After an 8 year long development process, the team behind the VLC Media Player has released version 1.0.0 of their popular and capable media player. Even though previous versions weren’t necessarily unstable, reaching version 1.0 is still somewhat of a milestone.
I have always been a huge fan of VLC. It’s open source, plays a lot of media files, is relatively light on resources, and runs on just about everything. Especially on Mac OS X, where the QuickTime player is limited and cumbersome, VLC offers an amazing alternative. However, on Windows and Linux it performs its role very well too, and it even runs on BeOS and Syllable (even though those versions are a little outdated). Sadly, I haven’t been using VLC as often as I used to now that Windows 7’s Media Player received its cleaner interface.
Originally, the project was supposed to have a client and a server, but features from the server side merged into the client side as time went on. The VideoLAN Client name was deprecated, in favour of the VLC Media Player name. Apart from the VLC Media Player, the VideoLAN Project also hosts several other projects, such as libdvdcss and x264.
Verson 1.0.0 of VLC introduces support for HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0, etc.), more formats (Raw Dirac, M2TS, etc.), instant pausing and frame-by-frame support, and much, much more.
yippee! coz it’s my ubiquitous fav player. wouldn’t know how to manage without it.
VLC is the only app I have found to be able to read BOTH the tags of a video part and an audio part of an OGV file. It’s a new feature too, didn’t exist in the 0.9.x versions.
On the other hand, trying to use their transcoder UI and export a video using another codec, is super-buggy.
I agree. Especially its Mpeg-TS output. For that FFmpeg/Mencoder do a better job.
Intrestingly enough VLC’s ogg muxer/demuxer (implementation of encoding/decoding to ogg container, incl .ogv files) is pretty broken.
Otherwise it’s an excellent media player. We’ve been using as default player on all workstations of our workplace. Although that use may decrease now – most viewed media is in an inhouse .ogv archive and with the arrival of Firefox 3.5 most users will probably prefer direct decoding/rendering in browser.
That’s for sure – the biggest part of the problem seems to be that the UI will happily let you choose options that the encoder can’t actually handle. Every time I’ve tried to use it, it’s reminded me of playing one of those old text adventure games where you have to go through trial and error to find *just* the right verb+noun combination (“take object” doesn’t work – but “pick up object” does).
Fortunately there’s always AVIdemux, Super, RAD video tools, etc.
VLC has historically had a terrible (nonexisting) support for ASS subtitles. I hear they’ve solved them by now, but I’m still a bit wary of it. I especially dislike the way they want to turn everything into a monolithic program…
I myself prefer the flexibility of mplayer and its most complete GUI frontend, smplayer.
How does the Blu-ray support work? Can I just install this beast on XP and play Blu-rays? I’m looking for a decent Blu-ray player cuz PowerDVD v8 (haven’t tried v9) blows chunks (it works, but is glitchy.. such as things like auto resume not working, it sometimes doesn’t come out of screen saver mode, etc), and WinDVD wouldn’t work for me at all.
PowerDVD 9 blows just as much chunks as v8. It crashes all the time on both blu-ray and DVD. Though I think some of it is because of nVidia’s acceleration. But unfortunately without the acceleration on, most movies run at 60 fps, which makes them all look like cheap Sci-Fi B movies.
If this will play Blu-Ray on Linux, that means I’m only using Windows for Age of Conan (and a few random other games) other than that, I could get rid of the crap!
Just a question.
One of the most-requested feature is the ability to show subtitles on the screen-base, over the black-borders of a 16:9 movie, for example. Version 1.0 has this ability?
VLC lists compatibility with BeOS. Has anyone tried it under Haiku?
Only the wxwindows versions (up to 8.6i) work on BeOS and Haiku as BeOS and haiku does not have a proper QT for it.
I think there is a problem with one or two of its dependences, as well as the need for a new interface. As already said, Haiku is lacking a usable implementation of QT, and the old native BeOS interface does not work post 8.6X. Thus a new native interface for haiku is needed.
If any one would like to help out, just join the mailing list on haiku ports. http://ports.haiku-files.org/wiki/MailingList
Edited 2009-07-08 00:42 UTC
I use it as my sole A/V player for OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Windows. I do not use Linux at all, that is why I don’t mention VLC for Linux. It is a beaut, and I really like it’s network functionality. I also use it as a test that any media file that can not play properly in VLC, I get rid of. Since it is capable of playing .wmv, .wma, .qt, if a file can only work with Wedia Media Player, then I erase it, because I know you can get viruses from files you download, and if it only plays in WMP, and VLC can not read the file, then I am suspicious it a trojan or virus. But yeah it is a great program, it is always one of the first programs I get from ports every time.
My daily routine includes a quick glance at VersionTracker for familiar software. Today one of the orange highlights did stand out; VLC 1.0.0.
It’s been a long wait, with frequent users witnessing this gradual progression towards VLC1. All this time, the app proved that increased stability and greater elaboration CAN go together with simplicity (that is, not getting bloated and having a clean user interface).
Though the turn from VLC0.x to VLC1 does not mark a long-awaited overhaul or world-shocking change, it however does prove the developers remain humble. As Thom pointed out, it took them eight years to get here, and still they do not boast with version numbers.
Respect for that, and respect & a word of thanks to the dedicated developers behind VLC. Be proud of what you achieved today! (Or actually… yesterday, according to the “NEWS” textfile 😉 )
I’ve heard a lot about vlc – mostly good sentiments. But why would I use it over xine or (g)mplayer? Does it do something better?
Not really. Only real pro over anything other player so far is it ability to play almost anything no matter how broken file is. I don’t use VLC since it has some horrible brightness issues, pixelation on some content and horrible UI in full screen. It’s good player but there are better, atleast Windows side.
Sorry to disappoint you, folks. VLC will not play Blu-ray, it doesn’t have a player key for decryption. Player keys cost money, and the AACS-LA wouldn’t let VLC have one anyway as the key wouldn’t remain secret for five minutes after hitting the svn repository 🙂
If you’re looking for Blu-ray playback on Linux, you can always rip with DumpHD or MakeMKV and then playback with Mplayer.
Congratulations to the VLC developers, they do good work.
I’m not sure in which world you think we live, but player keys have been floating around on internet for quite some years now.
JAL
How many years? Is there any additional layers of DRM/security to be broken before free software Bluray players are possible? Is there already open source / free software Bluray players which can play Bluray (with user provided player key)?
Please do your own research. It’s not that hard.
JAL
Is it just me or do all the download links on the site still point to 0.9.9? I’ve checked for a couple of OSes, and even when I tried the update from within VLC it still came up saying 0.9.9 was the latest release.
congrats! VLC is my key player for Linux and Windows. It can play anything I throw at it without issues.
Running VLC right now on Mac OS X; haven’t tried the 64bit version yet so I am unsure what it is like. Its amazing how it has reached the psychologically important 1.0 milestone for end users to jump on board.
Of the many years I have been using VLC, I’ve yet to come across a file it couldn’t play; where Quicktime and Windows Media Player would die the moment things started to get tricky – VLC would soldier on and continue playing.
When an opensource project concentrates on one thing; the results can be amazing, Firefox, SongBirdNest, VLC etc. I’m tempted next pay to make a donation – I’m a student with a small amount of cash but I think it is the least I can do given all the benefits I’ve reaped from its existence.
I use it on all platforms.
Although I am still having the blocky video look under win7.
Anyone solved this yet?