurfaceTexture" and GL_TEXTURE_EXTERNAL_OES: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/SurfaceTexture https://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/Sur... >The image stream may come from either camera preview or video decode. A Surface created from a SurfaceTexture can be used as an output destination for the android.hardware.camera2, MediaCodec, MediaPlayer, and Allocation APIs. When updateTexImage() is called, the contents of the texture object specified when the SurfaceTexture was created are updated to contain the most recent image from the image stream. This may cause some frames of the stream to be skipped. https://source.android.com/devices/graphics/arch-st https://source.android.com/devices/graphics/arch-st >The main benefit of external textures is their ability to render directly from BufferQueue data. SurfaceTexture instances set the consumer usage flags to GRALLOC_USAGE_HW_TEXTURE when it creates BufferQueue instances for external textures to ensure that the data in the buffer is recognizable by GLES. And Syphon, which has a rich ecosystem of apps and tools and libraries: http://syphon.v002.info http://syphon.v002.info >Syphon is an open source Mac OS X technology that allows applications to share frames - full frame rate video or stills - with one another in realtime. Now you can leverage the expressive power of a plethora of tools to mix, mash, edit, sample, texture-map, synthesize, and present your imagery using the best tool for each part of the job. Syphon gives you flexibility to break out of single-app solutions and mix creative applications to suit your needs. Of course there's a VLC Syphon server: https://github.com/rsodre/VLCSyphon https://github.com/rsodre/VLCSyphon
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoThis might just be my own environment, but it seems like VLC's ability to stream from Youtube breaks very frequently. Is that just a side-effect of Google constantly updating their YT infrastructure, or do you believe they are intentionally introducing changes to sabotage the ability for third-party programs such as VLC to render their streams?
- therealmarv 6y agoWhen will VideoLAN focus on color accuracy (colors are slightly off by default)? I suspect most users don't notice but e.g. Quicktime on supported formats adjusts colors according to monitor color profile and video color profile and it's visible for trained eyes. I can adjust manually my VLC too in colors but it's not exact science and just by comparing and personal feeling. I wished I could optimise videos as good as my TV is doing it in VLC (but this is also beyond colors). Thanks VLC!
- jbk 6y ago> When will VideoLAN focus on color accuracy Next major release of VLC.
- kuschku 6y agoI get constant crashes with HDR10 video, is improving the support for HDR10 video also on the roadmap?
- cvuls 6y agoyour problem is likely this https://wiki.videolan.org/VSG:Video:Color_washed_out/ https://wiki.videolan.org/VSG:Video:Color_washed_out/
- therealmarv 6y agoNo it's not only this. I have to change Hue, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, and Gamma slightly. Quicktime on Mac does a better job in this. VLC is not color accurate by default or not optimized for subjective pleasing color results (unlike most TVs nowadays) but the manual sliders can compensate it. However it's annoying if you change monitors. Then the settings are off again.
- seanalltogether 6y agoDo you view videolan as a platform that should support an endless array of features and plugins and codecs, or do you view it more like a product that needs to keep cutting the fat as time moves on?
- jbk 6y ago"Plays it all." but we're working so that new features don't slow down the player, at runtime.
- mFixman 6y agoSomehow, VLC is both one of the programs with the most useful features and the least bloat I've ever used. What does your project management do right to find the right features without adding bloat? This is the kind of thing giant software companies struggle with, and they have the advantage of feature-tracking scripts on their programs.
- jbk 6y ago> What does your project management do right to find the right features without adding bloat? 3 answers: - limited resources - modules: adding features is often just a new module, which does not slow VLC. - only devs :)
- LoathsLights 6y agoI always loved using VLC, but I watch a lot of tv shows and as far as I know there's never been a good way to remember playlist position (except from some plugin I never got to work). Has this ever been a feature you have considered adding?
- jbk 6y ago> Has this ever been a feature you have considered adding? Next major release
- robertoandred 6y agoWill there be a way to turn off all of the extra library functionality? I just want a video player. Like QuickTime Player but with more format support.
- jbk 6y ago> Will there be a way to turn off all of the extra library functionality? yes.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- franzb 6y agoI like VLC but why is it so difficult to set the volume at exactly 100%? Or did I overlook an obvious way?
- 5555624 6y agoThe easiest way, I know of, is to to just under 100% using the sliding scale in the lower left corner and then go to the Audio menu and increase the volume. A click on Increase Volume goes up to the nearest number divisible by 5 (i.e. at 97%, clicking Increase Volume goes to 100%; at 92%, you need to do it twice).
- Moru 6y agoOr just use the mousewheel, also does 5% increments
- roelschroeven 6y agoThe easiest way that I found is using the up and down arrow keys: the set the volume to multiples of 5%.
- znkynz 6y agox265 playback on Windows seems challenging; nearly impossible to seek in files using slider bar?
- jorl17 6y agoDo you "like" the IINA project, assuming you're familar with it, and is there anything you can "take" from it? What are your thoughts on it? I used to always install VLC in all my machines. One day, I found a file that had wonky audio -- it randomly sped up and slowed down, but in a somewhat bearable way (it was a 2h-movie,) like some weird flutter was going on. I didn't make much of it at the time. Later, I got another file that would randomly lose audio. As in, sometimes, the audio would cut for a while and then come back. Except I used to replay this file often and noticed it happen in different places every run -- this got me thinking it could have been a software issue. At the time (this was roughly 4 years ago, I believe), I happened to see IINA mentioned somewhere, and I therefore gave it a go. It seemed to consume more CPU, but it didn't have the wonky audio in neither of these files. I became a fan and, while I keep VNC installed "just in case", I get this feeling that IINA has higher compatibility and a better interface. For example, IINA has what seems like a better algorithm for finding subtitles from a path, and it's just more well integrated with macOS. I wish I could go back to VLC, but I keep feeling like it's going to fail me or that the UI isn't as polished/well-integrated into macOS. I hate that I feel this way because I honestly feel like I'm "betraying" this wonderful piece of software that is VLC. I guess there isn't really another question. I'd like to say thanks, and here's to hoping that in the near future I'll go back to VLC. You have done a remarkable job and I think you should be extremely proud of yourself! VLC rocks! :)
- handedness 6y agoIINA is an excellent piece of software. I would love to see a linux build. VLC is still valuable for more technical edge cases, but I've had significant stability issues with VLC for many years and on all platforms. IINA has never crashed on me. It also addresses so many of my minor annoyances with VLC.
- saagarjha 6y agoIf it makes you feel any better, IINA ships with x264, dav1d, and libbluray ;) Speaking as someone who works on IINA, the team behind VLC is excellent and I'm very thankful for the work they do.
- unixhero 6y agoJust here to say: After all these years, thanks for not falling into malware and adware temptations. Should I say mad props also to a fantastoc milestone of 20 years.
- surround 6y agoWhy was the VideoLan Movie Creator (VLMC) abandoned? Will it ever be revived? It would be nice to have an open source video editor.
- cynoclast 6y agowhy does VLC still fail to support click to play/pause?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- alinhan 6y agoWhat's the state of VLC's support for HDR on Linux?