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VLC 0.8.6 Released 258

Posted by kdawson from the plays-almost-anything dept.
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."
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VLC 0.8.6 Released More

VLC 0.8.6 Released

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  • Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xjerky ( 128399 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:45PM (#17201794)
    I realize Flip4Mac exists for this, but does the new VLC implement Windows WMV9 DLLs for the Intel OS X version?

    • Re:Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:50PM (#17201858) Homepage
      FFMPEG now contains an open-source WMV9 decoder.

      • Re:Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X? (Score:5, Informative)

        by KonoWatakushi ( 910213 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @08:15PM (#17202098)
        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: (Score:2)

          by Megane ( 129182 )

          I have a PPC mac and it is great to have a native working WMV9/VC-1 codec.

          Wow! Look at those pigs flying out of a frozen-over hell!

          Now I can finally play those WMV9/AAC Japanese TV rips without playing codec-war games. If they managed to get the softsub driver to be even somewhat useful, then it will have been worth the wait. VLC was notorious for how badly it rendered softsubs.

      • Any options for a browser plugin for OS X?

    • Re:Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by stuuf ( 587464 ) <[sac+sd] [at] [atomicradi.us]> on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:52PM (#17201880) Homepage Journal
      I think it uses the new WMV9 decoder added to ffmpeg for Summer of Code, so it doesn't need windows DLLs or any other platform-specific or legally shady methods.

    • Re:Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X? (Score:5, Informative)

      by kosmosik ( 654958 ) <kos@ko[ ]sik.net ['smo' in gap]> on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:53PM (#17201894) Homepage
      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. :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
        The only illegality in question for the WMV3 decoder is patent infringement, but it's not like Microsoft makes any effort to posting the relative patents needed to license WMV3/VC-1 like MPEG does for its standards.
        • You don't need to know which patents you're infringing; you just need to know that they exist and if you pay MS you get a license for all of them. :-/

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by 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 mont

      • Re:Hmmm....WMV9 on OS X? (Score:5, Informative)

        by dr.badass ( 25287 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @11:37PM (#17203584) Homepage
        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.

    • ffmpeg's WMV9 implementation (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wesley96 ( 934306 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:59PM (#17201966) Homepage
      Since it's using ffmpeg to decode WMV9 instead of using Windows DLLs, both PPC and Intel Macs enjoy native decoding of the codec in question. No wrapper, no drag.

      Incidentally, it looks like the new version is finally available in Universal Binary as well as Intel- and PPC-specific builds. And it seems to load subtitle texts automatically from the get-go without mingling with the preferences settings (yes, I confirmed this by trashing the existing preferences file). I say job well done for the VLC developers.

  • Why is this under Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drcagn ( 715012 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:47PM (#17201810) Homepage
    This program is cross-platform and this build has Windows- and OSX-specific features. Why is this under Linux? Just because it's open source?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by aero2600-5 ( 797736 )
      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

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Chandon Seldon ( 43083 )

        and is possibly the best media player for Linux.

        Lots of things are possible. That's one that's possible and not true.

        VLC Player is more likely to be the best media player under Windows, where stuff like MPlayer isn't native.

        • I'm a Linux user. I use VLC since it has a really nice interface, and plays just about everything. It feels like a more modern mplayer to me. Not that I have anything against mplayer though. Mplayer is one of the most rugged players I know, and it's absolutely PERFECT for use with MythTV.

          So no, I would say that it's a matter of opinion whether it's the best player or not. Personally, I think it is.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by gQuigs ( 913879 )
      If I recall correctly, it started out being only on Linux and then was ported to the other two.

  • VLC is teh woohoo! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DaveM753 ( 844913 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:47PM (#17201816)
    > "a Fullscreen controller"

    Woohoo! I've been a tad frustrated with the lack of control while in fullscreen. I suppose I could memorize all of the keyboard shortcuts, but I use several different viewers between the Mac, Linux and Windoze...it just gets too confusing. I can't wait to try this out!
    • I've been frustrated by 0.8.5's inability to remember deinterlacing settings, and also it's tendency to spew out errors. I've had it crash several times in an evening.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jherek Carnelian ( 831679 )
        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.
        • I really like vlc a lot, but like a lot of Free software, the user-interface could really benefit from improvement.

          ...as opposed to commercial software, which is harmed by improvement? :)

          The main beef I had with VLC is that the default keyboard shortcuts seemed deficient, and the navigation shortcuts changed in full screen on Linux. But VLC has rapidly become the best media player out there IMO, and the fact that it's cross-platform is gravy.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Miseph ( 979059 )
            I think the key phrase was user-interface. Most free software does need a lot of fixing up in the UI department, and most commercial software needs a lot of improvement in the functionality department.

  • nigthlies is up (Score:5, Informative)

    by gerbalblaste ( 882682 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:49PM (#17201838) Journal
    http://nightlies.videolan.org/ [videolan.org] is still online

  • /.ng (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:49PM (#17201842)
    Ok, it is time that you all stop covering software releases. You /.'d a college; now cut it out. My porn is of a greater urgency than your reporting.

  • Some help with versioning? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dave562 ( 969951 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @07:58PM (#17201958) Journal
    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.

    For bug fixes I could see a 0.0.1 increase but don't new additions and features generally come with a 0.1.0 increment at least? Maybe the devs are too scared of developing a true 1.0 version? =)

    • Except that they could go to 0.10.x and 0.11.x etc until they think they're ready to call it 1.0.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by h2g2bob ( 948006 )
      A lot of the new features come directly from the ffmpeg library, so the actual code in VLC isn't that much different. This really is just a release to add those features as 0.9 will take some time to do.

  • How about a mirror? (Score:5, Informative)

    by ZiZ ( 564727 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @08:00PM (#17201974) Homepage
    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.)

    • Re:How about a mirror? (Score:5, Funny)

      by maxume ( 22995 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @08:12PM (#17202072)
      Which one has your trojan embedded?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ZiZ ( 564727 )
        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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by javilon ( 99157 )
        Which one has your trojan embedded?

        The one that has a different checksum

      • Re:How about a mirror? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11, 2006 @09:29PM (#17202750)
        We all know slashdotters rarely if ever get a chance to embed a trojan...

      • Re:How about a mirror? (Score:5, Funny)

        by legal_asshole ( 859683 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @09:45PM (#17202874)
        I appologize in advance...

        I'd go with the mirror from India. The trojan has probably slipped off the executable, and the executable is going to be smaller to boot!

        I hate myself...

  • torrent? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by metroplex ( 883298 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @08:01PM (#17201978) Homepage
    Is there an official torrent of the releases hosted somewhere reachable?
    • Is there an official torrent of the releases hosted somewhere reachable?

      It would have been nice that had provided one before making this announcement. Maybe next time?

  • h264 decoding on vlc player kicks ass! (Score:5, Informative)

    by vivek7006 ( 585218 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @08:04PM (#17201998) Homepage
    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!
    • You should thank the ffmpeg team for that, not the VLC guys (who certainly deserve credit for their work in other areas though)
    • Really? I thought doom9.org's semi-consensus was that ffdshow was the best performing decoder for h264?

      Could have changed since I last checked I suppose.
      • http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=99402 [doom9.org]

        Ahh, I guess I was wrong.

        ateme: 58.78
        libav-mplayer: 58.22
        moonlight: 55.48
        libav-ffdshow: 52.15
        libav-ffdshow_old: 52.11
        nero: 50.74
        elecard: 44.04

        ffdshow is in the middle of the pack, behind mplayer/VLC and ahead of Nero. CoreAVC, while not tested there, is considered to be faster than all of the above.
        • Those numbers are from November 2005.

          I am not going to go dig for more recent numbers, but I saw comments in passing on the ffdshow-tryout mailing list about being their latest checkins being comparable to coreavc. Don't remember the specifics though, it could easily have been for one of the profiles that don't matter so much.
  • Installed 0.8.6 and when I go to fullscreen, I can't find any new full screen control. A big part of the reason I use MPC first and use VLC as a backup, is the much more usable interface on MPC in full screen mode. VLC still has none AFAICT.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by node 3 ( 115640 )
      Move your mouse.

    • Re:What fullscreen controller? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by flimnap ( 751001 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @08:31PM (#17202246) Homepage

      Installed 0.8.6 and when I go to fullscreen, I can't find any new full screen control.

      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.

      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.


      • > 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, movin

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )
          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.

          Agreed, I've found MPC to be better for that in particular and scroll wheel should be for sound, not jumping around in the vid where it's not accurate enough to be useful anyway. Unfortunately VLC seems to have MPC beat when it come

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbridges ( 70118 )
          The fullscreen controls added VLC are OSX only (read the update log).

    • To answer my own question. Change history details show that the interface I was looking for is only in OSX. That is why I couldn't see it. The story blurb led me to believe this was a multi-platform feature.

  • "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."

    And most importantly it will play all your pr0n torrents if you are running OSX. (Comes with free cloth

  • VLC is a packet-based player (Score:5, Informative)

    by aok ( 5389 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @08:21PM (#17202152)
    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.
  • I just started a RPM build based on the livna 0.8.5 spec file and dependencies...heading back to work for a few hours. If this works, I'll post the resultant SRPM and FC6 RPMs. The spec file that comes with 0.8.6 is marked version 0.8.0, so I didn't even bother with it.

    -Michael

  • Version Number Deflation... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 7Prime ( 871679 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @09:49PM (#17202892) Homepage Journal

    Is it just me, or does it make NO SENSE that this is a point.point upgrade? I don't care who you are, 0.0.1 upgrades are for things like bug fixes, small new implimentations, slight library recompiles... fuck: a new ICON. NOT major format additions, a UI overhaul, and a boatload of additional features!

    I can understand the concern for version number inflation (Netscape 4 -> Netscape 6 was idiotic, same with Winamp 3 -> Winamp 5), but let's not be overly humble to the point of confusing users. Version Number Deflation looks just as silly.

    I remember a time in which anything under 1.0 meant that a program was practically unusable and ONLY for elite users. But I've started to see a trend in the OSS community towards NEVER releasing a 1.0, as if 1.0 means that you're now an evil commercial entity that must be punished. No, 1.0 means "finished to the point of usability and beta tested to a certain level of solidity". Obviously, the finer points of this can be debated and are up to the descresion of the developer, but at a certain point, COME ON! When you've been working on a reasonably small audio player for over 4 years, and haven't even reached your 1.0, this tells me one of two things 1) You don't know how to code, and probably should find a new line of work, or 2) you're using numbers under 1.0 as a symbol of you're elitist OSS community status.

    Seriously, I've tried VLC... it crashes sometimes... not as often as Windows... not as often as MPlayer... it's been above a 1.0 for YEARS now, just fucking call it what it is, and cut with the ritualistic, elitist, OSS symbolism bullshit.

    • Re:Version Number Deflation... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @10:37PM (#17203244)
      I think that a lot of open source projects avoid going to 1.0 because they lose the whole "it's a beta, it's supposed to have problems" crutch. The fact of the matter is, people in general understand that all applications, regardless of version number, have flaws.

      When you call it 1.0, there is no going back. It's kind of scary for some projects. Look at the difference in press in a project like firefox. When it hit 1.0 it started getting flack for a poor upgrade mechanism and such, while before that no one cared much if it only came in .zip files.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 4D6963 ( 933028 )

      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 c

    • Re:Version Number Deflation... (Score:4, Funny)

      by WheresMyDingo ( 659258 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @12:21AM (#17203892)
      in related news.. as part of their Truth in Point Releases Initiative, Microsoft has renamed Windows Vista as "Windows 0.6.1"
    • I've tried VLC. It crashes a lot more often than Windows. I've seen VLC 0.8.5 crash twice in an evening, I see Windows crash once every other year, and often it's a hardware problem when it does.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
      MPlayer hasn't released 1.0 yet. In fact, their latest release snapshot was 1.0rc1 (the 'pre' in 1.0pre8 for example means "pre-release" or "preview").

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      No, 1.0 means "finished to the point of usability and beta tested to a certain level of solidity".

      Version numbers mean whatever you want it to mean. Ubuntu using year.month, many closed source applications just forget the whole bother and call it $foo 2006. That doesn't telling you any-fucking-thing about how big an upgrade is or how stable it is. It's neat if it makes some sort of sense that a +1.0.0 contains this, +0.1.0 this and +0.0.1 this, but it's entirely optional if you ask me. Want 1.0 to be "perfe

  • Thank you VideoLAN for VLC from a Mac user (Score:5, Insightful)

    by theurge14 ( 820596 ) * on Monday December 11, 2006 @10:11PM (#17203094)
    I use VLC here at home to play the videos Quicktime won't, and I have a copy on my USB drive so I can also play videos and listen to AAC files on the Windows 2000 machines at work that I don't have admin permissions to install anything else on. Thanks for making a great player, a cross platform player, and a portable player. Software the way it ought to be.

  • FLV? (Score:2)

    by antdude ( 79039 )
    Does FLV play completely? In v0.8.5, it didn't and I had to go back to v0.8.4. :(

  • Sooooo pretty. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Monday December 11, 2006 @11:06PM (#17203412)
    I'm just stopping by to point out that the new FFMPEG codecs included with VLC are dreamy. Fullscreen video looks twice as good as it used to. And having Apple remote support in fullscreen mode is fab. Truly an excellent release.
    • Fullscreen video looks twice as good as it used to.

      I have no idea how the (ffmpeg/libav) codecs could accomplish that, unless there was some serious bug in the past.

      Sounds more likely due to VLC changing something like the video output method, or enabling postprocessing.

  • Rrr (Score:3)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @01:37AM (#17204374) Homepage
    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?!? And why cant i get keyboard media key support. Those are my only 2 complaints though, and i use VLC as my primary player, so thats pretty good.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mark_in_Brazil ( 537925 )

      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.

  • Plays DVDs & CDs from ISO images (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dickeya ( 733264 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @02:37AM (#17204682)
    That feature alone makes it my default media player. VLC rules.

  • Question: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by crhylove ( 205956 ) <rhy@leperkhanz.com> on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @05:57AM (#17205590) Homepage Journal
    Can someone point me to a way to view what other people are watching in VLC? It's my job.

    Dwight Shrute.

  • A great video player (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GauteL ( 29207 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @11:01AM (#17207824)
    .. although I wish there was some care being taken about the interface. Most of my comments are about the Mac version, but some of them should be relevant to other versions as well.

    1. The OS X version shows the video with controls in the same window as the video, but ALSO shows a separate controller window. This is redundant. All the necessary options should be able to fit into the video window.

    2. There is a stop button that afaics just closes the video window. Why the need for this redundant option?

    3. Skip buttons have been combined with the fast forward button in almost any interface by now. Just do that in VLC as well.

    2. and 3. gets rid of three redundant buttons in the interface.

    4. The equaliser is not important enough to warrant a button of it's own. The menu is fine.

    5. There is an awful lot of so-called "unbreak me" options. Options to make things work if your system is somehow weird. Just check this automatically. I know this can be a lot of effort from the programmer, so I can understand a Free Software project not doing to much about it. Nevertheless, there are too many weird options that clutter up the interface.

    6. The preferences window has a "Reset All", "Cancel" and "Save" button. These are completely out of place in a program in OS X. Instant apply and a reset button would be better.

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