VLC Passes 3 Billion Downloads (venturebeat.com) 96
VLC has reached a rare milestone: It has been downloaded more than 3 billion times across various platforms, up from 1 billion downloads in May 2012. VentureBeat reports of the milestone and the new features coming to the media player: VLC today rolled out a minor update -- v3.0.6 -- that adds support for HDR videos in AV1, an emerging video format. But in the coming months, VLC has bigger things planned. First up is a major update to VLC's Android app in about a month, which will introduce support for AirPlay. This will enable Android users to beam video files from their Android phones to the Apple TV. [Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the president and lead developer of VLC's parent company VideoLan] then plans to update the VR app, which will enable native support for VR videos. He said his team reverse-engineered popular VR headsets so that developers no longer need to rely on the SDKs offered by vendors. The app will also receive support for 3D interactions and stereo sound, and add a virtual theater feature.
After that, a major update will be pushed to VLC across all popular platforms. The update, dubbed version 4.0, will offer playback improvements in scaling and video quality of HDR video files. But that's not all. Kempf says he plans to bring VLC to more platforms. He said he is thinking about bringing the media player to Sony's PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Roku devices. Kempf participated in Slashdot's interview a couple of years ago, offering some insight into how he's able to keep VLC sustainable (since VideoLan is a nonprofit that runs entirely on donations) and the various projects that were in the works at the time, among other things.
After that, a major update will be pushed to VLC across all popular platforms. The update, dubbed version 4.0, will offer playback improvements in scaling and video quality of HDR video files. But that's not all. Kempf says he plans to bring VLC to more platforms. He said he is thinking about bringing the media player to Sony's PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Roku devices. Kempf participated in Slashdot's interview a couple of years ago, offering some insight into how he's able to keep VLC sustainable (since VideoLan is a nonprofit that runs entirely on donations) and the various projects that were in the works at the time, among other things.
Push ads for a month (Score:2)
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mpv? Nope.
Haven't used it since they pulled lirc support. There's no kernel IR replacement for irexec, so it was removed off all my PCs and HTPCs.
Re:Never make fun of a NERD (Score:2)
Typical slashdot article (Score:4, Informative)
no actual link to download vlc in the summary. I didn't see one in the linked article either.
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ [videolan.org]
There's way more in vlc than just playing videos.
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QQ
(You can take that either way.)
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You obviously didn't read the title of the TFA: 3 Billion Downloads. Everyone already knows where to download it. Especially everyone on Slashdot, no?
Re: Typical slashdot article (Score:1, Funny)
Nope. Never heard of VLC before this. Guess I spend too much time being producctive, except for this post
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no actual link to download vlc in the summary.
Link? Just type VLC into the Windows Store ;-)
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That wink face means you're being facetious, right?
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Nope: https://www.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com]
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No that wink face is a "I'm being 100% serious while at the same time waiting to see the anti-Windows crowd's heads explode" winkface :-)
But seriously this is to their credit. VLC is available not only on a wide range of platforms but it's available in a native form for that platform.
You want an exe? You got it.
You want a tarball? You got that too.
dmg for your Mac? Of course.
dpkg? Yep, rpm? Yep. Okay that's the easy stuff.
Android store? Yesirree
Windows store? You betchya.
Apple App store? You got that too.
Wa
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Frame by frame? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder when VLC will add support for stepping through videos frame by frame?
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HA That's easy. Now try to go backwards one frame at a time.
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As your aware... video data is no longer frame by frame, but lots of deltas and other compression and movement tricks.
True.
Very difficult to go backwards
False.
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The internal data isn't frame by frame, but the final display is. Being able to scrub back and forth in the video, with data buffered in it. It would make sense that frames would be buffered in RAM, for rewind and backwards features, Also with modern computers with extremely fast video cards, that can render images faster then your monitors display rate, A full frame is created and saved and displayed in sync with the display to prevent disjointed images in fast moving video. However this may not be in VC
Quicktime Player... (Score:1)
...does it very easily - and quickly.
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Shouldn't matter. My computer goes 3 GHz. To me they are more interested in making excuses. My complaints are silly of course, considering the price I paid, and it is the best all around player, but, you know, c'mon... It's not that difficult. This is the very thing a computer should be able to do.
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I'm waiting for smooth seeking back and forth. No matter what hardware or OS, using the timeline to seek back and forth is choppy and clunky.
Ever hear of KEYFRAMES? (Score:2, Interesting)
Smooth seeking in a keyframe based CODEC is choppy- who'd have thunk it. Low IQ dribblers (the only people who think Slashdot is worth visiting for any reason other than propaganda watching) are always too thick to inform themselves on subjects very well covered on multiple internet resources.
Most modern CODECs are keyframe based and mono-directional. Editors with smooth seeking re-encode the video clips in a per frame form (essentially each frame becomes its own JPG picture). Either the re-encoded pictures
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Chill. Pretty sure he just meant it would be nice to have. Which it would. Nobody demanded VLC have it right now at all costs.
Re:Ever hear of KEYFRAMES? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why can't you just re-encode only from a previous keyframe to your seek point on the fly? There is no need to reencode the entire file. Just re-encode one keyframe to the next keyframe.
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Re:Ever hear of KEYFRAMES? (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand encoding video is time consuming but we only need to decode here really, which is always faster. You really don't need to re-encode anything you just need to decode a keyframe to keyframe and store the results temporarly. I just checked online for example on H.264 and it seems to have keyframe every 2 to 10 seconds on average, so in reality you only need to decode at max 10 seconds. Now if you don't have the computing power to do this for example on a mobile then obviously you use only key frame seeking but on a PC powerhouse there is no excuse.
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Not really. All you have to do is construct the frame you're seeking to. If you want to step back a frame, reconstruct from the keyframe again. The number of intermediate frames you keep to minimize the re-computation will be a trade-off between available memory and minimum time to step back.
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Just keep adding GPU and CPU support and get that smooth user experience that's expected on a new, fast desktop computer.
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I second that. Also, playing 4K videos sucks, at first I thought it was something else but the same videos play perfectly under LightAlloy, while VLC makes a mess of aquares, rectangles and still images on the screen.
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You should ask for your money back.
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The eternal excuse for sloppy code: but it's free”. Sorry but I am not using software because it's free, I'm using software because it's good. And if it's not good, I am providing feedback, no matter its price.
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One of the reason why Movies can fit on DVDs and Blueray disks, and being able to be streamed off a normal home internet connection for over a decade now, is lossy image compression. Traditional analog video sends a stream of signals at different intensities, at a predefined time, there is no buffering and no compression. The old Broadcast station makes the analog signal and the old tv picks it up and interprets it. Now if there is any interference, the screen would probably display static in some parts.
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A totally unscientific 3-minute test on 2 files suggests a different origin.
When you click in the playback bar, it's almost impossible to jump a small amount. Testing in a 90-minute video, when you click right next to the playback indicator, there's a dead zone, the smallest available jump is about 2 minutes ahead. And playback hiccups when you use this method; it plays a tiny amount (on the order of 0.2 seconds), then repeats that section before playback becomes smooth.
This is an interface problem: the dea
You don't need VLC for this... (Score:2)
SystemD is putting that feature out in the next version.
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It's not in the menus but there's a shortcut for 'Next Frame'.
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Disable Time-Stretching audio in the audio tab, it seems like it's enabled by default because it drops frames and slows the audio down to compensate, but nowadays it's really not needed unless your machine is slow as molasses.
Fix the playback then. (Score:1)
VLC has had a blocking/blurring issue with most videos on every system I've ever used it on since it was first released. Literally no other player does this.
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Screenshot it.
Because I watch all my TV via VLC, broadcast and recorded, all my video library, anything off the net, and anything locally saved or created, plus all the work stuff.
Literally never had an issue.
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Basically it's exactly as the AC posted. This goes for lots of stuff I've tried playing on it across multiple PCs. Even DVDs/BluRays.
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And the organisation is French.
Almost like it's an international collaborative software project...
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VLC was my 1st real player. But sadly, its randomly defined features make it difficult to take
seriously beyond the simple playing of flac, mp3, and most video formats and their containers.
Randomly? Take snapshots, for example, use to include the soft subtitle (if present). Didn't want it,
just disable the subtitle stream. N.P. Now, it's always w/o the subtitle.
I think the problem is the reluctance to shore-up existing features, fix bugs, and remain consistent
with VLC as a tool rather than a toy. I foll
Good Open Source (Score:2)
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Doubleclick to fullscreen (Score:1)
Java? (Score:2)
Baby Shark? (Score:2)
VLC badly needs a user interface update. (Score:2)
I'm a long time user of VLC and I have a love-hate relationship with it. On the one hand, I have a lot of loyalty and personal affection to the software, having used it to play back videos that could not be played by anything else. During the past couple of years, I feel that VLC has been falling back and feels harder to use compared to the other software I routinely use.
First of all, the interface is clunky and awkward, still looking like it was written for CDE using X primitives instead of modern toolkits
Internet hero (Score:2)