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Ask VideoLAN President and Lead VLC Developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf Your Questions

Posted by msmash on from the nerd-talk dept.

VLC remains one of the most popular applications. First released over 15 years ago, VLC is open-source, and is available across multiple platforms including Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, ChromeOS, iOS, and it's coming to the Xbox One later this year. We thought it would be great to have Jean-Baptiste Kempf, President of VideoLAN non-profit organization (the maker of VLC media player). In addition, he is also a lead developer of VLC.

Leave your questions in the comments section below. Let's get this going.

16 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. How do I stream to multiple TVs in my house by jdavidb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I recently installed the VLC app for FireTV stick and figured out how to stream from VLC on my PC. But I found that the VLC app couldn't work with a stream; it could only play files from network accessible storage like an SMB shared drive.

    I'm not necessarily asking the developers here - can anyone tell me how to stream to my three FireTV sticks across the house? Do I need to replace the FireTV sticks with some other more capable device? Will the FireTV VLC app ever support streaming?

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    1. Re:How do I stream to multiple TVs in my house by jdavidb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why would you want to perform streaming at the application level like that? SMB or NFS are so much more flexible, convenient, widely supported, and you can use any media player program you like. Seriously what's the appeal of app-level streaming?

      I want multiple TVs in my house to be playing the same video or audio at the same time, at the same point. I'd like to be able to start a movie for the family in the living room, go into the kitchen 20 minutes later to make popcorn, and turn on the kitchen and see the same program the family is watching in the living room.

      Can I use NFS or SMB to do that?

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  2. How do you keep VLC sustainable? by msmash · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would want to know how they keep VLC media player sustainable. As far as I know, there are no ads in the program, and they certainly don't bundle stupid programs with VLC.

  3. Microsoft Office Plugin / DirectX suport by pecosdave · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hate to ask for this because overall I'm anti-Microsoft, but I'm a systems administrator at a company and I can't seem to teach my users much of anything, any time I do they have turnover and it's lost. It would be great if there were some way to make VLC the player that worked with Power Point. For some gawd-aweful reason Microsoft thinks you need an Apple product to playback h.264 video in a Power Point presentation and we don't allow that anymore since it's pwned.

    I just want to thank you for an awesome product. I use it as a baby monitor with an IP cam at home (no MS products there). I use it on my phone to play podcasts in my car, I love the ability to increase playback speed (that's a little "non-sticky" of a setting). I

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  4. Other projects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apart from VLC -- and I can't thank you enough for this media player, it has made lives of millions easy -- what other projects you guys at VideoLAN are working on currently?

  5. Acquisition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Did any company ever approach you guys for buying VLC?

  6. Any plans for a touch-friendly UI? by swb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I use VLC on my laptop for playing movies on planes. It'd be kind of nice to have a touchscreen-friendly UI for those situations. It's kind of a nuisance to remember keybindings or use the touchpad.

  7. UI by DogDude · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why is the UI so poor and counter-intuitive? Are there any UI specialists working on the project?

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    1. Re:UI by fnj · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I would like to know this too. The shortcut keys in mplayer are excellent. Just copy them. I am always pressing right arrow in vlc and nothing happens.

    2. Re:UI by andrewbaldwin · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm not sure what your perspective of the problem is but for me the UI is fine. It's clean, simple and does what is expected; I can live wthout fancy colour schemes, gradients, customised icons...

      I'd like to thank the developers for providing and supporting an excellent product (tried others but keep coming back to VLC on all platforms).

      The only question I have (and it is trivial I know) is what is the significance of the traffic cone as the icon?

  8. How long before VLC for Xbox One? by msmash · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have an Xbox One, and its built-in media player just sucks. And there's no alternative! I know you guys have promised that VLC will be available later this year on Microsoft's gaming platform, but can you share exactly how long we have to wait. Also will VLC support HEVC files?

  9. Chromecast Support by Luthair · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I heard a very long time ago there was development effort to support Chromecast, any idea on the time frame before it's released?

  10. Seamless Playing by SemperOSS · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thank you for the my favourite player. Are there any plans for seamless playing in VLC. I have some playlists with continuous tracks and it would be nice to not have the break.

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  11. DLNA/UPnP? by Mister+Transistor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hi, great program! Thank you - longtime user here. Any plans to support streaming to ("fling to") players using DLNA or UPnP?

    Many devices like WDTV, FireStick/Kodi, etc. support this protocol, and I can control them very easily from a media "player" PC. I prefer the PC's user interface over the crummy remote control UI's of the playing device(s).

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  12. Technical mistakes in VLC's past by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If VLC were being redesigned from scratch today, what would you do differently? Are there any technical decisions or design choices in VLC's past that you now feel are mistakes?

  13. Re:iOS feature request by flargleblarg · · Score: 3

    Audio volume control has been a feature in the iOS version of the app for over a year. Slide your finger up and down on the right half of the video while it's playing. Similarly, sliding up and down on the left half adjusts the screen brightness.