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VLC 0.9.9, The Best Media Player Just Got Better
Matt Asay points out a recent update to VLC as they narrow in on a 1.0 release. Already a favorite of many, the open source project has made great strides in recent history towards really solidifying the position as best-in-class. This update, 0.9.9, fixes several display bugs and sees some definite performance improvements. "If you've yet to try VLC, do so. Whether you just want to play media files or also want to convert them, VLC can handle just about anything you throw at it. When all other media players fail, whether on Windows, Linux, or the Mac, VLC will almost always deliver. You can download VLC media player 0.9.9 here. It's open source, but that's not why you'll want to keep using it. You'll use it because it's better than its proprietary peers — by a long stretch.
Color me skeptical.
VLC is an OK media playback application. I, for one, never understood why someone would prefer it over using mplayer. It's got all the nice libavcodec improvements first, and is the perfect example of unintrusive UI design (note that I'm talking about the CLI-only `mplayer`, not `gmplayer` or any other graphical front-end).
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
Using "your" for "you're" and accusing someone of bragging when a third party says it's the best also makes you look like a jerk.
VLC has been a non-starter for me because I can't use better performing codecs for high definition content. The internal codec doesn't approach the performance of several other codecs. I'm sticking with Media Player Classic for my XP system. It's a much better player.
By the way, does anybody else feel like the story's headline looks like it came straight from Digg?
I think I speak for most of the community when I say "shut the fuck up, you illiterate retard."
Did they make a better desktop icon yet?
What the hell does this, and why?
What insane reasoning do you use to stick a video file inside a RAR (or any other compressed archive for that matter?) Jamming a compressed file into a compressed container usually results in a file size increase. I would stop complaining that VLC doesn't support something insane, and try to justify why that behavior is in any way valuable and -not- insane.
Many of the "content release teams" will make their official releases in multipart RAR format.
Apparently, Usenet is now for the "1337".
The end result is that even if you get such releases via BitTorrent, there's still a good chance they're distributed as multipart RARs. A video player that can play such files lets you view the video in its "seedable" form.
Of course, I just simply stop seeding such content much earlier than I normally would. If someone wants me to seed, they should make it EASY for me to seed by having the "seedable" form equal the "viewable" form.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You want the best media player? Go with the Frog. Ogg Frog, that is. vlc? They can't get their mutexes right, so who knows what else they got wrong. iTunes? Sure, if you don't mind the fact the stale buffer bugs when you're ripping CDs.
Ummm, excuse Mr. Crawford, errr...Ogg Frog, but, um, your website says that Ogg Frog hasn't been released yet. Furthermore, your website hasn't been updated since 2005. I think perhaps Duke Nukem Forever has a better chance of being released before Ogg Frog.
-- Just some guy who's been wondering when you'll release the damned thing
My blog
Of course it does, but generally i keep my keyboard stowed when using my Media Center. The mouse is small so I keep it with the remotes
Well, http://wiki.videolan.org/Mouse_Gestures then...
From your link:
left : Short time skip backward (10sec by default)
right : Short time skip forward (10sec by default)
left-up : Faster
right-up : Slower
left-down : Go to previous entry in playlist
right-down : Go to next entry in playlist
left-right : Play/Pause
right-left : Play/Pause
up : Volume up
down : Volume down
up-down : Mute Volume
down-up : Mute Volume
up-right : Change Audio track
down-right : Change Subtitle track
up-left : Enter fullscreen mode
down-left : Quit VLC
Hmm... They do ALL that and they can't add
"Single click: Play/pause"? Lame. I mean, obviously not everyone cares but it works REALLY well being able to click to pause in MPC. Gestures? Gestures are like the red-headed stepchild of interface methods - they are weird and people don't like them. Meanwhile, *clicking* the mouse, the thing it was designed to do, does nothing. I find this highly irritating.
And even if there is some way to force it, or make it work, or open some config file and change a line, why the hell isn't it standard!? It works well and fits right in where there is currently NO interface feature. It seems dead obvious to me and its simple things like that that make me question a project. Forget about pausing, who uses VLC and doesn't wish the trackbar expanded when you went full screen? I have a nice 1920x1080 TV and the trackbar is only like 600px wide. WTF? Try scrolling back 60 seconds in the godfather on a 600px wide trackbar 'cause your friend distracted you on a good part. That's damn tough, 60 seconds is only 3 pixels! if it were 1920 wide it would be 10px - tough but 3 times easier! I mean if this were a beta that would be fine but VLC has been around forever! I know they're still not at v1.0 but gmail is still in beta, so that's not always in indicator.
And the fact that it's more processor intensive than MPC? How many people are working on VLC that they can't even match MPC? MPC even streams better over a LAN at my place, which is funny because VIDEO LAN CLIENT should be better!
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
I have used VLC for many years, and am happy to see them finally put out an update. I love VLC because it will play just about anything - DVDs without a separate decoder installed, xvids, MP4s, Quicktime movies, and so on. It never fails.
However, it has plenty of bugs, and the user interface needs a lot of work. Integration with other applications like IE or Acrobat Reader is problematic. Often have problems playing videos on your second monitor as well, though supposedly that is fixed in this release.
IMO GOMPlayer has the best user interface out there; you can customize mappings functions like fast forward, rewind, multiple volume controls... lots of functions that you can map quite easily to customize it to how you use it. The problem with GOMPlayer though? It needs you to install codecs for just about everything.
The perfect media player for me would something like the customizable user interface in GOMPlayer combined with the extensive codec support included in VLC Player.
That's my 2 cents anyway...
Instead of polishing your knob in an article about how good you are, why not just TELL US what features makes the product so innovative than say 0.9.8, or 0.9.7, etc..
In terms of the poster's 'I'm the best' position, I'd say they fall flat in that regard as well.
1. For windows nothing can beat Media Player Classic. Nothing. It has just enough GUI to do what it was designed for, to play videos. It has all the configuration you'll ever need in the background, and if you don't it generally works out of the box for 90% of the things you want.
As for codecs, you have several options on how to get all the needed codecs, and you can bet that a large number of them support DxVA (where applicable) out of the box, which means you have a fast low overhead media player that plays pretty much everything you throw at it.
For Linux, that's a different story. Linux's equivalent of DirectShow(The decoding pipeline for media content) is gstreamer, but it suffers from a serious lack of adoption. We have Totem, but lets admit that if there's anything you need outside of the totem defaults, you're screwed.
The alternative is to use all-in-one-package media players. The obviously suffer in that if the codec / format / playback feature you're looking for isn't supported by the player, the whole stack becomes useless. But, this is sadly exactly what you're stuck with. Our options are: VLC/Xine/Mplayer and gui variants thereof.
VLC is fine, but its never had specifically good support on my hardware, and there are -many- videos that fail to play where other players can.
Xine is why software developers should never be put in charge of UI design. The UI stinks so badly, that the only time I ever open it is when all other players fail to play properly.
Mplayer is probably the most codec compatible player out there, but then again, there's no GUI for people to interact with. Unless you're a keyboard/command line nazi, you'll most likely decide that there's no point in Mplayer without one of its many available front-ends. I've tried a few over the years, and the only one that (finally) met my happy path requirements for > 80% of the time was SMPlayer. It is a great frontend to Mplayer, and gets my thumbs up. It keeps the complexity of selecting appropriate devices within the preferences if I really care to tweak them, but the out of box experience is also pretty good.
For anyone reading this post who is actually a contributor to these projects, PLEASE try to focus on supporting a pipelined system like gstreamer, or writing codecs that can be plugged in willy nilly instead of monolithic all-in.
I think a real winner on linux would be:
1. A user interface akin to SMPlayer, in terms of its toolbars, layouts, config (in general)
2. A container/codec glue that is well understood and powerful enough to support codecs, overlays, user input, etc.. I think gstreamer is this tool, but maybe it needs work on the input side of things *shrugs*
3. A set of simple codec/container implementations with simple APIs so that they can be plugged into any pipeline without gratuitous hacks. Ideally, these implementations could be interchangeable and upgradable without requiring recompilation of their glue layer
Ack, that's about it.
Bye!
Who the fuck cares?
This is one of those laws like "Thou shalt not smoke pot" or "Thou shalt not have sex before 18" (at least around here.) No victim. No harm. Not enforceable.
thegodmovie.com - watch it