VLC 0.8.6 Released

h2g2bob writes "VideoLAN yesterday released a new version of VLC media player. A shout out goes to ffmpeg for many of the codec improvements." From the blurb: "Building on feedback from the 29 million downloads of VLC media player 0.8.5, we bring you version 0.8.6 with many bugfixes, as well as a couple of new features we think you will truly enjoy. Most prominent are probably Windows Media Video 9 and Flash Video. Other important changes are improved H.264 decoding, better Windows Unicode support, a Fullscreen controller, and Apple Remote support for Mac OS X."

nigthlies is up

[gerbalblaste]

http://nightlies.videolan.org/ [videolan.org] is still online

Re:Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X?

[Wesley Felter]

FFMPEG now contains an open-source WMV9 decoder.

Re:Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X?

[kosmosik]

No. It would be illegal (in some countries) to use Windows files - they got its own license and it wold be sloppy. Instead VLC uses ffmpeg codecs which implement (partially) WMV9 decoding (but no DRM and no encoding *FIXME*). Ffmpeg codecs are another implementation (than Windows DLLs) achieved through reverse-engeenering (which also may be illegal to use in some countries).

As for now from ffmpeg documentation:
http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg-doc.html#SEC23 [mplayerhq.hu]

WMV8 and WMV9 are "not completely working". But I think they may work well for 90% of media files out there.

So kudos for VLC team for another great release. :)

Flash video

[Anonymous Coward]

Is flash video essentially just a container format like ogg or quicktime? Can I play videos from youTube by just copying and pasting the .swf URL into VLC?

IIRC youtube embed their player in the flash, so will VLC just ignore the bytecode and present a menu to access the embeded media?

How about a mirror?

[ZiZ]

Use a bloody mirror!

• VideoLAN primary mirror - France - Download [videolan.org] (HTTP)
• VIA Centrale Reseaux, École Centrale Paris - France - Download [via.ecp.fr] (HTTP)
• Twente University - Netherlands - Download [utwente.nl] (HTTP)
• IRCAM - France - Download [ircam.fr] (HTTP)
• Université de Strasbourg - France - Download [u-strasbg.fr] (FTP)
• Cr@ns, ENS Cachan - France - Download [crans.org] (FTP)
• Providence University - Taiwan - Download [pu.edu.tw] (FTP)
• Endpoint Corporation - Sweden - Download [endpoint.nu] (FTP)
• Optralan - USA - Download [optralan.com] (HTTP)
• Brno University of Technology - Czech Republic - Download [vutbr.cz] (HTTP)
• Brno University of Technology - Czech Republic - Download [vutbr.cz] (FTP)
• Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná - Brazil - Download [pucpr.br] (FTP)

(These are all Windows downloads. Remove the filename and last directory from the path to explore other download options.)

h264 decoding on vlc player kicks ass!

[vivek7006]

On windows platform, when I play h264 video files the cpu usage is considerably less than other players. Especially in comparison with mplayer-classic using ffdshow. I usually encode all my home-videos using x264 and use VLC player for playback. VLC player uses minimal cpu and video quality is awesome. Thanks guys!

Re:slashdotted with no comments

[_Pablo]

Mirrors:

http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/videolan/vl c/0.8.6/ [utwente.nl]
http://videolan.kn.vutbr.cz/vlc/0.8.6/ [vutbr.cz]

Re:VLC is teh woohoo!

[Jherek Carnelian]

I've been frustrated by 0.8.5's inability to remember deinterlacing settings,

You have to do more than just set the deinterlace method.
IIRC:
You have to add the deinterlace filter.
You probably also need to change the default setting for files (there are separate settings for files and for streaming).

I really like vlc a lot, but like a lot of Free software, the user-interface could really benefit from improvement.

Re:Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X?

[KonoWatakushi]

I have a PPC mac and it is great to have a native working WMV9/VC-1 codec. While I haven't tried it in VLC, I have used it in the recent MPlayer dev builds, and it is much better than flip4mac.

Re:Why is this under Linux?

[aero2600-5]

It's under Linux because VLC runs under Linux, and is possibly the best media player for Linux. Yes, there are versions for Mac and Windows, but that's for many reasons. First off is that a tarball will do you little to no good on either of those systems. More importantly, and I'm not 100% sure because it's slashdotted, there are probably things added to the Mac and Windows versions that just won't work under Linux. Should the software runs worse than it's capable of under Windows because it's intended for Linux? No. A perfect example is that not all web-browsers support advanced CSS techniques. Should we not create better websites that only the newer browsers can handle? We develop for both, one that the older browsers can handle, and one that the new browsers can make look even better. There is nothing wrong with developing for both. If you happen to look at the mirrors, there are .bz2 and .gz files, as well as a Suse version, in addition to the Mac and Windows versions.

Aero

VLC is a packet-based player

[aok]

I use VLC player for playing all my videos under Linux, both standalone and as a firefox plugin (in conjunction with the MediaPlayerConnectivity Firefox addon extension).

The only downside I find is that actions are a bit laggy compared to frame-based players. For example, if I hit pause, it doesn't pause instantaneously.

Also, and I'm not sure if it's a limitation of being a packet-based player, but I wish it wouldn't close the video right after it's done playing. I prefer the last frame to stay on the screen.

P.S. For those using VLC under XGL and get a weird green-tinted bar at the top of your videos, change the Video output module to "X11 video output". You'll need to toggle the Advanced Settings checkbox.

Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.filemirrors.com/search.src?type=begins& file=vlc-0.8.6-win32.exe&action=Find [filemirrors.com]

I used the .fr one. worked fine.

Re:h264 decoding on vlc player kicks ass!

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, playing h264 stuff in VLC doesn't work all that great for me... I use Media Player Classic with CoreAVC, and it uses far, far less cpu.

Re:Why is this under Linux?

[gQuigs]

If I recall correctly, it started out being only on Linux and then was ported to the other two.

Re:Flash video

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, more or less. You have to download the .swf file, then extract the url of the .flv file from it, then download that. There's a script to get the URL at http://www.keepvid.com/ [keepvid.com]. There's also a firefox plugin that'll do it for you.

Re:How about a mirror?

[ZiZ]

Since they run on Windows, they all require the trojan to be preinstalled.

This is a list of the mirrors from videolan.org, as seen on Google's cache [72.14.203.104] (or go searching for "cache:http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-window s.html" - don't forget to remove the spaces inserted by slashdot - on google yourself), with the links edited to be (a) direct mirror download links rather than through videolan.org's redirector and (b) the version number changed from 0.8.5 to 0.8.6.

And yes, it is a damn shame that you can't trust anyone on the Internet. Good thing there are helpful people like you watching out for the uneducated masses, otherwise we might all be running...er...trojan-infested pirated copies of Windows, with pirated music on our iPods, with our megahurtz being stoled.

Re:What fullscreen controller?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen way too many public presentations that begin with the Windows Media Player controls present, then sliding away, not to appreciate the value of VLC.

Thats the point - they slide away. If you don't want to see the controls, don't play with your mouse while watching something fullscreen.

Re:Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should Microsoft publish a list of patents? It's not their job.

Relevant patents are held in a patent pool with at least 15 other companies. The pool is owned by an outfit called MPEG LA [mpegla.com], which also manages patent pools for a number of other video standards. Unfortunately, VC-1 [mpegla.com] is still in their "Programs Under Development" section, so they don't yet have a patent list as they do for other standards such as MPEG-2 [mpegla.com].

Maybe you should complain about MPEG LA not yet posting the list -- it's been a few months since they announced the license terms from the initial pool members -- but that's hardly MS's fault.

Re:slashdotted with no comments

[chrispl]

I have not tried the new version yet but in the old version moving the mouse to the top right corner of the screen would pop up the controls.
Took me a while to figure that one out...

Never used Media Player Classic?

[guidryp]

> Gack, good! One of the best things about VLC is that there is no annoying "control" eating
> screen space when you go fullscreen. The keyboard shortcuts remain fully functional, so use those.

MPC interface is vastly superior, there is nothing on the screen until you move your mouse, then a nice control bar slides up, that works miles better than the lame one separate one in VLC. Especially since it works really well in MPC when you just click the positin bar anywhere.

Anyway still nothing in VLC, moving mouse does nothing. Pushing F does nothing.

Re:Issues with Vista?

[jelloshotgun]

I had that problem too, but if you go to Settings -> Preferences -> Video -> Output Modules and then check the Advanced Options box, select "Windows GDI video output" from the drop-down list, and it should work.

Re:Version Number Deflation...

[4D6963]

I think the difficulty of going from 0.x.x to 1.0 is that it may turn out that, after slowly adding feature after feature and fixing bug after bug to the point it'd deserve to be called 1.0, you're at something like 0.4.6 and as much as you'd like to call it 1.0 there's no way your program would deserve this huge incrementation over nothing. Just look at VLC or eMule, when should they have moved to 1.0? After 0.7.2 for VLC and 0.42e for eMule maybe?

You see, I just think that when your program evolves in a continuous manner and that no revolution is planned, it's hard to increment the first number of your version, and it has nothing to do with snobbism or incompetence.

Re:Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X?

[dr.badass]

Ffmpeg codecs are another implementation (than Windows DLLs) achieved through reverse-engeenering (which also may be illegal to use in some countries)

Um, no. There is no reverse-engineering involved. Windows Media Video 9 (fourcc: WMV3) is the same as VC-1 [wikipedia.org], which is an SMTPE standard, and a reference implementation has been available for a while now. I've been using ffmpeg builds with it for months.

Of course, I can't blame anyone for being confused, given how utterly useless the ffmpeg documentation is.

Re:Anyone know the changelog?

[Xenographic]

Their poor site is half dead but here's the changelog they put up:

Building on feedback from the 29 million downloads of VLC media player 0.8.5, we bring you version 0.8.6 with many bugfixes, as well as a couple of new features we think you will truly enjoy. Highlights of the new features and improvements:

        * Support for Windows Media Video 9 and VC-1
        * Support for VP5/VP6 and Flash video
        * Support for TTA and WavPack Lossless audio
        * Much improved H.264 support
        * Preliminary DVR-ms, MXF support
        * Shoutcast TV support
        * Windows unicode fixes
        * Apple Remote support
        * Apple Fullscreen controller
        * Universal Binary

Wish I knew how to make shuffle default to off :/

Re:slashdotted with no comments

[multimediavt]

VersionTracker.com [versiontracker.com] also has it for download on their mirrors.

Re:Softsubs fixed?

[aok]

I think it's fixed. When I was still using VLC under Windows, the subtitles looked pretty nasty. But it's been a while and I've been using Ubuntu Edgy now and recently watched some stuff with softsubs and they were very nice and not all chopped up.

The version I'm using is 0.8.6-svn20061012.debian-1ubuntu1 from Ubuntu Edgy.

Re:It's news.

[fireboy1919]

VLC is a very significant piece of software, not just for Linux users (for whom its especially significant)

Actually, I'd say that it isn't particularly significant for Linux users. In terms of featues and maturity, VLC is a step backwards compared to mplayer. However, mplayer has a lot of posix/linux kernel/gcc optimization tricks. It is designed and tested on Linux.

VLC, on the other hand, works fine with pretty much all of its features even on Windows and Mac, and it's portable - i.e. you can put it on a CD-Rom drive and use it to show whatever videos you've got there.

Ultimately, I think that the important issue is that it brings to all non-Linux users the codec support that mplayer has enjoyed for several years, and spurs further codec development, and starts people thinking abuot the important fact that a modern media player should be able to handle all possible media.

Re:Rrr

[Mark_in_Brazil]

My only issue with VLC is still there, why cant the slider go where you click it, instead of randomly skipping in the direction you click. Why cant you click ahead to whatever part like every other media player ever?!

Clicking on the slider bar bumps the slider in the direction toward the mouse pointer. But if you want to move to a specific spot, click on the slider, hold the button, and drag the slider to wherever you want it.

Oops... gotta go. The VLC 0.8.6 download just finished.