VLC 1.0.0 Released 419
rift321 writes "VLC media player, which we all know for simplifying the playback of pretty much any codec out there, has finally released version 1.0.0. Here's a quick list of improvements: live recording, instant pausing and frame-by-frame support, finer speed controls, new HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0), new formats (Raw Dirac, M2TS) and major improvements in many formats, new Dirac encoder and MP3 fixed-point encoder, video scaling in fullscreen, RTSP Trickplay support, zipped file playback, customizable toolbars, easier encoding GUI in Qt interface, better integration in Gtk environments, MTP devices on Linux, and AirTunes streaming."
Hardware acceleration (Score:5, Interesting)
Without hardware accelerated h.264 playback, I'm not going back to VLC.
Still, it's a great do it all player / streamer.
VLC media player and MPEG-2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Better DVD menu support? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So it plays back media (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd rather have a dozen tools, each of which excells at it's one thing, than one tool that does a half-assed job at a dozen things.
No matter what OS I'm on, I always seem to use one app for audio, and one app for video. What constitutes a clean and useful interface for audio rarely does for video, and vice-versa. I've yet to see an app that auto-switches on media type.
Heck, in FreeBSD, I usually have three video apps (noatun, vlc and mplayer) because none of them works well on everything, but at least one will work for whatever I watch.
Re:Does it still have a GUI interface (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't like the native look?
Use the skins: http://images1.videolan.org/vlc/skins2/subX.png
Re:Consolidation (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, we are approaching some consolidation, H.264 seems to reign supreme for almost all video, I guess that's run by people with eyes. Audio, meh. If they did a double blind test between LPCM, FLAC, Apple Lossless, TrueHD and DTS-HD Master I swear they'd find a ton of differences. And apart from those that want the kitchen sink general programming environment, MKV is doing a pretty damn good job on video, audio, subtitles, chapters, multiple angles etc. BluRay for example is a whole JavaVM, there's a full OS running inside the machine just to play the damn disc. Now I'm just hoping that all the browser plugins will die and be replaced with HTML5 video elements.
Sticking with mplayer, thank you (Score:5, Interesting)
I like VLC, I really do. For that matter, I like xine too. But neither one, as far as I can tell, can do one thing that mplayer does: Display closed captioning. No, that's not DVD subtitles. It's purely a US American thing, so is routinely ignored, or at least misunderstood, by the international communities that maintain these products.
I watched a thread on a VLC (or was it xine?) discussion forum where somebody asked about closed captioning support. After about twelve messages, they finally determined that no, it really wasn't the same as subtitles (some participants never were convinced of that fact), but was "some American thing", at which point amidst a lot of tongue clucking and regrets, the thread fizzled out.
So until a media player can display closed captions, I'm not really able to use it. But nice try, guys, and keep up the good work.
(Yes, I am sure I could dive into the mplayer code, locate the closed-captioning bits, extract them, and submit them to both VLC and xine as patches. I'll get right on that, mmm-hmmm!)
Best way to upgrade? (or Videolan's website sucks) (Score:3, Interesting)
Checking for updates from VLC 0.9.9 reports that I have the latest version. I figured I'd visit Videolan's site and see what the release notes said about upgrading, but I can't find any release notes. So I tried checking the FAQ, wiki, and forums. The FAQ doesn't cover upgrading from 0.9.9 to 1.0.0, and the wiki and forum links just seem to return you to the VLC main page. I'm downloading 1.0.0 now. I'll probably end up uninstalling 0.9.9 and installing 1.0.0, but it sure would be nice if the "check for updates" functionality worked. And it would be nice if the wiki and forums worked, too.
Zipped file playback (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't seem to find any additional information on the zipped file playback stated in the summary. Can anyone elaborate on that? Do they literally mean it will only play files that are zipped, or will it finally play back multi-part RAR files? I (and many others) have been asking for this functionality for years now - I even went so far as to submit a patch for this functionality... however, the developers (at least at the time) were whiny little princesses and refused to implement a feature like that because it compromises the integrity of VLC (no seriously, that was the reason).
As such, the lack of multi-part RAR playback has made VLC pretty much useless for serious media centers. If they've finally backpeddled and implemented this feature, my hat is off to them for manning up and accepting the fact that multipart RARs are a standard (however unfortunate that is) and the ability to play back media that is in that "format" is a necessity for a good player.
If they have still not implemented this functionality, however, VLC is still fairly useless for true universal media players, since other software is capable of it and works just as well if not better.
So - can anyone elaborate on that?
Re:Hardware acceleration (Score:1, Interesting)
What software actually has good and working hardware acceleration for h.264? I am not talking about hardware accelerated blu-ray discs. I want to be able to read h.264 in MKVs or AVIs as well. I don't know any software which can do this well and is usable so I stick with VLC. Anyways, my cheap dual core CPU can play a 15GB H.264 1080p movie so acceleration isn't that much an issue, and you won't even care in a few years, just like you don't care about acceleration for MPEG2 DVDs when you watch them in your computer.
Re:Better DVD menu support? (Score:3, Interesting)
it's making my linux sell really difficult for my girlfriend and my roommate, who both say "if it can't play a DVD, I'm not using it". Sigh
Don't sell linux. Quitting windows is like quitting smoking, if deep down you don't really want to quit, you never will.
Re:Consolidation (Score:5, Interesting)
This may not be entirely untrue, but for different reasons than you might imagine. Lossless means lossless, yes, but I hear rumors (definitely don't take my word for this) that DTS does apply some sweetening to the signal when they process it (boost the bass, widen the surround field). Not sure if this is true or not (and if it is true it is a really dumb idea), but for all intents and purposes, lossless is lossless and I can prove it -- with science!!
1. Step 1 -- Take an audio track, rip it as WAV, and dump it into any sound editing software.
2. Step 2 -- Duplicate that track and flip the phase on it.
What you are (not) hearing is perfect digital silence, as the waveforms are 100%, perfectly identical and cancelling each other out. This same trick sort of works in the analog realm (ie noise cancelling headphones), but you can never really get a perfectly opposing waveform and the effect thereby never works perfectly. In the digital realm however, the effect is flawless.
When two waveforms are similar, however, all of the similar parts of the waveform will cancel out, leaving only the differing bits. If you extrapolate this out, we can figure out what (if anything) is lost to different encoding processes. If you rip that same track as a 128k MP3 and repeat the experiment, you will hear everything that is lost to the encoding (that's where that hi-hat went!). When you repeat this same experiment (I know, I have done it) with Apple Lossless or FLAC, you will again get perfect digital silence, as the lossless track is bit-for-bit identical to the CD track. Science FTW!
Re:Consolidation (Score:3, Interesting)
Works for images, too. Take two images which may or may not be identical, put them on separate layers, then invert the colors of the top one and drop its opacity to 50%. If you're not looking at a perfectly uniform field of 50% grey*, the images aren't the same. Great way to tell if something's been 'shopped, or even resaved as a JPG again (since each resaving introduces new artifacts.) Automate this process with a webcam and you've got motion detection.
And speaking of sound, this is how Dolby Surround originally worked with just 2 channels of audio. Combine the left and right channels for "center"; invert one and add them (to get the difference) and that's your "surround." Back before I had a surround amp, I bridged two channels of my amp into speakers wired in series to make this happen.**
You're right: science FTW. :-)
* or something close. Just tried it with identical images and some pixels were 127-127-127 and some were 128-128-128. YMMV.
** can't find any suitable images so I'll try with a one-line ascii art:
Amp L Pos [+]-----[+] rear L spkr Pos | rear L spkr Neg [-]-----[+] rear R spkr Pos | rear R spkr Neg [-]-----[-] Amp R Neg