Slashdot Mirror
VLC 3.0 Adds Chromecast Support and More as the Best Free Media Player Gets Even Better (pcworld.com)
Ian Paul, writing for PCWorld: The best free media player is getting even better. After three years of development, VLC 3.0 'Ventari' is rolling out to all platforms, and it's packed full of goodies such as Chromecast support. The latest version of VLC contains a lot of great additions, as well as a tweaked UI. Chromecast discovery tops the list. It's only available on Windows desktop and Android right now, but Videolan says the feature's coming to VLC's iOS and the Windows Store apps in the future. [...] VLC 3.0's refreshed UI isn't a fresh, new look from previous versions, but it is noticeably different. The icons at the bottom of the window are cleaner, and the small icons used within menu items are also new. Version 3.0 also adds support for 360-degree video and 3D audio, readying features for a VR version of VLC slated to roll out in mid-April. The new VLC also adds hardware decoding across all platforms for better performance and less CPU consumption, especially when dealing with more resource-intense video.
...and two and a half years trying to dumb it down to qualify to be hosted on the "Universal" Windows App Store. The final "App" version only has a Play button and is about as useful as the media player in Windows RG.
There are so many times that I have wanted to cast some things from my Android phone but couldn't easily do it. This should be a very welcome addition to the VLC android app.
Free as in freedom, not free as in beer.
Either way, MPV is superior and available on Linux.
The pinnacle of media playback; Even installing it was a joy, All been downhill since then.
Whoever wrote that summary is not a geek, otherwise they would know VLC versions are named after Terry Pratchet's Discworld characters. Version 3.0 is named after Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Have they fixed the pixelization bug that's been present on Linux for years ? Until then, then can improve everything else they want, it'll remain mostly useless.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
It seems to be available for MacOS too.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
As far as I can tell, the playback UI is missing obvious features like X second skip forward/back, slow motion, etc, and isn't at all touch screen friendly. I don't need much that is touch screen friendly, but a video player would be one place where it'd be nice.
Plan 9.
The Chromecast protocol is heavily obfuscated and has secret encryption keys. Have they cracked it, meaning I can look into VLC's source code to see how it works and port it to other things, or are they tacking on a closed-source blob to enable this?
I actually lost interest in the things when I learned how they work. Chromecast isn't really a media streaming system, it's more of a URL sharing system.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is it a chromecast receiver or can it only cast to a chromecast device? A receiver would be more interesting.
Zoid.com
Some geeks just aren’t into Terry Pratchett.
Great writer... just not into it.
It sounds like the mobile apps are more intended towards playback and I don't see any mention of remote control functionality, so I suspect the answer to the second question is "no". Though the first part sounds like it should work fine.
For remote control functionality, you're probably better off using Plex or something like it. Without needing to buy anything or sign up for a paid Plex Pass subscription, you should be able to use it to playback MKVs and cast them to a Chromecast (which they've supported since 2013). The mobile apps can also be used as remotes for playback, though I seem to recall that there may be a one-time fee around $5 to use some features in the mobile apps if you're not a Plex Pass subscriber.
Can anyone name a better paid media player? I certainly cannot.
I have an old Xeon X5650 CPU which is 8 years old at this point. It barely breaks 7% usage when playing x265 files. I toyed around with some of the players that make use of hardware but found little difference. They claim the quality is better but only when zoomed at 4x can you see it.
Doesn't the last DVD patent expire in less than a week (Feb 14, I think)? http://www.osnews.com/story/24... http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wi... Or does VLC already ignore all those because it's based in France? Maybe VLC is already set, and it's just a Handbrake update to look forward to sometime after Wednesday.
Are they ever going to implement this feature? Showing an image of when hovering over a position in the time slider? Its one thing I really miss having when using this otherwise great media player.
is this a beta? website says 2.2.8 is the latest
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
The home page for VideoLAN at https://www.videolan.org/ still indicates the current version is 2.2.8. The downloads page at http://download.videolan.org/v... does show a version 3.0.0. For Windows, however, there is no x64 version yet. Since I usually use VLC for listening to streaming broadcasts of classical music, I will wait for an x64 Windows version.
And it's been years since the last version of VLC was released. We've been waiting for WebM WebVTT subtitle support for that entire time.
It has NOT been years since the last version of VLC. Version 2.2.8 was released for OS X and Windows (both x32 and x64) less than three months ago.
I'm pretty sure there's some IP reason, but why they doesn't support Blu-ray disk yet?
Elok
If you have that much time.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
Windows has the clearly superior MPC-HC which is free as in freedom and free as in beer, but not free as in beard (neckbeard), because it relies on the excellent DirectShow APIs which are available only to people who run Windows.
Windows has the clearly superior MPC-HC which is free as in freedom and free as in beer...
As long as you don't think you'll ever need support of any kind, perhaps.
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
Yes, it is.
Are the default settings appropriate for a computer made after the year 2006?
p>kurkosdr opined:
Windows has the clearly superior MPC-HC which is free as in freedom and free as in beer...
prompting dcsmith to respond:
As long as you don't think you'll ever need support of any kind, perhaps.
The fact is that, as of today, MPC-HC is as stable as any application I've ever used on the Windows platform. Also, because the player employs whichever codecs the user has installed, it should be fully compatible with forthcoming video codecs for some time to come, as long as new ones are installed by the OS as they come into use - and on Windows, that's pretty much been the case.
Having said that, because development of MPC-HC has come to an end, it won't be capable of displaying VR content, once that becomes a thing - which, IMsnHO, won't be for a while, since nothing even approaching an industry standard has yet emerged (with the kind of de-facto "standard" of Google Cardboard excepted - and Cardboard is, at best, a tentative, preliminary step towards VR that nobody with any scrap of sense would contend is worth further development). So, sometime in the future, MPC-HD will become obsolete for al but by-then-legacy content.
Which will limit its users to watching, what, a century or more of movies and TV ... ?
Check out my novel.
VLC has been far from the best media player on Linux. I went back to mplayer because its speed is unparalleled, seeking in a stream is fast and doesn't break the playback completely, and it doesn't flail around and spaz out if it doesn't understand how to play something.
I just wonder what these superior media players do that VLC doesn't? What I need is to be able to click on a video file and then watch it on the screen with minimal UI crud.
- Raynet --> .
Hmmmmm, but is it fully Handbrake compatible?
MPC-HC was not the only active fork of MPC, which let's not forget was abandoned by the author in 2006. That said, I'm not a huge fan of the interface of the only other active port, MPC-BE, which does not follow the original goal of keeping the simple and clean look of Windows Media Player 6.4.
No madVR support? And its the best? I am on slashdot right..
Nonsense, SMplayer is vastly superior to MPC.
Eat the rich.
SMPlayer with MPV as the backend is probably the best media player on any platform right now.
Eat the rich.
Different players have different strengths. One of the nice things about VLC is that it will play just about everything, even ancient weird formats that nobody has used for years. That's something that the alternatives can't do.
It has been the better option for something like 10 years now. I really don't get why people like VLC.