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Lack of Manpower May Kill VLC For Mac

Posted by timothy on from the vlc-generally-rocks dept.

plasmacutter writes "The Video Lan dev team has recently come forward with a notice that the number of active developers for the project's MacOS X releases has dropped to zero, prompting a halt in the release schedule. There is now a disturbing possibility that support for Mac will be dropped as of 1.1.0. As the most versatile and user-friendly solution for bridging the video compatibility gap between OS X and windows, this will be a terrible loss for the Mac community. There is still hope, however, if the right volunteers come forward."

5 of 398 comments (clear)

  1. This would be a great loss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The DVD player that comes with Apple's computers is rather intolerant of scratches, etc., and will report "Skipping damaged area..." then skip ahead a ridiculous amount. VLC will play fine right through the supposedly damaged segment. Losing VLC for the Mac would be terrible. If I knew anything about programming, I'd think about joining this project.

  2. Mplayer OSX Extended by The+J+Kid · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sad to see VLC struggling, but there's always Mplayer OSX Extended for the mac. Get the extra codec pack and it can play anything!

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    Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
  3. Really? by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 5, Informative

    I thought Handbrake uses FFMPEG. Anyway, if Handbrake uses some VLC code then the Handbrake developers will probably continue to maintain that code without necessarily having to maintain VLC as a whole.

  4. I'll help! by MrCrassic · · Score: 5, Informative

    I wanted to respond directly to the person who put this post up, but I don't want to register for yet another forum.

    I'll gladly help develop for the project. My knowledge in video and audio processing is very weak (I took a class on it, but I didn't really put too much work into it), but my skills in C and C++ are pretty good (but not expert). I'm also pretty well-versed in Java, though it's been a while since I needed to whip it out. Finally, I'm slowly, but surely, learning Objective-C.

    Please e-mail me at the address listed here. I don't want to see this die! I just migrated over to OS X and find this app extremely helpful, especially from my use of it in Windows.

  5. Re:user-friendly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Whoever takes the job, please remove the stupid "anything I want to play gets added to a stupid playlist" thing. When I open a video with QuickTime, it plays that video. If I open another video at the same time, it opens up another QuickTime window.

    VLC is more like QuickTime (video player) but it currently acts more like iTunes (media library player).

    Have you even bothered to open the preferences? It right there in the Interface pane (simple settings view):
    Allow only one instance [x]
    Enqueue files when in one instance mode[x]
    Just uncheck "Allow only one instance".