VLC Media Player 0.8.4 is out

mctk writes "This new release features many improvements including a new VLC cone, new Mac OS X wizard and extend controls dialogs, tree playlist skins2 support, HTTP interface CGI handling, linux binary codecs loader, UPnP and Bonjour service discovery, shoutcast stream forwarding, new languages... Have a look here for the full list of changes. Binary packages and the source code are available on the VLC download page." Always been one of my favorites on any platform.

Comments

vlc - I like

[xiong.chiamiov]

I really like VLC. For the longest time, I used Winamp to play all my media files, but it is painfully slow. iTunes is okay, but still lacking. And WMP is out of the question (I try to run Windows as non-Microsoft as possible). Then, when trying to find something to run .ogm (Ogg Vorbis video files), I came across VLC, and haven't used anything since. And the fact that it's released under GNU doesn't hurt at all.

Re:vlc - I like

[alphakappa]

One of the greatest features of VLC is that it will let you save any media that it can read. So whether it is a movie file or a streaming movie, it will let you save it to a file (or broadcast it). That is pretty much how *most* applications in other areas work - if you can read a file, you can save it too, but no other mainstream media player will let you do this for media files.

Re:vlc - I like

[chris_eineke]

mplayer does that just fine, thank you.

Re:vlc - I like

[magefile]

I use VLC with srt files. Granted, I'm using a Mac, but I bet it works on Windows, too. Your video/audio file must have the same name as the srt file (except the extension, obviously), then while the video is playing, select the Video menu. The bottom option should be the "Subtitles Track" option - just pick the one you want.

Re:vlc - I like

[6*7]

But this results in a 1 pass encoding, anyone that likes some quality would prefer to just dump the stream to disc and spend the extra time for a multipass encode.

Mac OS X wizard?

[pomo monster]

I'll reserve judgment 'til I've used it a bit more, but nine times out of ten, wizards are a usability disaster that are only marginally better than the abomination of an interface that necessitated them to begin with. (Those nine times are usually in Microsoft products.) You shouldn't need a wizard to set things up, or to create things--the options should be right there in front of you, and not require elaborate explanation. Wizards are kind of alien to the whole OS X experience, even though there are a few examples of decent, helpful wizards in the OS.

Also, I notice the new VLC still doesn't have a nice way to compensate for audio desynchronization. There should be a slider or something on the controller to scrub the audio sync back and forth in realtime. Add to that the totally awkward menu to select where to play fullscreen--why not just play it on whatever display the window's in right now?--and overall I'm disappointed in this update.

That said, it's still the best "free" player out there for OS X I've seen yet. Congratulations to the developers. It could be a great product, if only they'd pay a little more attention to usability and elegance.

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[uiucmatse]

Yeah, I agree wizards are usually awful. However, in VLC on OS X, it operates more like a "Save As..." command. There's no egregious handholding, it's just a far more Mac-like way to transcode video than digging through the standard method. Oh, and I don't like the new icon.

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[pomo monster]

It's a personal preference, I'm sure, but MPlayer makes VLC look like the fucking Chrysler building in terms of design. All things considered, VLC's not too bad--it's just that it could be much better, without (seemingly) much effort.

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[Blakey Rat]

Are you joking?

The GUI to mplayer on OS X is SO BAD it took me over a half hour to figure out how to quit the program. You click the movie window to bring it to the front, hit Command-Q, nothing happens. That's weird. You scrub the menus. No Quit option. Hmm. Let's try making the window bigger... Command-0, nothing. Command-1, nothing. (In pretty much every media player, Command-1 is half-size, Command-2 is normal-size, Command-3 is double-size, and Command-0 is full-screen. VLC is a bit different, but not so much that it's too confusing.)

Of course since I don't keep my Dock open all the time, little did I know that mplayer isn't ONE program, it's TWO programs... and the program that actually plays the movie doesn't quit. At all. It can't quit. But if you quit the *other* program, then it automatically goes away. I guess the "designer" of the GUI didn't know you could hide the Dock. Of course, even if he didn't, there's no excuse for putting two icons on it, one of which doesn't (for all practical purposes) work when you could use one in the first place.

Whoever "designed" this interface obviously had never used a Mac before or, possibly, even a GUI before. It's terrible. It's horrible. It violates almost every rule of good GUI design, and, as a result, it's a pain in the ass to use. I'm sorry. It's an F in my book.

VLC might not have all the codecs or whatever, that mplayer has, but you know what? It has a GUI that wasn't designed by an alien from the planet Weebo who's never seen a computer before, so it gets my download every time.

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[pomo monster]

Nah, there's no such thing as "no design," only thoughtless design.

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[pomo monster]

Or, to reply to myself, "unintelligent design" if you prefer.

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try hitting g and f for audio de-synchronization, it is not a new feature.

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[pomo monster]

I'm contributing by making suggestions, right here, right now. Not everybody can (or even wants to) learn to program. So don't be a jackass--it just makes the open source community look bad.

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[l3v1]

complaints and suggestions for improvement are unwelcome

No, I think the point was that in FOSS land you don't bash an app if it has different key bindings than some of your usual native os apps. As it is, mplayer's key bindings are fairly easy to figure out if you spent some time with more than one app. Anyway, both vlc and mplayer rock big time, and I personally don't really care what movie players people like as long as I can have them both close.
 

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[TheRaven64]

Right now, going with the 'stealing focus' pain in the ass beats out the 'choosing File-Open Disk, Ok' pain in the ass.

Somewhere near your mouse, you will find a device that looks a bit like it, but hat around 100 buttons and isn't designed to be moved. Familiarise yourself with this device - you will find it useful. To play a DVD with VLC, hit command-d, then hit enter.

You will, however, still find that VLC plays the audio track with the number of the last one played, not the one with the same name. This can be irritating, since some DVDs of TV shows put the audio tracks in a random order and you need to manually select English every time.

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[zootm]

No, I think the point was that in FOSS land you don't bash an app if it has different key bindings than some of your usual native os apps.

Why not? It's a valid criticism. Consistency is a large part of usability, and usability is what GUIs are there for.

It's fair enough if it's ported from another platform and has taken the keybindings with it, that does not change the fact that its interface is crappy on the new one. The fact that a system is OSS does not remove one's right to talk about its flaws.

Not everyone is capable of coding, but most people can tell when something doesn't work they way they want it to. The problem is that those who are capable of coding are often a lot more tolerant of weirdness and having to learn new interfaces, even when it's completely unnecessary, so the feedback of those who can't code is often invaluable.

Wake me when it plays WMV3 on the Mac

[Nova Express]

That, to my mind, is the huge, gaping hole in VLC. And the latest version doesn't solve the problem, as WMV3 isn't supported on any now-Windows platform. I would think that somebody would have reversed engineered the codec by now. It's hard to be the Swiss Army CanOpener of video formats when it doesn't open half of all the cans coming off the line...

Re:Wake me when it plays WMV3 on the Mac

[Teilo]

Try WMV Player if you want an alternative to WMP on OS X. It lets Quicktime Player play any WMV file. It's not Open Source. It's not free. But it actually works better than WMP on a Mac.

Re:Once again, beaten by DIGG!

[Anonymous Coward]

The world cares, deeply.

As in who gives a shit? Digg sucks ass.

Re:Have you contributed?

[UCFFool]

Just like any project, they have to prioritize. Besides the massive amount of codecs it already does, it has h.264 running very well, which I have seen a lot more than WMV, and I use it on windows... I suppose I just avoid Windows Media in general. THe simple point is, if you want this codec so badly, make a monetary donation and add a Note: please put this towards the WMV3 codec! Ask and ye shall receive, but a little motivation couldn't hurt.

Simply one of the best

[quadra23]

Always been one of my favorites on any platform.

I agree from my own experience. In fact, I find files (or discs) that either work strange or not at all on other media players (such as Windows Media Player or WinAMP) run just (or very close to) perfect on VLC. The capability to play VCD, SVCD, DVD, DVD (with menues) was a feature that I also found make the player even more flexible.

Does anyone here have experience with VLC for running your own streaming server? Also, anyone know if they are going to add capability to play RealPlayer files? I find RealPlayer as a major bloatware and RealAlternative (no offense, just from my experience) looks too much like (and as featured limited as) the original media player in Windows 95/98. For a good reference here's a full table of all features available on all the various Operating Systems that VLC works with. Very good product and highly recommended!

Anime

[Parham]

A lot of people recommend this very player for anime playback. Anime tends to come in a lot of formats (avi, mpeg, mkv, ogm) with a lot of codec requirements, and this player seems to have become a favorite in the anime circles. This is one of my favorite players and it's completely replaced most of the other media players I used to use.

One of the bigger perks...

[(H)elix1]

One of the biggest perks for using VLC is it does *not* honor the 'thou shall not fast forward through the FBI warning and any damn previews/ads we applied the same flag to' setting. Skips right on by.

Re:One of the bigger perks...

[J. Random Luser]

is that it is Region 0 out of the box. Apple's DVD player allows you to set(change) a fixed region 4 times before resorting to some hack to start again. I assume if MS abides by the MPAA rule then WMP behaves similarly. Meanwhile VLC just plays any DVD I chuck at it, never asks what Region.

I believe it's not the matter of 'doable'

[wesley96]

There are at least two solutions to decoding WMV3 video stream in OS X. But you know the first one is a horrible Microsoft implementation and the other one is a licensed codec package from Flip4Mac that you have to pay. Currently, neither can't do what everyone wants... WMV3 video + MP3 audio in AVI container, which is the biting deficiency, and compounded by the fact that some anime file releases use exactly THAT format thanks to the existence of WMV9 VCM in Windows. Ugh.

As for VLC, it needs an OPEN-SOURCE decoder. Specifically, it'll be adapting something that ffmpeg guys are doing. That team has been tackling WMV3, a.k.a. VC-1 / VC-3 / WMV9 stuff for about a year now. They put preliminary support in, what, February? Apparently, peeps have so far gotten the key frame to decode, but it freezes there.

So what I'm saying is, it's nice to donate to VLC guys, but help ffmpeg guys first.

Re:Very Buggy for Me

[tholomyes]

From the README.MacOSX.rtf:

14. VLC does not start anymore or does strange things
Delete your preferences and try again. You can use the script "Delete Preferences.app" on the disk-image to do that. If you want to do it by hand, delete "org.videolan.vlc.plist" and a folder called "VLC" in ~/Library/Preferences (your personal preferences-folder inside the library of your HOME). If this does not help, see 13.

Site slashdotted, mirror

[EspoManiac]

Download from mirror at this location:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download_soft.php?d=115 8&s=171

Re:Just stop using WMV3

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate that codec. It's not like MPEG4 derivatives are multi-platform, why do people still insist on using WMV?

OSX coming leaps and bounds

[McCarrum]

In the changelog ..

Mac OS X port:
* New script to delete the preferences automatically

I see OSX is now getting standard Windows functionality ..

Re:Plugin

[jZnat]

Same plugin architecture (the Netscape plugin architecture that is), so it'll work in Mozilla, Netscape, Firefox, etc. Just copy it to your ~/.mozilla/plugins/ directory (%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Plugins\ in windows IIRC).

Ignores DVD Region Code

[Nice2Cats]

For those of us whose lives are lived between two or more of the infamous DVD regions (in my case, Europe and the U.S.), VLC is an absolute godsend. Every Mac user should get it: Apple's DVD Player wants me do pick one or the other RC, while VLC just plays the damn thing. Quicktime gives me nag entries in the menus -- like, I pay a four-digit sum for a computer and they won't throw in the $40 fee for the full fuctionality? Really clever, Jobs -- and so if I want to play around with the size and other stuff, I just use VLC for QT instead. VLC is one of the coolest pieces of software out there, free or corporate, and anybody who is not using it on whatever platform should be treated with suspicion -- they probably work for the RIAA or eat babies. Or both.

Thanks, guys, for all the great work. This and Firefox are some of the ones that make all the difference.

Re:Ignores DVD Region Code

[Anonymous Coward]

I pay a four-digit sum for a computer and they won't throw in the $40 fee for the full fuctionality? Really clever, Jobs

The extra charge for QuickTime Pro predates The Return of The Steve.

Among other things, the amount of money Apple has to pay organizations like the MPEG-LA for patent licence fees varies with whether Apple's customer is "Pro" or not. Moreover, for some formats Apple must pay the patent holders or their agents varying fees for reading and creating (or exporting) video and audio.

For "Pro" users who use QuickTime as part of their day jobs, $40 is pretty small. Adding $40 to the bills of the hundreds of thousands of other Mac users whenever they buy a new machine or upgrade to QuickTime generally wouldn't make them happier. It'd delight the various patent holders other than Apple, though!

Yes, it's annoying, but that's the patent system for you...

On the other hand, QuickTime Player's "reminder" panes and other enticements can be distracting, but it's not as if there aren't various possibly legal workarounds.

Re:Ignores DVD Region Code

[myspys]

It should be noted that the newer Powerbooks will ask you for a new region code and if you select Cancel it will automatically eject the DVD, thus rendering it impossible to even try with VLC :-/

Re:Ignores DVD Region Code

[Zhe Mappel]

Quicktime gives me nag entries in the menus -- like, I pay a four-digit sum for a computer and they won't throw in the $40 fee for the full fuctionality? Really clever, Jobs Agreed. Apple's cheapness on this issue is sad; nickle and diming your customers is especially silly when the system ships with extraneous iApps. Look, Apple, I'll trade you my useless iMovie just so Quicktime can do what *free* players everywhere do.

Re:Ignores DVD Region Code

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't really true - you can still play all region dvds fine by turning off autoplay then using vlc.

Use MPlayer for windows

[coder111]

I'm using mplayer windows binaries with all the non-free DLL codecs, it plays everything I throw at it. It's fast, stable, and I can use same thing under windows I do use under linux.

You should try it too. http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

--Coder

VLC and others...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use many different players due to the hopeless muddle of codecs available. Basically, I can play any video file you throw at me if you give me enough time. This list shows just how bad it really is:

VLC: For use when PowerDVD gets the shakes, media player classic doesn't work, windows media player doesn't work, the Zoom player doesn't work, Quicktime doesn't work, and for streaming over a network

Media Player Classic: The awesomest player in the world due to its small size and ability to play RealMedia and Quicktime files (usually), the ability to play Windows-based codecs without dropping frames like in VLC, and for use when sites give links like in Amazon (for the audio previews, copy the location and paste it into the "Open File" dialog box).

Zoom Player: A good backup. Both this and MPClassic come with the Real Alternative pack.

Quicktime Player: Good for when all other Quicktime-playing software fails and H.264

PowerDVD: When VLC refuses to play the AVI or MPG file with issues, PowerDVD has an awesome capability - it just skips frames instead of freezing, and it ALWAYS keeps in sync.

Windows Media Player (definitely not to be confused with MPClassic): It's kind of ok, and so far has only shown its worth when playing H.264 codecs provided by the Combined Community Codecs Pack. Oh yeah, and MP3s don't sound too bad either.

DivX Player: Released by the DivX Labs, the latest version is much, much more stable and offers post-processing for ATI video cards. It can clean up your heavily compressed AVI file very nicely, but does require a noticable amount of resources to do so. PowerDVD (I'm pretty sure) can perform slightly the same job for a fraction of the processing time, though I could be wrong since I haven't tested it all that much.

Winamp: The venerable Winamp has shown itself a resource hog in its older days. When will they actually begin to optimize it instead of adding new features or security fixes that shouldn't be required in the first place? I have 2.9 for sentimental reasons, though I use version 5 for my music, coupled with HQProcsoft to milk as much from my Audigy 2 card as possible (uses software resampling - I now have audio resampled to 9600 and an output bit resolution of 32). HQProcsoft is like aural candy, and Winamp's music plugins like the Pacemaker and the visualizations are quite simply, awesome. Not for use for video files unless you want to clean the audio up. You will notice a substantial improvement using HQProcsoft in conjunction with video files though (warning: wmv is not supported by HQProcsoft)!

I use every single one of those players regularly, trying to find the one which shows the best picture and sound for any single video file I am viewing. I have actually not used Winamp all that often for video files, preferring Windows Media Player Classic for most of my needs (where else can you get such an awesome interface with instant access to subtitles, audio types,etc.?). I'm not recommending you do what I do, but hopefully what I've said above will help you choose. As a rule of thumb, you should only really need windows media player classic and VLC for most applications. Though with the rise of H.264, anything could happen.

Re:Once again, beaten by DIGG!

[Slashcrap]

Jealousy hurts, doesn't it?

Digg = 1 line stories followed by 50 x 1 line comments. A lot like yours in fact.

That's why you like Digg isn't it? You feel that you are among intellectual equals. And from what I've seen you're almost certainly correct.

One question - if Digg is so good, why are you on Slashdot?

I look forward to your reply of "you suck" or "your mom smells" with baited breath.

PS. Now that you've aroused my interest I think I'm going to go and start trolling on Digg. Does Digg have the same protections against trolls that Slashdot has? No? Oh, so sad.

Ironically, so much better on Windows...

[cardpuncher]

VLC manages to embody the essential dichotomy of the OSS vs Proprietary Software debate.

Get an installer for Windows or the Mac and you get a useful multi-purpose tool that has more flexibility and fewer restrictions than the equivalent commercial software.

Try to install it on Linux and you realise the advantages of a commercial platform onto which you simply install binary application packages. There are *some* packages available for VLC, provided you happen to have the right version of the right Linux distribution, but most have some important features configured out. Try to compile it yourself and get ready for a nightmare of dependencies on specific (sometimes elderly) versions of obscure libraries, header files that your Linux distribution didn't think to provide and a number of other little glitches that have you tearing your hair out. Or, more likely, giving up.

Now if only there were an open platform onto which you could simply copy an open application and just have it run...