VLC Will Get a New UI This Year With 4.0 Launch (arstechnica.com) 114
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: News website Protocol ran an extensive piece on the history and status of the popular open source video player VLC, and the story includes new details about the next major version of the software. Among other things, VLC 4.0 will bring a complete user interface overhaul. "We modified the interface to be a bit more modern," VideoLAN foundation President Jean-Baptiste Kempf told the publication. Kempf had previously shown some version of a new interface about two years ago, but it's unclear at this point how much that one resembles the one the team plans to introduce with VLC 4.0.
While the article doesn't list every change coming, it does outline a couple other possible directions and priorities for VLC. The VideoLAN foundation has not generally sought ways to monetize VLC, but some source of funding or revenue could help ensure long-term support for the project. To that end, Kempf said VideoLAN is exploring a Plex-like business model, with ad-supported free video streams available in the player. "That is something that could work for VLC," he explained. But it was clear nothing is final on that front yet. VLC will also ultimately get support the AV1 and AV2 codecs; AV1 is gaining a great deal of traction for streaming services and other video products these days. Finally, VideoLAN is developing a new way to run VLC on the Web, using Webassembly and JavaScript. VLC 4.0 is expected "in the coming months," but we don't know any more than that at this stage.
While the article doesn't list every change coming, it does outline a couple other possible directions and priorities for VLC. The VideoLAN foundation has not generally sought ways to monetize VLC, but some source of funding or revenue could help ensure long-term support for the project. To that end, Kempf said VideoLAN is exploring a Plex-like business model, with ad-supported free video streams available in the player. "That is something that could work for VLC," he explained. But it was clear nothing is final on that front yet. VLC will also ultimately get support the AV1 and AV2 codecs; AV1 is gaining a great deal of traction for streaming services and other video products these days. Finally, VideoLAN is developing a new way to run VLC on the Web, using Webassembly and JavaScript. VLC 4.0 is expected "in the coming months," but we don't know any more than that at this stage.
They'd better keep the traffic cone (Score:5, Funny)
It's the highlight of my year when the Santa hat appears on it at Christmastime.
Re: They'd better keep the traffic cone (Score:2)
Can they finally add a "reset filters" button FFS?
Re: They'd better keep the traffic cone (Score:5, Insightful)
How about clicking with the mouse to pause the video, will they do that?
Will they use the same keyboard shortcuts across Windows+Mac+Linux versions instead of every version doing something completely unpredictable?
What about having the control bar be as wide as the screen so you're not trying to go to a specific time in the video using only 100 pixels?
Will the Mac version finally be able to single step more than five frames without crashing?
Most importantly of all: Will it try to buffer more than 2Kb of video on my 16Gb PC so that it doesn't stutter every time there's a scene with sea/rain/fog/jungle, or if somebody else tries to use the WiFi while I'm watching something?
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Most importantly of all: Will it try to buffer more than 2Kb of video on my 16Gb PC so that it doesn't stutter every time there's a scene with sea/rain/fog/jungle, or if somebody else tries to use the WiFi while I'm watching something?
Tools -> Preferences -> Show Settings All -> Input/Codecs -> Advanced section
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Why can't it just do it by default?
Re: They'd better keep the traffic cone (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't know how to do it. I loaded vlc, and used the search function in the preferences dialog to find the settings. Then I provided directions to the section sans snark for once and boom, I'm accused of that very thing.
There are up and down sides to additional buffering. Increased buffers for streaming content in particular can have serious ramifications for users on metered connections. Last I looked the default buffers in Kodi were pretty small too, for similar reasons. You can increase them without too much effort if you need to. I am on a reasonably solid connection for living in BFE, so for once it's not affecting me that much, but my experience of having mediocre connections is that I've generally had to increase buffers manually in most applications.
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Then I provided directions to the section sans snark for once and boom, I'm accused of that very thing.
Such is life in the land of /. Best to keep the snark at full tilt 100% of the time, just to be safe.
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I just want the ability for "previous frame".
This isn't fucking rocket science. Somehow YouTube can do it but VLC can't.
Re: They'd better keep the traffic cone (Score:2)
Will they use the same keyboard shortcuts across Windows+Mac+Linux versions instead of every version doing something completely unpredictable?
IMHO they should follow the UI conventions of whatever platform theyâ(TM)re running on. Itâ(TM)s better to be consistent with all the other programs on a given platform than to be consistent across platforms
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I could not disagree more. It should be seamless to move from Mac to Windows to Linux **for an application**. I don't have time for one of my buddies using an app on another platform to have to teach me the new shortcuts for the same frickin' app if I'm trying to help him use the app. You could easily remove one PITA question from an FAQ since you wouldn't have to differentiate between platforms. Ever been reading support for an app and then you realize it's for a smartphone and that there's no support for
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Re: They'd better keep the traffic cone (Score:2)
I'm German.
This answers your question.
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He said sour cunt not sour kraut.
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I'm German.
More articulate and less awkward; Germans* are supposed to be refined.
*Bavarians notwithstanding
Re: They'd better keep the traffic cone (Score:2)
Also, zis is humor. German humor. If you do not smile, zat is normal.
"modern design" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: "modern design" (Score:5, Insightful)
They've declared war on everyone who uses a UI as opposed to sitting there marvelling at how the colour scheme invokes feelings of warmth.
Re: "modern design" (Score:4, Informative)
The best part is that they've now started printing instruction manuals in pale grey ink.
I don't have enough facepalms for that.
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low-contrast, flat nonsense
Don't forget "monochrome with an accent color". Who knew that 256 colors would actually turn out to be enough for most interfaces in 2021?
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Fork it!
Re: "modern design" (Score:1)
Running smplayer just fine, thank you very much.
Yes, patched too. Trivial thing in Gentoo, really. I've gotten to a point where I can run popInto smplayer, edit the source code, run pushChange, and it will diff my changes with the original code, store it as a patch in /etc/portage/patches/.../, and re-install/-compile the package. Sometimes in seconds, thanks to good caching.
(Don't mean that in a pretentious way, because really, I just want that to be a normal option for everyone.)
P.S.: Wait, didn't Slashco
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One more reason for me to finally try Gentoo on my no. 1 laptop - also on some old collectible 32-bit machines... The oldest being an IBM ThinkPad with the butterfly keyboard, a 486 with 8 or 16MB RAM - can Gentoo be be built for this (optimizing for size) with X server and lightweight tiling WM, or should I just search some *really* light distro?
Re: "modern design" (Score:3, Funny)
And that it would be 256 shades of grey.
No wonder using these new UIs is like getting spanked.
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Was a time when we had only shades of grey (or green, or amber) on many of our monitors, or even none, or maybe two not counting black. And we had to have comprehensible UI back then, and by and large we did. You shouldn't need color to make sense of UI. Sometimes it's necessary to make sense of data in applications, but that's a whole other thing that sometimes can't be helped.
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You shouldn't need color to make sense of UI.
This is a flawed argument. It's not about needing color. It's about using unused bandwidth to convey information to the user.
Compare for instance any interface that uses monochrome icons to one that uses icons with differing colors and I guarantee you that even experienced users find their desired icon much, much quicker in the case of the colored icons.
(Unless they are all shades of blue. Humans are terrible at quickly discerning different shades of blue.)
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The problem comes in when you choose the shades poorly and try to get excessively fancy about it. For example, making the inactive element a gradient between grey values of 200-100 and active is between 190 an 100. YUCK!
The old green screen had black, green and really bright green. No room for the designers to screw up and make inactive indistinguishable from active. If it was really really important, such as "meltdown in progress" you could resort to blink, but if you over-used that one people would be com
Re: "modern design" (Score:1)
256? They would do just fine with the CGA color palette!
Wait until they see my 80s amber screen in inverted mode! They're gonna freakin cum!
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At least with the CGA palettes you had easily discernible colours.
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Man, that triggers some flashback. CGA palettes at hi-res may have been easily discernble, but man, were they eye-gougingly ugly. A purplish pink and and rather gangrenous cyan as I recall, was the more popular of the two, because otherwise you couldn't have both black and white.
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> Who knew that 256 colors would actually turn out to be enough for most interfaces in 2021?
256 shades of grey, you mean
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This was my first thought. Flat, dark (hey, some people, like me, find dark themes to be more eye strain), and low contrast. They removed all the visual cues that separated UI elements before.
Re: "modern design" (Score:1)
Dark themes are more of an eye strain. It's about relative contrasts. Everything is piercing, compared to a full black background.
But I just like the look better, due to having grown up with it in the late 80s and 90s. (Mostly green on wannabe-black.)
And if it is fully black, it saves a *lot* of battery on OLED screens.
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VLC 4.0 will bring a complete user interface overhaul.
"We modified the interface to be a bit more modern,"
Translation: It will be ugly, unusable shit.
Re: "modern design" (Score:1)
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I hope it wont come to that as well... But if using GTK GUI, shouldn't that (flat or not buttons come from GTK theming) depended on GTK settings, not on the application itself?
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Having said that - if the screenshots of the new UI from the FOSDEM 2019 presentation [fosdem.org] (UI screenshots start on slide 20) are still accurate, however, this redesign looks quite okay.
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As for flat UI, there's very much a reason for it - it's heavily documented as to why it is the right path for user interfaces on screens.
Citation please.
it is flat in order to immediately convey purpose
I do not understand your English. Please rephrase. "convey purpose" is very wishy-washy and ill-defined.
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Clearly the purpose is to spread chaos by increasing user stress and eyestrain. It was the only thing the Simpsons hadn't done yet.
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I don't see any benefit for flat design, I like "3D" buttons, input elements, etc. and there's nothing unclear about them compared to flat elements. Flat elements are, at best, as good as non-flat, so I don't see a reason - besides they are more ugly IMHO anyway.
Besides, if using GTK UI, isn't the design defined by global GTK style configuration anyway?
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"As for flat UI, there's very much a reason for it - it's heavily documented as to why it is the right path for user interfaces on screens."
Oh please, go peddle your hipster horseshit somewhere else.
Flat UI designs suck and everyone knows it.
Oooh - touched a nerve I see (Score:2)
Hey, if you want to go and dig up reasons *why* flat-UI works and why it is so prevalent, knock yourself out.
I'm not about to write reams of content in a post when the info is out there.
Do you really think Google/Apple/Microsoft haven't spent a LOT of time and effort on the research behind this?
Ah, whatever, I'll troll away some more - despite being an old white guy, sometimes it seems Slashdot is populated by the worst kind of old white guys - anything "new" or anything made by a younger person, is ... wel
Fork in 3...2...1... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Fork in 3...2...1... (Score:3, Interesting)
The VLC UI has been broken for 20 years. It is a very useful product that has been held back from wider adoption due to a horrible interface. It was antiquated when it first came out.
Re: Fork in 3...2...1... (Score:4, Insightful)
The VLC UI has been broken for 20 years. It is a very useful product that has been held back from wider adoption due to a horrible interface. It was antiquated when it first came out.
The UI has remained unchanged AND this app has remained insanely popular because it just works. Not sure what the hell you're talking about with "wider adoption". (You act as if they struggle with 37 downloads a month, barely beating out Pee Wee's Adult Playhouse or some shit.) We purposely uninstall default crapware and install VLC. Even at work. Why? Because it just works. Every damn time.
Same reason steering wheels have been circular in design, for decades now. It just works. What you call antiquated most call functional. and fit for purpose. And it runs on damn near anything. You're right. It is very useful. So why change it.
Change for change's sake, hardly ever ends well. Let's hope they don't screw up a 20-year legacy.
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Same reason steering wheels have been circular in design, for decades now. It just works.
So I take it you won't be investing in my new Triangular Steering Wheel company? What if we made them in revolting pastel colors?
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Same reason steering wheels have been circular in design, for decades now. It just works.
So I take it you won't be investing in my new Triangular Steering Wheel company?
Sounds like a smashing proposition from a driven individual. I think I'll wait until that goes somewhere first.
What if we made them in revolting pastel colors?
No thanks, but I'm certain Apple will be interested. New color schemes are a top selling technical upgrade for them.
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My problem with VLC is startup time, even on SSD-equipped systems. I guess loading all those Qt libraries take some time compared to just providing a UI on top of DirectShow and some extra codecs.Now, I understand that the VideoLAN people want a cross-platfo
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And (Score:2)
It works perfectly as intended. I don't have to hover the cursor over illegible icons that resemble the Futurama language.
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Seriously, the 20yr old design lasted so long because it works. It's not broken. VLC have finally fallen victim to the Flat UI-ers. R.I.P.
Go ahead and fork. One thing that has been shown time and time again is that silent majority who prefer the old UIs doesn't actually exist.
The VLC UI hasn't lasted for 20 years because it works. It has lasted for 20 years because people have focused on other things, and the reason it's popular is that underneath it's a damn frigging awesome piece of software and one of the few that doesn't rely on OS codecs.
I too use it. When I'm forced to because players with better UIs don't work.
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One thing that has been shown time and time again is that silent majority who prefer the old UIs doesn't actually exist.
You may be right. I'm very vocal. I probably exist.
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It's not that you're vocal, or silent, it's that you are actually a minority.
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I did say the GGP might be right. As for not being a majority, I'll have to go see if my personal zip code has been rescinded yet.
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And there's plenty on the interface that could be done better. It's OK, ever great on some parts, but some choices are not that good at all.
No need to fork it up (Score:4, Insightful)
VLC supports skins. There is no need to fork it to have a different interface. They might well simply include the old interface so you have a choice!
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There's more to UI than the theming.
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There's more to skins than color.
Many "skins" also define gadget placement and size/scale, options, etc.
vlc has a fully customizable interface. You can alter these properties for your own player. You don't even have to go into preferences; "Customize interface..." is in the tools menu right above it. If you go in there you'll find legacy profiles for VLC 2.x.x, 1.1.x, and 0.8.x. So as long as they aren't planning to rip out the existing theming system, the old interface will be in there.
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The UI may work, but it is dated and cluttered.
Flat UI, when done right, is always an improvement.
Immediately recognisable iconography that gets out of the way when you don't need it.
Flat colours that also 'get out of the way' - this is especially important when viewing video content.
You want the UI as spartan yet intuitive as possible. You want it as minimalist as possible.
The star of the show is the content, not the interface.
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Flat UI, when done right, is always an improvement.
Assertion made! Please prove it.
There's really no need for this flat UI. I can either go true fullscreen, without the controls showing, or I can leave them on the screen, and my visual cortex will strongly prefer the central region of my vision. The controls will be invisible to my brain, because they're in an ignored area of peripheral vision.
Flat is stupid. Saying it needs to be "done right" is the same line we hear about True Communism. Also, now that you've said it has to be "done right", you've paved y
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Yes you keep saying that. We can only assume it's merely a strongly held opinion, not supported by facts, as you didn't supply any. Personally I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever that flat interfaces are "always" an improvement. This minimalism crap is a disease.
It will be really interesting to talk to you UX guys in 20 or 30 years when your UI designs are looking very dated and unusable to your aging eyes. None of your flat designs will be as lasting as, for example, the classic Windows 95 UI whi
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Flat UI when done exactly right is not worse than non-flat - FTFY
There's nothing that is somehow less clear in non-flat design.
Re: Fork in 3...2...1... (Score:1)
Re: Fork in 3...2...1... (Score:2)
I've used VLC since the beginning. The UI had always been a serious detraction for me. I'm excited to see what the redesign brings.
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But I don't use a GUI to watch videos, you insensitive clod!
Have fun watching the GUI and complaining about its flatness while I watch the video. If I need something like pause or changing the subtitles, I use this old-fashioned thing called the keyboard. (I've used MPlayer since about 2001, I now prefer the mpv fork because it has better HW acceleration support.)
Yay. (Score:1)
May VLC be an example to Mozilla. Yes, the UI was a bit overdue but functional, don't touch it just for the sake but this case i'm glad they finally do. Getting tired of people asking if i run windows 2000 to play a movie.
"That is something that could work for VLC," (Score:5, Insightful)
About time... (Score:3)
Re: About time... (Score:1)
GIMP died, when it caved to morons too stupid for a real window manager, and went single-window. (Not even supporting a secondary screen, at leasr back then.)
They should have had smart window setups that work with window manager presets to offer multiple standard arrangements that can be frozen and unfrozen in their layout. Would have been the best of both worlds.
Re: About time... (Score:1)
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But you can easily change modes and go back to the separate windows.
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I just learned a thing that might kick me back the other way - edit->preferences->window management, set "window hint" to "normal window" instead of "utility window", and it behaves much more like the default settings I'm used to on other platforms (tool palettes no longer a
But of course, let's have a new UI (Score:4, Insightful)
The current UI has its idiosyncracies to be sure, but what was so fundamentally wrong with it that it needed replacing?
I'll tell you what: nothing. This is yet another case of oh-shinyisn. Every once in a while, software makere (commercial or otherwise) feel they need to change what works and make it worse.
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Color my new UI skeptical. (Score:3)
Now if only the mobile UI wasn't a nightmare. (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't even hold the damn phone in any reasonable way without touching anything that does something annoying, because the entire damn screen is stuffed to the brink with interactive elements, like
* ruining your auto-brightness, or
* setting the volume despite there being two damn physical buttons for that exact purpose, or
* jumping back or forward in totally unpredictable ways by dragging the finger in a vague area with invisible borders. But don't move it too high, or low, or we'l halve or double the speed.
* And don't ever lift the finger in-between or it will be a double-tap and jump you 10 seconds back/forward
* or pause/unpause, depending on where in the invisible UI!
And of course the only way to get the screen to auto-rotate for fullscreen video is with the speaker to the right, no mattter if the video's upside down now. And stay that way, cause auto-rotation only works with locked rotation mode, because that completely makes fucking sense.
And, *worst of all*, there is *no* way, to quickly do *anything*. Good luck pausing at an exact moment! ... *watches glacier flooww ...*) ... And half the time the bottom UI pops up instead. Which has a pause button, but 1. it took two freaking seconds of stupid input detection delay and animation to get to that point, and 2. the freaking thing vanishes right after you pressed it!!
(Just press *space* in any sane desktop player. Goes so fast, I can literally make the video stutter rapidly like techno by holding space. Meanwhile in the mobile world
Instead you have to do awkward double-taps... But not too fast either!
So no chance in hell you're gonna loop over a bit that is hard to catch a few times...
And if you disable that, you get to manually hide the bar each time, which is probably deliberately somebow not one bit better, even though in theory it should be.
And don't get me started on jumping around with that dot on a line at the bottom... that somehow assumes you have scanning microscope needles for fingertips. Transparent ones, of course!
Last but not least, all of that comes on top of the cruel joke that the basic touch screen system already is by itself. Can't even type a damn word without needing autocorrect or doing it slowly while staring at the "Ceci 'nes pas un keyboard" picture instead of what you actually typed.
Obviously also designed for ants.
And with no cursor keys (unless you want even smaller imaginary keys). And no selecting text with shift. No copy/paste buttons. (Dontthinkaboutselectingtext donttinkaboutselectingtext dontthinkaboutMURDER MURDER MURDER!)
Don't even ask about rain. You'll be lucky if the thing doesn't short-circuit and burst into flames, even without alll the common sense ports you were expecting before you saw the new lineup of glue mirrors.
But oh wait! This is Industry Standard(TM) UI design!
Can't anybody see how insane all of this is??
Re: Now if only the mobile UI wasn't a nightmare. (Score:1)
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please, remember, you are not alone
it's just that there's very few of us
i wish we could somehow band together and mame something "better" or at least something that can be very, very easily configured on-the-fly without requiring a restart (no, i did not say "recompile" for a reason. A change in the UI should not require recompilation, ever. If it does, the code is shit.)
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You can't even hold the damn phone in any reasonable way without touching anything that does something annoying, because the entire damn screen is stuffed to the brink with interactive elements, like
I would say the problem on the phone is not so much the fault of the app designers, but rather the phone manufacturers who, somehow, are totally unaware that a large portion of their customers tend to hold the phone in their hands when using it, and have instead decided that the "bezel", which is properly defined as "the outside edge you use to hold something", should be completely removed, apparently assuming that users will hold the phone on the back using the suckers of their tentacles. Or something.
Re: Now if only the mobile UI wasn't a nightmare. (Score:4, Informative)
I pondered adding ", grandpa!!" at the end of my comment.
Thank you for making my point for me, better than I could have.
One day, when you grow into a person of your own, you too will learn, that forward is not the only direction of all 360Â, just because that is where your herd moves, and sometimes it's just the corridor to the meat grinder.
Media Library and Playlist (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope they take cues from Winamp for the Media Library and Playlists. Those were some of the most powerful functions of the aged media player -- and if they get them right, it could win over a lot of folks.
Winamp's media library had a small SQLLite database that indexed all the media you added to it. You could quickly search by any of the metadata in a song or video quickly. The nice thing was it displayed the results in a 3-pane system that made it super easy to see the results.
Winamps's playlist was simple, but powerful as well. They allowed simple drag-and-drop, ability to add based on directories, selections, playlists, etc. And the ability to rearrange the list on the fly was great. You could quickly export the list into other formats too. Even at the OS level, you could right-click on a music or movie file and "Queue to playlist" instead of immediately play..
So many of the current generation of media players fail at these two things.
Re: Media Library and Playlist (Score:3, Insightful)
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> winamp still works fine
And it really whips the llama's ass.
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I did try VLC for a while but the simple lack of not being able to keep the playlist contents from session to session makes it a no from me.
I know you can save the playlists but I tend to add items from multiple folders into a playlist to play through the day as I'm working.
Ended up with Potplayer (installed an older version before they included ads!)
Good for some I'm sure, just not for me.
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Well the playlist is useful for those who watch the same video over and over. I have done that with music on very rare occasions, but mostly I'll listen to a particular piece of music a few times and archive it. There are special movies and rare TV shows that I might see twice, but why would I want them in a 'playlist'? They go on an archive disc so that maybe, in ten years, I might watch them again.
Perhaps your playlist is for your toddler's videos?
Nowadays, "modern" has stopped meaning "better". (Score:3, Insightful)
And I know exactly who to thank for that: Apple.
Leading they were, for sure. Unlike Microsoft. ;)
Just in the batshit crazy direction. And MS followed.
So we can also thank all the spineless visionless copycats.
Re: Nowadays, "modern" has stopped meaning "better (Score:1)
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What's with "nowadays"? For desktop applications, that was true twenty years ago, when VLC debuted. It's not that the odd individual app may not have improved, but overall the way we design UIs for desktops has not made things any better *for the user*.
I don't think you can blame it entirely on Apple, but the transition from MacOS 9 (1999) to MacOS X (2001) is a case in point. There is no doubt that MacOS X has a technically more elaborate and superficially impressive, but did it make the user any more p
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For me the bad facets of 'modern' are thanks to the web, not any desktop GUIs.
'modern' meaning that every single application considers UI design as part of it's branding. What's the background color of an active selection? That's for each specific company to decide, so that if you are switching between them it's hard to recall whether the application you are using uses darker or lighter background to indicate 'active'. Not unbearable until you deal with an application that has only two elements and it tak
Well, the GUI has had a lot to desire on some... (Score:3)
That old GUI has had a lot to desire on some things, I just hope it will make it easier and improved on those things, and not just be a restyling for the purpose of restyling the UI.
Have they finally fixed the problem with windows? (Score:2)
Every time I try to install it on windows, it crashes [awwmemes.com]. (SFW)
What VLC should focus on... (Score:3)
Most of the new features sound cool. Looking forward to 3D/VR bits. Yet personally this is what I most would like to see:
There is still no way to say just show forced subtitles. Either you need a forced only track which is rare (For most BD content the forced track is empty), your favorite langue subtitles are running *all the time* or you NEVER see forced subtitles. VLC just ignores the forced flag in the sub track. With VLC every time spooky space aliens speak or there are foreign language dialogues you are screwed.
AC4 audio codec otherwise most OTA ATSC3 broadcasts won't have audio.
ars gratia artis (Score:2)
More frustrated artists getting their big chance to be creative and reinvent the wheel as something to be hung on a wall.
Maybe VLC could figure out how to render 4k video on my Sony 4k tv? Nah, why bother when we can make our UI into a work of art.
Just let me run two instances at once... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hopefully (Score:2)
They fix whatever is flagging malwarebytes anti-exploit every time it tries to update before they spent time on cosmetics.
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That's malwarebytes problem.
They can't be held responsible for some third-party flagging them, but the third-party whose job is to literally flag only dodgy software can.
Who doesn't like a shiny new interface ! (Score:2)
Unfortunately, this usually means recoloring icons and moving menus around. I can't recall any recent interface update where functionality was improved. There are some very smart people at VideoLAN; let's hope they do it right. One detail I'd like to see is the ability to conveniently move forward and back one video frame at a time. There is a limit to the number of keyboard commands that I can memorize and the number of clean fingers I have available.
I personally hope that unlike recent updates, this one w