VLC 0.9.9, The Best Media Player Just Got Better 488
Matt Asay points out a recent update to VLC as they narrow in on a 1.0 release. Already a favorite of many, the open source project has made great strides in recent history towards really solidifying the position as best-in-class. This update, 0.9.9, fixes several display bugs and sees some definite performance improvements. "If you've yet to try VLC, do so. Whether you just want to play media files or also want to convert them, VLC can handle just about anything you throw at it. When all other media players fail, whether on Windows, Linux, or the Mac, VLC will almost always deliver. You can download VLC media player 0.9.9 here. It's open source, but that's not why you'll want to keep using it. You'll use it because it's better than its proprietary peers — by a long stretch.
Re:VLC is OK. (Score:5, Interesting)
why someone would prefer it over using mplayer
On Mac machines. VLC is one of those rare applications that works best on Macintosh. My personal preference for it stems from the clean GUI, the working DVD support, and the fact that it will actually play full-screen on your second monitor while still letting you work on the first monitor in other applications.
It's also a fine player on Windows and Linux - though not as compelling as those platforms have other very good choices.
Depends on my OS (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Better than mplayer? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ditto. For those few times when MPC won't play something or has a problem playing it smoothly, I fire up SMPlayer.
Eh... (Score:3, Interesting)
Eh, VLC is okay. I've found it to be more processor intensive when decoding MKV's than Media Player Classic - to the point where the old PC i repurposed as a media center can play 1080p movies just barely smoothly in media player classic, but it chokes if i need to use VLC (media player classic has options for choosing an audio stream but never actually shows more than one stream! grr).
I also HATE that VLC doesn't let you click on the frame to pause. Nothing happens when you click on the frame, so why not pause! Having to navigate to the little pause button every time is lame.
ALSO hate that even in full screen, the progress bar stays small, so I don't have much resolution when i want to skip back a little.
So yeah, best player ever? meh. It's nice, and i love all the transcoding features etc. is has, but that's not media playing, that's something else. As a media player, VLC is just ok.
-Taylor
Re:VLC is OK. (Score:3, Interesting)
VLC is an OK media playback application. I, for one, never understood why someone would prefer it over using mplayer [mplayerhq.hu].
I used mplayer for years, I tried a windows binary, didn't like it much. The command prompt is horrible in windows, and all of the GUIs I've found just didn't work all that well. VLC was a nice slim media player, worked well with any file I threw at it (like mplayer), it had a nice playlist I could drag and drop files onto, and it was easy to use. Same thing on my mac.
In linux I use mplayer for everything, but linux is more command line based, I'm used to it. I know how to quickly navigate a linux system with the command line. There isn't some fancy windows explorer or finder that I want to integrate nicely with on linux so mplayer works just fine for me in that situation. But seeing as how most people use windows or mac, VLC is very easy to install and will play just about anything, it's kind of obvious why most people would use it.
VLC OS X (Score:2, Interesting)
I've always had bad experiences with VLC on Mac, no matter which version. Converting videos to mpg, mp4, or anything else I try results in unreadable files.
While I donno if others are experiencing the same issues, it's disappointing that it's been consistently unreliable for me.
Re:Better than mplayer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed. Does it rescale video decently now, or is it still a pixelated mess (see, this worked fine in old versions, and then, somewhere along the line, it got broken. "It was ffmpeg's fault," but somehow mplayer didn't have the same problem)? And when you use it to transcode, does it produce MPEG-2 output that is correct-enough to be played by... any other player? 'Cus it hasn't yet in any version I've tried previously. And how about subtitles; does it handle them correctly now?
(VLC has an identity crisis. Once upon a time, it was supposed to be for network video streaming. Now it's competing as yet-another-general-purpose-media-player.)
Re:Better than mplayer? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not sure why this guy got modded Troll. Case in point, I got the most recent BSG DVDs and tried to play them on everything I had. VLC didn't work beyond the root screen. Windows Media Player failed. Intervideo DVD player crashed every time. It wasn't until I loaded the K lite codec full that I could get it to play...and only on the Media Player Classic frontend.
I have an Ice Age 2 DVD that won't play on anything except my custom-compiled mplayer. Doesn't even work with the same version on Windows.
Re:Revert interface to 0.8.6, or use OSX GUIfor wi (Score:5, Interesting)
I too absolutely hate the new QT interface and I want them to bring back the ability to use the wxWidgets interface that was used in 0.8.6 releases. Apparently the wxWidgets interface of VLC is no longer maintained, therefore they dropped it in the 0.9 releases. Because of this I still continue to use 0.8.6 on my machines. :(
Re:Better than mplayer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Try Zoom Player. It comes with the CCCP pack and much easier to use than VLC, looks better, may not have some of the same functionality but for playback it's unbeatable. Also, the scroll-wheel zoom in/out feature rocks.
VLC still has issues on my machine where I'll hit the spacebar to pause, then hit it again and the file will 6 out of 10 times start playback at half speed.
MPC has issues with subtitles.
VLC is illegal in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd love to use VLC legally in the US, but that doesn't seem like it'll happen any time soon.
VLC FAQ [videolan.org]
Re:VLC is OK. (Score:2, Interesting)
I also only used the Apple Remote with VLC until I found this little tool: http://gravityapps.com/sofacontrol/ [gravityapps.com]
I am a happy registered user of Sofa Control, which allows you to program your Apple Remote to pretty much do anything. And it highly extends/replaces the Front Row functionality without borking it up if you still want to use it, while simultaneously taking over "full control" of the remote away from Front Row. You can even use it to remotely control Safari which I imagine might come in handy (presentations etc).
Yup, Sofa Control + Apple remote = useful. Sorry for the off-topic-ness.
Re:Better than mplayer? (Score:2, Interesting)
After forking, the last update dates from December 10, 2008 [sourceforge.net] and it is a strong sign that it is, in fact, updated. There are also another fork that specialises in home cinema, hence its name Home Cinema.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli2/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc/
Also, why hunting for all the codecs when you can just as well download the current ffdshow from, say, afterdawn?
A warning about VLC and privacy - album art (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe it's resolved since then, but if VLC wasn't concerned about its users then I wasn't going to waste more time on their behalf either. Album art downloads tend to do Google searches and download the first image returned. For at least some releases of VLC, this gets triggered for videos as well as audio. The end result is, every time I watch a video that I have on my local network, VLC advertises the fact that I am watching it. To the largest data mining company ever, Google. Unencrypted for anyone to see.
I posted a question to VLC forums, they seemed very unconcerned about this.
Somehow I enabled album art download. I don't remember doing it, but I am told it is off by default in every release so I did it, as opposed to VLC doing it automatically, so it's not necessarily a big deal. but I don't remember turning it on and had no way to know it was on until I got "out of disk space" errors and went looking for things to delete.
Anyway, more details here and read for yourselves.
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=55288&p=182407 [videolan.org]
Re:Better than mplayer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Better than mplayer? (Score:2, Interesting)
From what I heard, it sounds like VLC on Mac is a lot better than VLC on Windows. Partly because of differences in the actual program/UI on the different platforms. The other reason is because there are more competitive apps on Windows than there are on Mac, so the whole "best media player" tag is more likely to draw in Windows users to the comments so they can disagree with it.
Disclaimer: This is all what I've gathered reading the thread. Luckily, I don't have a Mac.
Re:Better than mplayer? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem's I've found with VLC over MPC, is that VLC does not support the Windows interface for media control buttons on keyboards.(Rather minor, but when watching something full screen, having a working hardware play/pause button is nice.)
But VLC does provide keyboard control using regular keys. The spacebar is your hardware play/pause button. Yes, if you've got media control buttons, it would be nice to be able to use them. But VLC's way of doing things works even for those who just have a plain old regular keyboard.
NOW SEEKS IN FLV FILES! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm surprised that this isn't listed as one of the improvements anywhere.
That was what made Miro a PITA. Miro is based on VLC for playback support. It is now going to be USEFUL for me! Fantastic.
Re:VLC is OK. (Score:1, Interesting)
You need to try smplayer, it works really nice in Windows and it looks ok.
Re:Better than mplayer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Exceptions:
1. DRMed Windows Media Audio/Video
2. Some audio codec used in a 3gp file I have
DVD video is so easy to play on so many things. I've never had a problem with it in vlc. It's CSS and MPEG-2, not some weird and exotic combination of brand new codecs.