VLC 's Beta For Android Is Ready — Unless You're North American

MrSeb writes "The VideoLAN Project has pushed a beta version of VLC for Android to the Google Play Store. The beta brings most of the functionality of VLC for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X to Android in a native UI in the Android 4.0 Holo style. However, there are a few hitches. The beta release published to the Google Play Store today is only compatible with ARM systems that use the ARMv7 architecture set and support the NEON instruction set. That means that there are several devices — mostly those released before the Samsung Galaxy S in late 2010, and anything powered by Tegra 2 — that cannot run the current beta. Also, apparently due to a lack of North America-specific Android test devices, VLC for Android is currently not available from the US or Canadian Play Store. Both problems should be rectified soon, though." VLC is one of those impressive programs that just works with nearly any input thrown at it, and one of the first things I put on any computer. I hope the Android version retains pitch-controlled variable-speed playback, perhaps my favorite VLC feature, and something I miss on my tablet.

Comments

tegra 2

[Skarecrow77]

I remember when the tegra 2 was hot shit.

i mean, i love my asus tf101, it's awesome, but it always saddens me when there's yet one more cool thing like thist that it won't support cause of lack of NEON instructions or limited video memory bandwidth or something like that.

Re:tegra 2

[mcrbids]

I remember when the tegra 2 was hot shit.

Meh.

I remember when the AMD 386DX40 was considered to be wickedly fast, except for the Motorolla 68xxx line in the Macs. Now, my router has a more powerful CPU that runs on just 100 milliamps, 5 volts. Although the i7 is today's "wickedly fast" x86 processor, I don't remember really giving all that much of a damned about it. The marketplace has matured, and nobody really cares all that much any more.

Did you get a Core2, i5, or AMD CPU? Would you notice if you had? Chances are that you wouldn't notice the difference. Because it does the job well and reliably, I'm still using a 10 year old Pentium 3 server as a network monitor!

But phones are different. It's still new technology, needed features are still being implemented, tested, and improved on. My 2 year old Droid2 phone is already so obsolete that when I went to exchange it because of a defect, Verizon decided to replace it with an entirely new model!

Re:tegra 2

[Man On Pink Corner]

Although the i7 is today's "wickedly fast" x86 processor, I don't remember really giving all that much of a damned about it. The marketplace has matured, and nobody really cares all that much any more.

I think that has more to do with the phenomenon known as Getting Old, than with the state of the marketplace. We, the desktop users, are the ones who have "matured."

Back in the day, you could argue about whether a 386-40 or a 486-25 was the better way to go. Some benchmarks went one way, some went the other. The difference between the fastest x86 CPUs and the slowest ones on the shelf at any given time was perhaps 2x-3x. A lot of us paid very close attention to the CPU market and were always up for an argument or flame war about it.

Today, the difference between the high-end Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge CPUs and the low-end parts is stupefying. The performance spread between the fastest and slowest devices is 6x in the "high end" category alone. In the broader market the spread is more like 30x-50x. And this doesn't even consider GPU-based computing.

So I'd say the desktop CPU market is a lot more interesting now than it was back in the day... but there's too much other stuff going on that's even more interesting, like getting work done and paying the mortgage.

Re:tegra 2

[jedidiah]

Quicktime does a poor job of dealing with random audio and video formats and doesn't have a good package management system to back it up.

That's why VLC is a very popular Mac download.

It covers up both of those faults in MacOS or Windows.

Re:tegra 2

[aynoknman]

I remember when the tegra 2 was hot shit.

Meh.

I remember when the AMD 386DX40 was considered to be wickedly fast, except for the Motorolla 68xxx line in the Macs. Now, my router has a more powerful CPU that runs on just 100 milliamps, 5 volts. . . .

Meh.

I remember when the PDP11/73 was considered awesomely fast. Now I have a faster processor in my wristwatch.

Re:tegra 2

[X0563511]

I'm a big fan of VLC, because i seem to get some consistency no matter what system I run it on.

Re:tegra 2

[serviscope_minor]

Mplayer is not available for BSD.

Since when?

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/url.cgi?ports/multimedia/mplayer/pkg-descr

Re:tegra 2

[Stewie241]

Apple computers can run Linux just fine. :P

Hardware acceleration?

[JDG1980]

Will this version of VLC support hardware acceleration for H.264 and other video formats on those devices where the hardware supports it?

Re:Hardware acceleration?

[WilyCoder]

You're not gonna get hardware acceleration any better than what the device manufacturer supplies via their include 'video' app.

Getting access to those HW accelerated video decoders is very black box in nature. Notice how the article mentions requiring the NEON instruction set. VLC must be using the simd instruction set called NEON to do the decoding.

Surprisingly, you can achieve a good amount of performance by using NEON in your code (I've used it myself).

for people in north america

[lister king of smeg]

for people in north America just grab it off of their nightly build site. thats what i did yesterday

You can still get it and it works...

[icebike]

You can always download it from the Nighties

http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/android-v7-neon/VLC-debug.apk
or for Tegra 2:
http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/android-v7-tegra2/VLC-debug.apk

Plays all files, in all formats, like the classic VLC.
Audio and video media library, with full search.
Support for network streams, including HLS.
Supports Android from version 2.1 (platform-7).
Supports ARMv6, ARMv7 and ARMv7+NEON.
Subtitles support, embedded and external, including ASS and DVD subtitles.
Multi audio or subtitles tracks selection.
Multi-core decoding, for Cortex-A7 A9 and A15 chips.
Experimental hardware decoding.
Gestures, headphones control.

I sincerely doubt its due to an unavailability of US/Canadian test devices because late model GSM HSPA/UMTS devices from all the major manufacturers are pretty much the same world wide. I actually prefer buying unlocked international versions of these devices rather than carrier models.

I suspect this is really another patent fight over Codecs used or worked around by VLC, and the Google Market (play store) is making sure they don't end up on the wrong side of the MPAA, (not to mention trying to keep Google's YOUTube ox from being gored.

It does work, but won't necessarily play everything the desktop version plays just yet. The software decoding is slow and jerky for videos recorded on the android device it self, and the sound is out of sync, where as the embedded video player, or the desktop version works perfectly playing the same files.

It has a hard time of finding media on External_SD or attached USB storage on some tablets.
Still its a beta. And its nice to see progress,

Re:You can still get it and it works...

[iluvcapra]

The App Store isn't GPL-compliant.

Depends on the GPL version; the iOS App Store is perfectly GPL 2.0 compliant, as long as a distributor of software provides their source upon demand, they are fulfilling their terms under Section 3, paragraph b. Several iOS developers distribute GPL software, such as Doom, this way. VLC is distributed under GPL 2.0.

The GNU, unfortunately, promotes an intentionally obtuse interpretation of paragraph 6 of the v2.0 license, and only uses this interpretation when attacking software on the iOS App Store; it's happy to turn a blind eye to Android phone and tablet vendors who violate the GPL, mainly for strategic reasons.

nearly any input?

[Ardeaem]

Whatever. I tried piping some input to it and it failed miserably.

Re:nearly any input?

[Maximum Prophet]

Whatever. I tried piping some input to it and it failed miserably.

Hmm, I don't know what the problem was. I tried random input and it worked great. Just like I expected it to. (:-)

hmmmmm

[nomadic]

Ahhh, VLC. The only free, open source software I've ever seen that was just as good as the hype.

What for

[vlm]

What do I do with this? I could set it up. But beyond the hack value "hey I'm running VLC"...

So the target market is a subset of android users who know how to put files on a memory card but don't know how to transcode, who want to watch movies on a tiny little screen with a tinny mono speaker where the battery probably doesn't live long enough to watch a movie so its tv shows only ... I'm kinda getting painted into a corner for what to do with this.

I'm not (only) trying to make a rhetorical question but it is a fair question in general, what to do with this.
1) No access to a desktop to transcode on
2) Access to short/TV length files in odd formats that don't play natively
3) Not terribly concerned that it only works on certain / my hardware
4) Very concerned about video but not care about the awful audio
5) Tiny screen is OK (I thought the most important feature of couch potatoe viewing was the larger the screen the better, 60+ inches etc)
Man if I could do the above, then I would... um... what? I donno. Understand that I'm a pretty creative dude in general but in this specific instance and at this specific moment, I'm completely stumped.

Re:What for

[DeanCubed]

I use a phone to play video for road trips all the time. Just grabbed an audio jack from my phone to the car speakers, and I dont really want to look at the screen much while driving. But to watch things like WWE wrestling, reality shows, Gordon Ramsey shows, Mythbusters, etc. it's convenient and my passengers can watch the screen no problem.

Re:What for

[Anonymous Coward]

What do I do with this?

You play audio and video files with it.

Re:What for

[justinlindh]

The only reason that I've been anticipating VLC on Android is for SMB streaming on my Xoom. The 10.1" screen is perfect for watching a flick in bed, so the tiny screen concern kind of evaporates. I have no interest, whatsoever, in configuring transcoding: I just want my device to be able to play videos natively, and across my existing network.

Can someone who's tried the Beta comment on whether it has SMB support? Bonus points if you can tell me whether Tegra 2 seems to be able to play an average 720p H.264 reasonably well.

Re:What for

[CanHasDIY]

Of course I could just transcode and avoid the whole VLC / hardware compatibility list whatever.

You could, but why make all that extra work for yourself?

1 - download media file to device
2 - discover it doesn't play on the stock player (*.avi, for example)
3 - copy file from device to computer
4 - fire up transcoding software and wait 10 min - 1hour+ for completion
5 - copy new transcoded file back to device
6 - play file in stock player (maybe, assuming the transcoder didn't mess anything up, you had all the settings perfect, Venus is in alignment, etc.)

--or--

1 - download media file to device
2 - play in VLC


At least, that's how it's worked for me thus far, but of course, YMMV.

Re:What for

[Laur]

You're really not thinking very hard, Android runs on more than just tiny phones. I just installed the VLC alpha a few days ago on my (rooted) Kindle Fire, which is great for watching video (that's one of it's selling points). Combined with cifsmanager, I can now browse and play my entire music and movie collection on my home server, without having to transcode everything into the limited formats that the Kindle supports. Very, very useful indeed.

Re:Where's the Slow/Fast speed buttons?

[KuNgFo0]

Enable the status bar like the parent said, then you can click on the "1.00x" text and a popup gives you the speed controls.

Re:Impressive progams?

[chronoglass]

VLC is one of those impressive programs that just works with nearly any input thrown at it, [...].

Or what we, in the Linux community, call "software"*. ^^

* after all required dependancies are hunted down from the ends of the earth and/or compiled from source and installed.

Re:People have brains

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentlemen, I like VLC.

  Gentlemen, I love VLC!

  I like AVI, I like RMVB.

  I like 120fps, I like interlacing.

  I like rainbowing, I like the dot crawl, I like blocking.

  I like the ringing, and I like tinny audio.

  On a computer, a DVD player, a PS3, on a Mac, on an Archos. I truly love each and every kind of artifact man can encode to a file.

  I like the broken ASS support when even the simplest of lines fails to render correctly. When the translatorâ(TM)s notes overlap the main dialogue, it makes my heart dance!

  I like when an encode displays like it is corrupted! It always left a warm feeling in my chest when they would check the CRC, only to find it is correct.

  I like it when #darkhold encoders post on AnimeSuki and rage about the topic at hand. I recall how much it moved me, seeing how epic longposts were made - how they would shun the subject again and again, even though it wouldnâ(TM)t die. And itâ(TM)s painfully exciting when a leecher posts about how great it is in the same thread. And how wonderful it is to have 120fps for a show that is a constant 23.976!

  And that pitiful resistance, encoding to h264, despite it being harder on the CPU. I even remember when Xvid had a 10:1 leecher ratio!

  I like it when the MKV fanboys are thrown into chaos. And when the VFR feature they are supposed to be promoting is violated repeatedly⦠oh how very sad it is.

  I like it when the detail and sharpness in HD encodes are crushed and obliterated! And them being filtered, smearing and ghosting and looking worse than a standard DVD. Gentlemen, what I want is a low bitrate hell.

  Gentlemen, my compatriotsâ¦

  Leechers, you who abuse my XDCC botsâ¦

  Gentlemen, what do you desire? Do you also want eyecancer? Is a return to the age of VCDs what you want?

  Do you yearn for a VHS encode that stretches the very limits of poor quality, the artifacts so intense that it makes Stevie Wonder cringe?

  Very well then, we shall have VLC.