11 ms·

VLC 2.1.0

282 points by jbk 13y ago

jbk 13y ago
So, this is our new major release, and I'm going to share some stuff that should fit better the audience here on HN, and that are not part of the main announcement :) First, this is a release that fixes some important architecture mistakes we've done in 2.0.x branch of VLC. I'm notably speaking of the lag in reactivity, notably on volume change (that was shared on the mpv thread) and seeking, but also some grave video settings propagation. I wish we could have fixed and shipped that earlier, but we couldn't (long release cycle). Then, this is the first official release of libVLC that is LGPL for most of what you need as a developer, including the right modules. SDKs for Win32/64, MacOSX, iOS and Android are getting ready. If you are a web developer, our VLC plugin now supports Windowless, to fill the gap between Flash and HTML5 (it should work on IE6,7,8 without too much work). If you are on Mac OS, the interface is finally polished after the major changes of 2.0.0 :) Finally, we decided, as a community that we will accelerate the major release cycle of VLC. The fact that we needed 1,5 year to get the fix to some critical audio core and video settings issues out is way too much. We will move towards a 6-months schedule with LTS. Sure, there are other very good players on each platform, but we are doing our best so that you can play everything everywhere for free, using open source technologies :)
- devindotcom 13y ago
  Thanks for the breakdown. VLC is my primary but maybe now I'll even be able to uninstall mplayer and the others!
- jongalloway2 13y ago
  Congrats on the release! Can you give any high level updates on the VLC for Window 8 effort? I've been following the Kickstarter updates and know it's been more difficult than expected, just wondering if there's any new news.
  - jbk 13y ago
    Yes, we're almost near porting the core: http://people.videolan.org/~funman/win/wack.xml http://people.videolan.org/~funman/win/wack.xml
    - jongalloway2 13y ago
      Awesome! Great to hear, and thanks for the quick response.
- davidu 13y ago
  Amazing piece of software. Somehow still can't figure out how to do the one additional thing I want (above and beyond what I have already sorted out how to do), which is quit the player and re-open it later at the TS of where I left off with my video. :-)
  - jbk 13y ago
    Use the srspos extension :)
    - wahnfrieden 13y ago
      http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Remember+position?content=157838 http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Remember+positio...
  - codfrantic 13y ago
    It already remembers on Android :-D
- grinnick 13y ago
  I like the (very subtle) OSX interface polish I can see. Also, perhaps it's just me but it seems to open faster than 2.0.8 did. Thanks for all your hard work anyway. VLC has been my default media player for years now. I can't think of another piece of software that I've used so regularly for such a long time.
  - jbk 13y ago
    It is faster than 2.0.8 to open on OSX, yes. And yes, a bit of polish has been done on the OSX interface, but there is a bit more yet to do :)
    - ethana 13y ago
      I wish more attention would also apply to the bland Windows interface. It still feels like windows 95 :(
      - jbk 13y ago
        You understand that we are volunteers, right? If noone wants to work on that and shares design, it isn't done.
  - devx 13y ago
    It seems to open faster on Windows, too.
    - jbk 13y ago
      That is true too :) But the increase should be smaller than on OSX.
  - Camillo 13y ago
    I haven't noticed any differences in the interface, but the application is 50% smaller now. I like that.
    - jbk 13y ago
- mayhew 13y ago
  Thanks for all of your hard work. VLC is a great example of open source software that "just works" for normal users.
  - jbk 13y ago
    Thanks :)
- wslh 13y ago
  Congratulations! How VLC is currently backed financially? how much extra money do you need for the project?
  - jbk 13y ago
    We receive only donation through paypal, that pay for the server, and going to conferences... The rest is volunteer work :) If you have a million or two to spare, we could do something though :) To be honest, we need code more than money.
    - bloopletech 13y ago
      As someone who currently uses a different player (mplayer2) which shares an upstream (ffmpeg) with VLC, how much of the codec/format improvements are due to/push to the upstream projects? I really hope all these great improvements are shared between the media player projects as much as possible.
      - aktau 13y ago
        Not quite sure myself, but I've been tracking the development of mpv, a fork of both mplayer2 and mplayer, and its development is going fast, very fast. For example, intel VA-API support was ported and integrated into master in about a week. With support for VA-API VPP (video post-processing), so deinterlacing comes free too (just like for VDPAU). That means that on my weak intel boxes, decoding 1080p content takes about 3-5% CPU and 25MB. Which means I can play 16-32 simultaneous videos in a grid at the same time. You should've seen the look on my clients' face when they saw me pull that one off, where the former developer couldn't even do one HD clip without lagging horribly. It is, in a word, awesome. Just like this new VLC, which I use on my mac. Also awesome. I actually looked at the new VLC plugin code to make my own browser plugin for mplayer/mpv. Though in the end I didn't decide to support a windowless interface like VLC (because I couldn't really, mplayer-likes don't support that). That's fine though, windowed mode was far easier to code.
    - luckydude 13y ago
      No code, have some money. PM me if that would help.
- 1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
  I have stared at you're work for over 150 days straight. Around 8 TB~ of content, estimating about: 666 KB/s. It's probably higher then that. I just wanted to thank you.
  - jbk 13y ago
    Cool content, or?
    - gph 13y ago
      Porn. ;)
      - baabaab 13y ago
        Probably ~80% of the videos VLC plays are pornographic.
        rjuyal 13y ago
        76.68% of statistics are made up on the spot.
        arthulia 13y ago
        so then only 4.32% of videos VLC plays are pornographic
        darklajid 13y ago
        And math is hard in general.
      - gph 13y ago
        I think my comment is too old to edit. Just wanted to add on a serious note, VLC is great at everything I've thrown at it. Radio and video streams work fantastically and the interface is simple and efficient.
    - 13y ago
- pinaceae 13y ago
  VLC is one the most impressive pieces of multi-platform open source software out there. you guys and girls are doing a heck of a job. congrats on all the work.
- erikt 13y ago
  Why is this update not showing up in my Mac? I'm on 2.0.8 and when I checked for update it says that 2.0.8 is the latest version. Edit: Nevermind, looks like this has been answered. VLC waits a week before releasing the update to the public.
- nja 13y ago
  So are all the 2.X releases going to be named after Discworld characters? Twoflower and now Rincewind...
  - jbk 13y ago
    And The luggage for 1.x. Yes.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  I have a rather odd question for you. I've been trying to use VLC for forensic work, specifically for viewing videos frame-by-frame. There's a way to step forward one frame at a time, but there's no way to step backwards. So it's really difficult to switch between two frames back and forth to look for differences. I've resigned myself to capturing screenshots and pasting them into an image editor then using undo/redo to switch between frames. Do you have any suggestions for how to do it better? I know this feature probably wouldn't be useful to anyone but me, so I'm not really putting in a feature request. Just hoping to discover that someone else has already figured out a way of stepping backwards frame-by-frame, to complement the existing "step forwards" functionality.
  - etcet 13y ago
    avidemux can do this. Most video formats are not designed or optimized for going backwards so it's much slower.
    - barrkel 13y ago
      But fast forward is usually almost instantaneous, to the point it's often faster to seek backwards, then play back at normal speed, than to wait for a previous frame to be calculated. There's no reason why the software can't cache frames (it's only 25fps normally) or fast forward from the last I-frame. 25 frames of 1080p HD video is 200MB, as uncompressed 32bpp bitmaps. I have 24GB of memory in my PC; that's the worst case, and it's not bad. A bunch of prior frames can be cached, and the next bunch recalculated if it looks like the user is going to continue stepping backwards.
  - FizDev 13y ago
    Although I haven't tried it, there seems to be an extension for that : http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Previous+frame?content=156396 http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Previous+frame?c...
  - iamthebest 13y ago
    Last time I checked, Apple's QuickTime Player was able to do this. There's even an option to show frame numbers in place of units of time in the UI.
- iamthebest 13y ago
  I just updated from 2.0.8 and already notice a lot of improvements in 2.1.0. Pause/play and start/stop used to result in some unpleasant audible artifacts. Sounds much cleaner now. Same goes for changing playback speed. I still think there's some weirdness going on with using F11 vs double-clicking to switch to full screen view for video playback. Overall great job with this release. BTW, I'm also loving the fact that I can use VLC on Android. I compiled it from source back when there were no binaries, currently am using the nightlies, and am looking forward to being able to get the stable releases in the app store eventually.
- mikevm 13y ago
  VLC is a great piece of software, but it's always missing some last pieces of polish that stop it from replacing my default video player (I only keep VLC in those rare cases when I have some unplayable video). Two issues that are very annoying to me: 1. The lack of "Remember last played position" option is very frustrating. This option is now part of many popular media players. 2. The "Disable screensaver" option doesn't work properly. When you pause a video, VLC will stop the computer from going into sleep mode. This is pretty awful! VLC should only disable the screensaver while the video is being played. And one last thing that would be nice: the ability to move the main VLC window by clicking and dragging on the video area, and not just by the titlebar.
  - fjarlq 13y ago
    At least those requests are being tracked: 1. https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/5315 https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/5315 2. https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3724 https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3724
  - jbk 13y ago
    1. you have an extension called srspos for that. 2. yes, pause is bad in VLC, because it still displays...
- gtufano 13y ago
  Do you have some pointer handy for further information about the SDKs? I've not been able to find anything on the site (or on the wiki)
  - jbk 13y ago
    What OS are you interested in?
    - gtufano 13y ago
      Mostly iOS, but also OS X.
- joseflavio 13y ago
  I use VLC in win7 (x64) and in ubuntu (x64). I usually watch my videos from a slow memory card or pendrive, because of this I try always to increase the file caching the in input codecs, first, I don't understand why it is limited to 6999ms, is there a reason (my machines have between 8gb to 32gb of ram, so would be nice to prefetch everything...)? and second, the volume is still with some lag... i guess because you pre-amplify it.. the lag is a real pity because makes it feels a way worse player... still it is my favorite player! so thanks!
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  When are you guys going to release an official Android app?
  - iamthebest 13y ago
    I've been grabbing the nightly builds and installing them on my phone for a while now. http://nightlies.videolan.org/ http://nightlies.videolan.org/
devx 13y ago
When is the VP9 support coming?
- jbk 13y ago
  We are waiting for Google to officially release a libvpx version for VP9 decoding... It seems to take a long time: http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=webm/libvpx.git;a=tags http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=webm/libvpx.git;a=tags
shitlord 13y ago
I am running VLC 2.0.8 on windows, and when I check for updates, it says I am up to date. Am I on a different release channel? Anyway, I switched to VLC 2.1.0.
- jbk 13y ago
  As with every major release, we usually wait for a week before activating it for normal people :)
  - shitlord 13y ago
    Oh, okay. While you're here, I had one other question that I might as well ask: why can't I install VLC on my Nexus 4 using Google Play? I've installed a nighty APK, and it seems to work fine on the device.
    - jbk 13y ago
      Because you are in the USA. This will change in the next month.
      - shitlord 13y ago
        Thanks for the help!
w4rh4wk5 13y ago
Apparently shuffle is still not working as intended... Man this issue must be around for ages now. This problem makes VLC useless as my default music player :'(
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Unless "shuffle" means something other than what I think it means, I don't see how it should even be possible to mess it up. What sort of issue is there?
  - pyrocat 13y ago
    I'm completely unaware of the VLC shuffle issue, but a surprising number of media players implement "shuffle" in non-obvious ways. Some shuffle your playlist and always play through it in that order (over and over again, if you've put it on repeat), others grab a random track only when the "play next" event happens, others will shuffle on the "play last" action as well as "play next", .etc Just because something seems intuitive doesn't mean all developers will implement it the same way.
    - codygman 13y ago
      I guess correct depends on if you want a "playlist shuffle" or a "random song" :D
      - w4rh4wk5 13y ago
        I'd like to have both available. Most other music players provide an option to shuffle the current playlist (which rearranges all the songs in a random order, and stay in that order) And they provide a "random song" option where all the songs from your current playlist are played in a random order for ever. VLC shuffles the playlist upon hitting the shuffle button and does not alter the order until shuffle is disabled and reenabled again. I'd like VLC to go through the whole playlist in a random order once, and when every song has been played instead of reusing the same pattern again, reshuffle.
      - 13y ago
AsymetricCom 13y ago
* New port to iOS, from iOS 5 to 7, on all iPads and iPhones after 3GS. Is there any way to actually get VLC on iOS anymore?
- jbk 13y ago
  Yes, use the AppStore.
- ngoldbaum 13y ago
  The app store.
alan_cx 13y ago
Been using VLC for as long as I can remember, but recently I have had loads of audio/video sync problems with VLC. Really annoying since I don't want to use any other media player, and I've had to. Will this release do better?
- jbk 13y ago
  It should, yes.
- koala_advert 13y ago
  There are keyboard shortcuts to manually sync audio/video.
ucha 13y ago
https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3558 https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3558 We finally have H264 hardware decoding on Mac. That's the single largest missing feature that prevented me from completely switching to VLC. I used to open H264 videos with QuickTime. Good job guys!
nijiko 13y ago
ACTUAL NEWS ON HACKER NEWS?!
ivarious 13y ago
>For Anime Fans >New 6.1 downmixer to 5.1 and Stereo from MKV/Flac 6.1. >Correct YUV->RGB color matrix in the OpenGL shaders. I like how they put a separate entry for pirates.
jimmcslim 13y ago
The streaming and transcoding capabilities of VLC appear awesome but are hard to get to the bottom of. I tried to use VLC to convert a h264 stream coming out of an IP camera (Foscam) into either a live FLV stream or an iPhone compatible HTTP stream; it seems like it is POSSIBLE but actually knowing which sequence of magic whispers to utter is the challenge :-)
- jbk 13y ago
  We are working on it for 2.2
iliiilliili 13y ago
I've recently switched to Media Player Classic for watchign movies. I tried not to, because VLC works on Linux, but MPC's video quality is simply superior, when you put the two side-by-side you can see a difference... http://i.imgur.com/oLHiQgR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/oLHiQgR.jpg so when I'm watching a movie, I will switch to Windows and play it on MPC. For everything else VLC is fine. Annoying, I've tried filters and other fixes, but nothing worked.
- ComputerGuru 13y ago
  This post is actually devoid of factual content as it stands. Please don't take it as an insult, read on: Media Player Classic uses codec decoders you have installed on your PC, VLC ships with everything it needs to play your videos. In other words, you should not be comparing VLC to MPC, but rather VLC's underlying codec library (from ffmpeg, I believe) to the active codec decoder being used on your Windows machine. For example, I too use MPC on Windows to get better video - but that's because I have CoreAVC installed and MPC uses it to play h264 content. CoreAVC blows everything else out of the water in terms of performance and quality. What codec are you using on Windows w/ MPC?
  - iliiilliili 13y ago
    I'm not sure, but as an end-user, I'm comparing the two players on the out-of-the-box results I get when playing video. If VLC's codec library is inferior to the one on my Windows computer, then I won't use VLC unless I could easily import my proprietary codecs.
  - rossy 13y ago
    Media Player Classic does have it's own video renderers, however, which are responsible for scaling and colour conversion. It also has FFmpeg built in to decode some more popular formats without relying on system codecs. The washed out colour in that screenshot can probably be fixed by changing the video output method (to OpenGL/Direct2D/Direct3D) or changing the default luma range in the graphics card settings from 16-235 to 0-255.
    - 13y ago
rgovind 13y ago
Thanks for making this software. I have been trying to add a RSS-ticker and stream my video for a month...using ffmpeg. Even after posting on ffmpeg user gropus, I got no useful responses. It took me 5 min to do the same using VLC.
- BinaryBrainz 13y ago
  Care to share your results and/or notes? I recently started messing with VLC's stream output capabilities and would love to see some interesting examples of what is possible.
i386 13y ago
Does anyone like the Mac OS X interface? I've been tempted to hack on it to make it nicer.
- HNSucksAss 13y ago
  No. For example, the inexplicably microscopic scrub bar and playhead piss me off frequently.
- Hates_ 13y ago
  Switching to the dark theme has made it more pleasant for me, but there is still room for improvement.
- jbk 13y ago
  Please share improvements :)
ksec 13y ago
I have always tempted, and wanted to use VLC. But i have always been sticking to MPC and its derivative. Currently I am using MPC-BE. The reason is rather simple. VLC on Windows is just plain ugly. You could tell this is a Linux software ported to Windows. It doesn't even need to complex and fancy. Take a look at MPC-BE, plain simple and stylish. And it isn't all just about the looks. The settings, menu placement, icons, etc. I really wish something could be done about it.
sandieman 13y ago
Clicked hoping for airplay or chromecast support. Maybe next time :)
- jbk 13y ago
  Well, those are difficult because of Apple and Google who do not really want 3rd party solutions.
rafski 13y ago
I really don't like the idea of the Playlist-driven interface forcing itself in front. I have no use for Playlist, why do I have to see it, ever? Even when I launch a file from Finder, I get a split-second blink of the Playlist. And when the clip stops, I see Playlist instead of the starting screen and can't drag and drop to play files to it anymore. When I disable the Playlist by pressing its button on the interface, the expanding transition of the window when opening a file is oddly jumpy — hopefully an easy fix in future releases (I'm on OSX 10.8.5). Playlist still appears at times. The standalone Controller module from the interface… I miss it, any chance of it ever returning? Back to the two years old VLC 1.1.12 for me, it was much better thought-out interface-wise (Playlist is just a functionality, not the driving feature and Controller is still there) — and it still plays every file I need it to. I will of course keep checking for updates.
- riffraff 13y ago
  I didn't like the interface since 2.x came out, but I thought I'd give it a shot. In the time since, * I have never used the playlist on purpose once * I kept wanting to put the video always on top in a tiny window while I do something else, and always visible controls/strange resize limit make it worse than before. Compare: http://imgur.com/c4V9k12 http://imgur.com/c4V9k12 So I wish the VLC guys the best, but I have moved on to MplayerX and only keep VLC.app around for some hypothetical case in which the other player won't work. I'll keep hoping for 3.x interface changes.
- Dacapa 13y ago
  I had the same problem with playlist. Going back to 2.0.8 now. It's more stable even though it's a bit slow when closing the app.
BoppreH 13y ago
You can now see the total playlist time and the startup time seems to have been almost eliminated. It's great to see significant improvements to the software you use everyday.
- jbk 13y ago
  Glad you like it :)
616c 13y ago
I remember when I first moved to Linux, six or seven some odd years ago for the first time, and I researched a good media player. I went, unlike others with mplayer, with VLC. It was one of the first projects that made me think "how are proprietary software companies not embarrassed to compete with this, it is SO much better!" Thank you guys. You are true FOSS heroes.
- hrkristian 13y ago
  I have almost the exact same story as you. VLC is simply a fantastic piece of work and had been for years. Incidentally that is also my thought on for instance Gnome-Shell vs. Metro, OSS has so much unique potential.
Daiz 13y ago
It's a bit funny and sad how VLC has touted new stuff "for anime fans" for a few releases, yet every time they've done it they still haven't managed to catch up to the "standard" solutions in those circles. If you're on Windows (and a ton of people are - the lion's share of VLC users included), CCCP is an equally simple one installer solution that can be pushed even further with things like madVR and XySubFilter. For example, VLC's dithering of 10-bit content still seems to be worse than CCCP out of the box, leading to banding where there shouldn't be any, and it seems to be doing something weird to the colors in all the things I tested it with. I'm not exactly sure what it is, though, as it's not a color matrix or luma level issue - I'd post some screenshots but I'm at work now. Also, Nvidia users still seem to have luma level issues out of the box that requires a trip to GPU settings to fix. Congrats on the release anyway, VLC has come a long way from the 0.8.6 days as far as high-end media playback is concerned.
- NovaS1X 13y ago
  The Daiz summons works on HN too I see. I agree that 10-bit playback needs to be addressed. However it seems either CCCP or mplayer2 work great with no noticeable difference in quality. Only VLC seems to have an issue with decoding 10-bit video streams. Works fantastically well for everything else though.
- jbk 13y ago
  > It's a bit funny and sad how VLC has touted new stuff "for anime fans" for a few releases, yet every time they've done it they still haven't managed to catch up to the "standard" solutions in those circles. Our goal is not to match the crazy setup people do and spend hours to tweak. For the 10bits dithering, use the OpenGL output, and it is done.
  - Daiz 13y ago
    >Our goal is not to match the crazy setup people do and spend hours to tweak. Installing CCCP is as easy as installing VLC and gives you better quality out of the box. Installing and configuring madVR is an extra five-ten minutes of effort. Hardly a "crazy setup" that would require "hours of tweaking". There's also KCP which comes with madVR preconfigured, though CCCP offers better compatibility with a wider range of setups (which is why I personally recommend CCCP with madVR as a separate optional component on top of it). Also, at least in the previous version, 10-bit dithering was still lacking even with OpenGL output, as demonstrated here: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/32677 http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/32677 I haven't been able to test if the situation has improved in the new version yet, though.
jackkeline 13y ago
There seems to be a regression in the hardware-accelerated decoding. Worked fine in 2.0, now it looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/IzSfo0v.jpg http://i.imgur.com/IzSfo0v.jpg (Win64 VLC build on Nvidia hardware)
- jbk 13y ago
  Can you try the win32 one?
  - jackkeline 13y ago
    Sure. The Win32 build does the same. I also noticed reliable crashes at startup with some videos. In a blind guess I updated the video driver (from v314.07 to v327.23) with no effect. With disabled hardware-accelerated decoding everything works like a charm. Give me a note if you would like me to do more testing. BTW: After the crashes... what kind of information sends the bug report function to you? Anything privacy related (file name, ip address, etc.)?
john_wilcox 13y ago
Congrats to the VLC team! While VLC is excellent and we would like and want to use VLC as a plugin in our corporate environment, we sadly cannot, because there's currently no way to configure VLC plugin to use a proxy. In order to get to the internet, everything must go through the proxy. It would be very welcome if You could implement this little functionality. VLC plugin should just get the proxy settings from the browser and it would be done. Ofcourse, bonus points for SPNEGO. I have just made my HN accounts only to post this request. Keep up the excellent work! Edit: minor typos.
- jbk 13y ago
  Please mail me.
Dacapa 13y ago
I had problem with AirPlay in Mac OS X 10.8.5. When using internal speakers the sound is normal. But when I switch to AirPlay speakers the program hangs and looses sound. Now I'm going back to 2.0.8
duwip 13y ago
Thanks jb, awesome work by the vlc team - as always. Could you maybe share some news on the status of the web plugin for the Mac?
- jbk 13y ago
  There is a new one finished. Do you want to try it? Mail me.
  - duwip 13y ago
    done
ilitirit 13y ago
I loved VLC, but since I've started using Daum PotPlayer I just can't go back :\ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PotPlayer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PotPlayer
- jbk 13y ago
  Sure, using software violating open source licenses is a great idea...
  - ilitirit 13y ago
    I wasn't aware of any violations. Regardless, PotPlayer just seems much better than VLC. And this is coming from someone who used VLC exclusively for many years. In any case, this bit can be found in the Copyrights Tab of the About section: "- This program contains the video decoder FFmpeg (http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu) was used, FFmpeg subject to the LGPL license. LGPL license, refer to the installation directory LGPL.TXT. The modified FFmpeg sources can be downloaded from the http://potplayer.daum.net/devel/ffmpeg.zip." http://potplayer.daum.net/devel/ffmpeg.zip." I don't know if that resolves the situation though.
canvia 13y ago
Would it be possible to add key frame previews when mousing over the time bar? Similar to youtube where you mouse over a time and see the closest key frame so that you can have some idea of what part of the video you are about to skip to beyond the time. Thanks for the awesome software and keep up the great work!

282 points by jbk 13y ago

jbk 13y ago

So, this is our new major release, and I'm going to share some stuff that should fit better the audience here on HN, and that are not part of the main announcement :) First, this is a release that fixes some important architecture mistakes we've done in 2.0.x branch of VLC. I'm notably speaking of the lag in reactivity, notably on volume change (that was shared on the mpv thread) and seeking, but also some grave video settings propagation. I wish we could have fixed and shipped that earlier, but we couldn't (long release cycle). Then, this is the first official release of libVLC that is LGPL for most of what you need as a developer, including the right modules. SDKs for Win32/64, MacOSX, iOS and Android are getting ready. If you are a web developer, our VLC plugin now supports Windowless, to fill the gap between Flash and HTML5 (it should work on IE6,7,8 without too much work). If you are on Mac OS, the interface is finally polished after the major changes of 2.0.0 :) Finally, we decided, as a community that we will accelerate the major release cycle of VLC. The fact that we needed 1,5 year to get the fix to some critical audio core and video settings issues out is way too much. We will move towards a 6-months schedule with LTS. Sure, there are other very good players on each platform, but we are doing our best so that you can play everything everywhere for free, using open source technologies :)

devindotcom 13y ago
Thanks for the breakdown. VLC is my primary but maybe now I'll even be able to uninstall mplayer and the others!
jongalloway2 13y ago
Congrats on the release! Can you give any high level updates on the VLC for Window 8 effort? I've been following the Kickstarter updates and know it's been more difficult than expected, just wondering if there's any new news.
- jbk 13y ago
  Yes, we're almost near porting the core: http://people.videolan.org/~funman/win/wack.xml http://people.videolan.org/~funman/win/wack.xml
  - jongalloway2 13y ago
    Awesome! Great to hear, and thanks for the quick response.
davidu 13y ago
Amazing piece of software. Somehow still can't figure out how to do the one additional thing I want (above and beyond what I have already sorted out how to do), which is quit the player and re-open it later at the TS of where I left off with my video. :-)
- jbk 13y ago
  Use the srspos extension :)
  - wahnfrieden 13y ago
    http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Remember+position?content=157838 http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Remember+positio...
- codfrantic 13y ago
  It already remembers on Android :-D
grinnick 13y ago
I like the (very subtle) OSX interface polish I can see. Also, perhaps it's just me but it seems to open faster than 2.0.8 did. Thanks for all your hard work anyway. VLC has been my default media player for years now. I can't think of another piece of software that I've used so regularly for such a long time.
- jbk 13y ago
  It is faster than 2.0.8 to open on OSX, yes. And yes, a bit of polish has been done on the OSX interface, but there is a bit more yet to do :)
  - ethana 13y ago
    I wish more attention would also apply to the bland Windows interface. It still feels like windows 95 :(
    - jbk 13y ago
      You understand that we are volunteers, right? If noone wants to work on that and shares design, it isn't done.
- devx 13y ago
  It seems to open faster on Windows, too.
  - jbk 13y ago
    That is true too :) But the increase should be smaller than on OSX.
- Camillo 13y ago
  I haven't noticed any differences in the interface, but the application is 50% smaller now. I like that.
  - jbk 13y ago
mayhew 13y ago
Thanks for all of your hard work. VLC is a great example of open source software that "just works" for normal users.
- jbk 13y ago
  Thanks :)
wslh 13y ago
Congratulations! How VLC is currently backed financially? how much extra money do you need for the project?
- jbk 13y ago
  We receive only donation through paypal, that pay for the server, and going to conferences... The rest is volunteer work :) If you have a million or two to spare, we could do something though :) To be honest, we need code more than money.
  - bloopletech 13y ago
    As someone who currently uses a different player (mplayer2) which shares an upstream (ffmpeg) with VLC, how much of the codec/format improvements are due to/push to the upstream projects? I really hope all these great improvements are shared between the media player projects as much as possible.
    - aktau 13y ago
      Not quite sure myself, but I've been tracking the development of mpv, a fork of both mplayer2 and mplayer, and its development is going fast, very fast. For example, intel VA-API support was ported and integrated into master in about a week. With support for VA-API VPP (video post-processing), so deinterlacing comes free too (just like for VDPAU). That means that on my weak intel boxes, decoding 1080p content takes about 3-5% CPU and 25MB. Which means I can play 16-32 simultaneous videos in a grid at the same time. You should've seen the look on my clients' face when they saw me pull that one off, where the former developer couldn't even do one HD clip without lagging horribly. It is, in a word, awesome. Just like this new VLC, which I use on my mac. Also awesome. I actually looked at the new VLC plugin code to make my own browser plugin for mplayer/mpv. Though in the end I didn't decide to support a windowless interface like VLC (because I couldn't really, mplayer-likes don't support that). That's fine though, windowed mode was far easier to code.
  - luckydude 13y ago
    No code, have some money. PM me if that would help.
1qaz2wsx3edc 13y ago
I have stared at you're work for over 150 days straight. Around 8 TB~ of content, estimating about: 666 KB/s. It's probably higher then that. I just wanted to thank you.
- jbk 13y ago
  Cool content, or?
  - gph 13y ago
    Porn. ;)
    - baabaab 13y ago
      Probably ~80% of the videos VLC plays are pornographic.
      - rjuyal 13y ago
        76.68% of statistics are made up on the spot.
        arthulia 13y ago
        so then only 4.32% of videos VLC plays are pornographic
        darklajid 13y ago
        And math is hard in general.
    - gph 13y ago
      I think my comment is too old to edit. Just wanted to add on a serious note, VLC is great at everything I've thrown at it. Radio and video streams work fantastically and the interface is simple and efficient.
  - 13y ago
pinaceae 13y ago
VLC is one the most impressive pieces of multi-platform open source software out there. you guys and girls are doing a heck of a job. congrats on all the work.
erikt 13y ago
Why is this update not showing up in my Mac? I'm on 2.0.8 and when I checked for update it says that 2.0.8 is the latest version. Edit: Nevermind, looks like this has been answered. VLC waits a week before releasing the update to the public.
nja 13y ago
So are all the 2.X releases going to be named after Discworld characters? Twoflower and now Rincewind...
- jbk 13y ago
  And The luggage for 1.x. Yes.
sillysaurus2 13y ago
I have a rather odd question for you. I've been trying to use VLC for forensic work, specifically for viewing videos frame-by-frame. There's a way to step forward one frame at a time, but there's no way to step backwards. So it's really difficult to switch between two frames back and forth to look for differences. I've resigned myself to capturing screenshots and pasting them into an image editor then using undo/redo to switch between frames. Do you have any suggestions for how to do it better? I know this feature probably wouldn't be useful to anyone but me, so I'm not really putting in a feature request. Just hoping to discover that someone else has already figured out a way of stepping backwards frame-by-frame, to complement the existing "step forwards" functionality.
- etcet 13y ago
  avidemux can do this. Most video formats are not designed or optimized for going backwards so it's much slower.
  - barrkel 13y ago
    But fast forward is usually almost instantaneous, to the point it's often faster to seek backwards, then play back at normal speed, than to wait for a previous frame to be calculated. There's no reason why the software can't cache frames (it's only 25fps normally) or fast forward from the last I-frame. 25 frames of 1080p HD video is 200MB, as uncompressed 32bpp bitmaps. I have 24GB of memory in my PC; that's the worst case, and it's not bad. A bunch of prior frames can be cached, and the next bunch recalculated if it looks like the user is going to continue stepping backwards.
- FizDev 13y ago
  Although I haven't tried it, there seems to be an extension for that : http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Previous+frame?content=156396 http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Previous+frame?c...
- iamthebest 13y ago
  Last time I checked, Apple's QuickTime Player was able to do this. There's even an option to show frame numbers in place of units of time in the UI.
iamthebest 13y ago
I just updated from 2.0.8 and already notice a lot of improvements in 2.1.0. Pause/play and start/stop used to result in some unpleasant audible artifacts. Sounds much cleaner now. Same goes for changing playback speed. I still think there's some weirdness going on with using F11 vs double-clicking to switch to full screen view for video playback. Overall great job with this release. BTW, I'm also loving the fact that I can use VLC on Android. I compiled it from source back when there were no binaries, currently am using the nightlies, and am looking forward to being able to get the stable releases in the app store eventually.
mikevm 13y ago
VLC is a great piece of software, but it's always missing some last pieces of polish that stop it from replacing my default video player (I only keep VLC in those rare cases when I have some unplayable video). Two issues that are very annoying to me: 1. The lack of "Remember last played position" option is very frustrating. This option is now part of many popular media players. 2. The "Disable screensaver" option doesn't work properly. When you pause a video, VLC will stop the computer from going into sleep mode. This is pretty awful! VLC should only disable the screensaver while the video is being played. And one last thing that would be nice: the ability to move the main VLC window by clicking and dragging on the video area, and not just by the titlebar.
- fjarlq 13y ago
  At least those requests are being tracked: 1. https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/5315 https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/5315 2. https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3724 https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3724
- jbk 13y ago
  1. you have an extension called srspos for that. 2. yes, pause is bad in VLC, because it still displays...
gtufano 13y ago
Do you have some pointer handy for further information about the SDKs? I've not been able to find anything on the site (or on the wiki)
- jbk 13y ago
  What OS are you interested in?
  - gtufano 13y ago
    Mostly iOS, but also OS X.
joseflavio 13y ago
I use VLC in win7 (x64) and in ubuntu (x64). I usually watch my videos from a slow memory card or pendrive, because of this I try always to increase the file caching the in input codecs, first, I don't understand why it is limited to 6999ms, is there a reason (my machines have between 8gb to 32gb of ram, so would be nice to prefetch everything...)? and second, the volume is still with some lag... i guess because you pre-amplify it.. the lag is a real pity because makes it feels a way worse player... still it is my favorite player! so thanks!
Florin_Andrei 13y ago
When are you guys going to release an official Android app?
- iamthebest 13y ago
  I've been grabbing the nightly builds and installing them on my phone for a while now. http://nightlies.videolan.org/ http://nightlies.videolan.org/

devx 13y ago

When is the VP9 support coming?

jbk 13y ago
We are waiting for Google to officially release a libvpx version for VP9 decoding... It seems to take a long time: http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=webm/libvpx.git;a=tags http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=webm/libvpx.git;a=tags

shitlord 13y ago

I am running VLC 2.0.8 on windows, and when I check for updates, it says I am up to date. Am I on a different release channel? Anyway, I switched to VLC 2.1.0.

jbk 13y ago
As with every major release, we usually wait for a week before activating it for normal people :)
- shitlord 13y ago
  Oh, okay. While you're here, I had one other question that I might as well ask: why can't I install VLC on my Nexus 4 using Google Play? I've installed a nighty APK, and it seems to work fine on the device.
  - jbk 13y ago
    Because you are in the USA. This will change in the next month.
    - shitlord 13y ago
      Thanks for the help!

w4rh4wk5 13y ago

Apparently shuffle is still not working as intended... Man this issue must be around for ages now. This problem makes VLC useless as my default music player :'(

jlgreco 13y ago
Unless "shuffle" means something other than what I think it means, I don't see how it should even be possible to mess it up. What sort of issue is there?
- pyrocat 13y ago
  I'm completely unaware of the VLC shuffle issue, but a surprising number of media players implement "shuffle" in non-obvious ways. Some shuffle your playlist and always play through it in that order (over and over again, if you've put it on repeat), others grab a random track only when the "play next" event happens, others will shuffle on the "play last" action as well as "play next", .etc Just because something seems intuitive doesn't mean all developers will implement it the same way.
  - codygman 13y ago
    I guess correct depends on if you want a "playlist shuffle" or a "random song" :D
    - w4rh4wk5 13y ago
      I'd like to have both available. Most other music players provide an option to shuffle the current playlist (which rearranges all the songs in a random order, and stay in that order) And they provide a "random song" option where all the songs from your current playlist are played in a random order for ever. VLC shuffles the playlist upon hitting the shuffle button and does not alter the order until shuffle is disabled and reenabled again. I'd like VLC to go through the whole playlist in a random order once, and when every song has been played instead of reusing the same pattern again, reshuffle.
    - 13y ago

AsymetricCom 13y ago

* New port to iOS, from iOS 5 to 7, on all iPads and iPhones after 3GS. Is there any way to actually get VLC on iOS anymore?

jbk 13y ago
Yes, use the AppStore.
ngoldbaum 13y ago
The app store.

alan_cx 13y ago

Been using VLC for as long as I can remember, but recently I have had loads of audio/video sync problems with VLC. Really annoying since I don't want to use any other media player, and I've had to. Will this release do better?

jbk 13y ago
It should, yes.
koala_advert 13y ago
There are keyboard shortcuts to manually sync audio/video.

ucha 13y ago

https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3558 https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3558 We finally have H264 hardware decoding on Mac. That's the single largest missing feature that prevented me from completely switching to VLC. I used to open H264 videos with QuickTime. Good job guys!

nijiko 13y ago

ACTUAL NEWS ON HACKER NEWS?!

ivarious 13y ago

>For Anime Fans >New 6.1 downmixer to 5.1 and Stereo from MKV/Flac 6.1. >Correct YUV->RGB color matrix in the OpenGL shaders. I like how they put a separate entry for pirates.

jimmcslim 13y ago

The streaming and transcoding capabilities of VLC appear awesome but are hard to get to the bottom of. I tried to use VLC to convert a h264 stream coming out of an IP camera (Foscam) into either a live FLV stream or an iPhone compatible HTTP stream; it seems like it is POSSIBLE but actually knowing which sequence of magic whispers to utter is the challenge :-)

jbk 13y ago
We are working on it for 2.2

iliiilliili 13y ago

I've recently switched to Media Player Classic for watchign movies. I tried not to, because VLC works on Linux, but MPC's video quality is simply superior, when you put the two side-by-side you can see a difference... http://i.imgur.com/oLHiQgR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/oLHiQgR.jpg so when I'm watching a movie, I will switch to Windows and play it on MPC. For everything else VLC is fine. Annoying, I've tried filters and other fixes, but nothing worked.

ComputerGuru 13y ago
This post is actually devoid of factual content as it stands. Please don't take it as an insult, read on: Media Player Classic uses codec decoders you have installed on your PC, VLC ships with everything it needs to play your videos. In other words, you should not be comparing VLC to MPC, but rather VLC's underlying codec library (from ffmpeg, I believe) to the active codec decoder being used on your Windows machine. For example, I too use MPC on Windows to get better video - but that's because I have CoreAVC installed and MPC uses it to play h264 content. CoreAVC blows everything else out of the water in terms of performance and quality. What codec are you using on Windows w/ MPC?
- iliiilliili 13y ago
  I'm not sure, but as an end-user, I'm comparing the two players on the out-of-the-box results I get when playing video. If VLC's codec library is inferior to the one on my Windows computer, then I won't use VLC unless I could easily import my proprietary codecs.
- rossy 13y ago
  Media Player Classic does have it's own video renderers, however, which are responsible for scaling and colour conversion. It also has FFmpeg built in to decode some more popular formats without relying on system codecs. The washed out colour in that screenshot can probably be fixed by changing the video output method (to OpenGL/Direct2D/Direct3D) or changing the default luma range in the graphics card settings from 16-235 to 0-255.
  - 13y ago

rgovind 13y ago

Thanks for making this software. I have been trying to add a RSS-ticker and stream my video for a month...using ffmpeg. Even after posting on ffmpeg user gropus, I got no useful responses. It took me 5 min to do the same using VLC.

BinaryBrainz 13y ago
Care to share your results and/or notes? I recently started messing with VLC's stream output capabilities and would love to see some interesting examples of what is possible.

i386 13y ago

Does anyone like the Mac OS X interface? I've been tempted to hack on it to make it nicer.

HNSucksAss 13y ago
No. For example, the inexplicably microscopic scrub bar and playhead piss me off frequently.
Hates_ 13y ago
Switching to the dark theme has made it more pleasant for me, but there is still room for improvement.
jbk 13y ago
Please share improvements :)

ksec 13y ago

I have always tempted, and wanted to use VLC. But i have always been sticking to MPC and its derivative. Currently I am using MPC-BE. The reason is rather simple. VLC on Windows is just plain ugly. You could tell this is a Linux software ported to Windows. It doesn't even need to complex and fancy. Take a look at MPC-BE, plain simple and stylish. And it isn't all just about the looks. The settings, menu placement, icons, etc. I really wish something could be done about it.

sandieman 13y ago

Clicked hoping for airplay or chromecast support. Maybe next time :)

jbk 13y ago
Well, those are difficult because of Apple and Google who do not really want 3rd party solutions.

rafski 13y ago

I really don't like the idea of the Playlist-driven interface forcing itself in front. I have no use for Playlist, why do I have to see it, ever? Even when I launch a file from Finder, I get a split-second blink of the Playlist. And when the clip stops, I see Playlist instead of the starting screen and can't drag and drop to play files to it anymore. When I disable the Playlist by pressing its button on the interface, the expanding transition of the window when opening a file is oddly jumpy — hopefully an easy fix in future releases (I'm on OSX 10.8.5). Playlist still appears at times. The standalone Controller module from the interface… I miss it, any chance of it ever returning? Back to the two years old VLC 1.1.12 for me, it was much better thought-out interface-wise (Playlist is just a functionality, not the driving feature and Controller is still there) — and it still plays every file I need it to. I will of course keep checking for updates.

riffraff 13y ago
I didn't like the interface since 2.x came out, but I thought I'd give it a shot. In the time since, * I have never used the playlist on purpose once * I kept wanting to put the video always on top in a tiny window while I do something else, and always visible controls/strange resize limit make it worse than before. Compare: http://imgur.com/c4V9k12 http://imgur.com/c4V9k12 So I wish the VLC guys the best, but I have moved on to MplayerX and only keep VLC.app around for some hypothetical case in which the other player won't work. I'll keep hoping for 3.x interface changes.
Dacapa 13y ago
I had the same problem with playlist. Going back to 2.0.8 now. It's more stable even though it's a bit slow when closing the app.

BoppreH 13y ago

You can now see the total playlist time and the startup time seems to have been almost eliminated. It's great to see significant improvements to the software you use everyday.

jbk 13y ago
Glad you like it :)

616c 13y ago

I remember when I first moved to Linux, six or seven some odd years ago for the first time, and I researched a good media player. I went, unlike others with mplayer, with VLC. It was one of the first projects that made me think "how are proprietary software companies not embarrassed to compete with this, it is SO much better!" Thank you guys. You are true FOSS heroes.

hrkristian 13y ago
I have almost the exact same story as you. VLC is simply a fantastic piece of work and had been for years. Incidentally that is also my thought on for instance Gnome-Shell vs. Metro, OSS has so much unique potential.

Daiz 13y ago

It's a bit funny and sad how VLC has touted new stuff "for anime fans" for a few releases, yet every time they've done it they still haven't managed to catch up to the "standard" solutions in those circles. If you're on Windows (and a ton of people are - the lion's share of VLC users included), CCCP is an equally simple one installer solution that can be pushed even further with things like madVR and XySubFilter. For example, VLC's dithering of 10-bit content still seems to be worse than CCCP out of the box, leading to banding where there shouldn't be any, and it seems to be doing something weird to the colors in all the things I tested it with. I'm not exactly sure what it is, though, as it's not a color matrix or luma level issue - I'd post some screenshots but I'm at work now. Also, Nvidia users still seem to have luma level issues out of the box that requires a trip to GPU settings to fix. Congrats on the release anyway, VLC has come a long way from the 0.8.6 days as far as high-end media playback is concerned.

NovaS1X 13y ago
The Daiz summons works on HN too I see. I agree that 10-bit playback needs to be addressed. However it seems either CCCP or mplayer2 work great with no noticeable difference in quality. Only VLC seems to have an issue with decoding 10-bit video streams. Works fantastically well for everything else though.
jbk 13y ago
> It's a bit funny and sad how VLC has touted new stuff "for anime fans" for a few releases, yet every time they've done it they still haven't managed to catch up to the "standard" solutions in those circles. Our goal is not to match the crazy setup people do and spend hours to tweak. For the 10bits dithering, use the OpenGL output, and it is done.
- Daiz 13y ago
  >Our goal is not to match the crazy setup people do and spend hours to tweak. Installing CCCP is as easy as installing VLC and gives you better quality out of the box. Installing and configuring madVR is an extra five-ten minutes of effort. Hardly a "crazy setup" that would require "hours of tweaking". There's also KCP which comes with madVR preconfigured, though CCCP offers better compatibility with a wider range of setups (which is why I personally recommend CCCP with madVR as a separate optional component on top of it). Also, at least in the previous version, 10-bit dithering was still lacking even with OpenGL output, as demonstrated here: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/32677 http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/32677 I haven't been able to test if the situation has improved in the new version yet, though.

jackkeline 13y ago

There seems to be a regression in the hardware-accelerated decoding. Worked fine in 2.0, now it looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/IzSfo0v.jpg http://i.imgur.com/IzSfo0v.jpg (Win64 VLC build on Nvidia hardware)

jbk 13y ago
Can you try the win32 one?
- jackkeline 13y ago
  Sure. The Win32 build does the same. I also noticed reliable crashes at startup with some videos. In a blind guess I updated the video driver (from v314.07 to v327.23) with no effect. With disabled hardware-accelerated decoding everything works like a charm. Give me a note if you would like me to do more testing. BTW: After the crashes... what kind of information sends the bug report function to you? Anything privacy related (file name, ip address, etc.)?

john_wilcox 13y ago

Congrats to the VLC team! While VLC is excellent and we would like and want to use VLC as a plugin in our corporate environment, we sadly cannot, because there's currently no way to configure VLC plugin to use a proxy. In order to get to the internet, everything must go through the proxy. It would be very welcome if You could implement this little functionality. VLC plugin should just get the proxy settings from the browser and it would be done. Ofcourse, bonus points for SPNEGO. I have just made my HN accounts only to post this request. Keep up the excellent work! Edit: minor typos.

jbk 13y ago
Please mail me.

Dacapa 13y ago

I had problem with AirPlay in Mac OS X 10.8.5. When using internal speakers the sound is normal. But when I switch to AirPlay speakers the program hangs and looses sound. Now I'm going back to 2.0.8

duwip 13y ago

Thanks jb, awesome work by the vlc team - as always. Could you maybe share some news on the status of the web plugin for the Mac?

jbk 13y ago
There is a new one finished. Do you want to try it? Mail me.
- duwip 13y ago
  done

ilitirit 13y ago

I loved VLC, but since I've started using Daum PotPlayer I just can't go back :\ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PotPlayer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PotPlayer

jbk 13y ago
Sure, using software violating open source licenses is a great idea...
- ilitirit 13y ago
  I wasn't aware of any violations. Regardless, PotPlayer just seems much better than VLC. And this is coming from someone who used VLC exclusively for many years. In any case, this bit can be found in the Copyrights Tab of the About section: "- This program contains the video decoder FFmpeg (http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu) was used, FFmpeg subject to the LGPL license. LGPL license, refer to the installation directory LGPL.TXT. The modified FFmpeg sources can be downloaded from the http://potplayer.daum.net/devel/ffmpeg.zip." http://potplayer.daum.net/devel/ffmpeg.zip." I don't know if that resolves the situation though.

canvia 13y ago

Would it be possible to add key frame previews when mousing over the time bar? Similar to youtube where you mouse over a time and see the closest key frame so that you can have some idea of what part of the video you are about to skip to beyond the time. Thanks for the awesome software and keep up the great work!