[HN Gopher] VideoLAN is 20 years old today
___________________________________________________________________
VideoLAN is 20 years old today
Author : jbk
Score : 701 points
Date : 2021-02-01 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.videolan.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.videolan.org)
| frannyward wrote:
| I use VLC for converting .VOB files to .MP4 that I converted from
| VHS on my pioneer dual recorder/player.
| makeworld wrote:
| ffmpeg would be a better tool for that. Handbrake too I think,
| if you prefer a GUI.
| kevas wrote:
| Just stopping in & saying that I love this software. Thank you!
| intsunny wrote:
| I remember when us Linux desktop folks would run Windows Media
| Player 6.4 under Wine because it had the best support for all the
| codecs out there. (Especially all the DivX movies and TV shows
| out there.)
|
| Also in the early 2000's it was super fashionable for EVERY Linux
| app to have a needless server/client model. VLC is quite the
| prime example of this.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| VLC is one of the first things I install on any new system. It's
| light, consistent and works! Thank you for not going "2.0" on it.
| blazor wrote:
| Happy Birthday! What a superbly useful, solid piece of
| technology. Don't forget when this came out, the only option to
| watch video on Windows was to pay money, or try Windows Media
| Player, which I don't recall ever successfully playing any video
| I ever threw at it !
| kuon wrote:
| I have enormous respect for VLC and what it brought to video in
| general. But, recently I have been using mpv because I love how
| snappy it is, especially when seeking with the mouse wheel.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| Can someone explain why I can't get VLC from the standard Fedora
| repository and instead have to enable rpmfusion? I vaguely recall
| that it had something to do with proprietary codecs, but I never
| really understood the details.
| jbk wrote:
| Software patents on multimedia.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| Thank you for an amazing piece of software that I use daily! I
| got a question I've been wondering about.
|
| When I first encountered VLC, most other popular media players
| had very embellished UIs with tons of chrome and bitmaps
| everywhere. Apart from superior performance and format support,
| VLC stood out by being unapologetically minimalist and basic in
| its interface. Was that intentional? And were you ever tempted to
| go the same route UI-wise as other media players?
|
| I'm sure glad you didn't!
| jbk wrote:
| > Was that intentional? And were you ever tempted to go the
| same route UI-wise as other media players?
|
| If you suck at UI, hide your UI. :)
|
| Else, we're working on updating the UI, but that's very
| difficult for a small open source team. And that's going to
| make a lot of people unhappy, so we're working on options to
| get the old look possible :)
| ROARosen wrote:
| Oh great.. I'm actually a fan of certain UI upgrades/revamps,
| when done appropriately.
|
| I know I'm in the minority here when I say this - between the
| fine folks at HN - (and I truly do understand the sentiment),
| But I can't help myself... sorry fellas!
| jbk wrote:
| Help is welcome :)
| frannyward wrote:
| I use it to convert . VOB files to .MP4 format.
| yandrypozo wrote:
| ... and I still use it on my phone and my laptop <3
| jacko0 wrote:
| What happened a few years ago to the iOS version, it was suddenly
| withdrawn from the App Store.
| jzer0cool wrote:
| The #1 video player that always worked. Can you imagine a time
| before Youtube and cheap hosting for a college student? Well,
| that was a time for me involving FTP servers, hosting on some
| place with great bandwidth, a time of Emule, Limewire,
| sharebear?, I can't recall it all.
|
| There were so many video extensions like .avi, .mpeg, and my
| favorite was .dvix. When you use some reguar player, it was
| always say "codec not found". I always knew it would run in
| VideoLan. VideoLan you are my codec saver and many hours saved
| and enjoyed!
|
| Happy Birthday!
| rspeele wrote:
| VLC "just works" and has done so for at least the 11 years or so
| that I've used it. What an excellent piece of software. Never
| change, VLC!
| easytiger wrote:
| Yea, it's solid and the android port is excellent and by far
| the best video player available there too.
|
| Even on android the upnp client is very good.
|
| The only issues I've had are when i first installed in one
| OnePLus7 a lot of my videos seemed to have some kind of timing
| issue playing (looked like 5 FPS). Suspect it was to do with
| the 90Hz screen and eventually was fixed.
|
| Gestures to change volume and brightness are top QoL features.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| Thanks VideoLAN!
| uhtred wrote:
| Using VLC right now to listen to .flac music files!
| discordance wrote:
| Send them a few bucks HN. They deserve it!
|
| https://www.videolan.org/contribute.html#money
| INTPenis wrote:
| I've had some sort of computer for over 26 years but as far as I
| can remember VLC is one of those few graphical desktop
| applications that I've relied on for the longest consecutive
| time.
|
| In so many situations where you want a video player, VLC is
| always there and it always works.
|
| I wish I could donate to more projects but I try to focus on
| privacy organisations. If VLC started charging for a lifetime
| license tomorrow I would buy it.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| VLC is great. I've been using it since at least 2002 and it works
| where other players do not, or where other players are missing
| codecs. I am looking forward to the next 20 years of VLC!
| octocop wrote:
| VLC is great! I am just wondering when i can chromecast subtitles
| on VLC
| smudgy wrote:
| I remember when it came out as a swiss army tool for videos -
| loved it since the first version I got (off Slashdot) and I've
| been using it since.
|
| Good job folks at VideoLAN! Thanks for reminding me I'm an old
| fart!
| colmvp wrote:
| Just to chime in here with the love for VLC, it's very rare for
| me to continually use the same program for years while it gets
| updates, doesn't lag my computer, and just works.
| pachico wrote:
| You guys rock and the entire Linux community owes you big time.
| Once you installed videolan you were ready for all media formats.
| It was so tiresome to tell the people you convinced to try Linux
| that no, by default they couldn't play their media, that they
| needed gstreamer this and that. You made the transition to Linux
| so much easier to lots of people by offering a simple to use very
| feature rich application everyone needs and uses.
|
| Thank you!
| johnchristopher wrote:
| VLC is how I listen to music on Linux.
|
| For the longest time I have been a foobar/winamp user on Windows.
|
| But on Linux, the music player situation is atrocious. I
| surrendered to VLC et voila. It bugs me to no end that I use a
| video player to play music files but that's life.
|
| It plays everything, it doesn't need an insane backend scanning
| framework, it doesn't randomly crashes, its controls have been
| consistent for years and I can easily select the output device. I
| hate using it to play music but I love that I can use it to play
| music.
|
| Oh, and I can't wait for someone to release a VLCMedia distro
| with a keyboard/kiosk mode to get rid of XBMC/Kodi which has an
| insane amount of incoherent keybindings and defaults.
|
| edit: I also use cvlc to create an RTSP stream from pi-0, those
| streams are read and converted by a pi4 to HLS files in ssh
| shared folder with a VPS that has an index.html file with a js
| player. Works flawlessly. Only downside is when wifi gets flaky.
| How cvlc is the easiest and fastest option to do that on a pi0 is
| beyond me but thank you.
| isaac21259 wrote:
| If your looking for a good music player on Linux I highly
| recommend Lollypop.
|
| https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Lollypop#
| fladd wrote:
| Have you tried DeaDBeeF? https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io/
| teddyh wrote:
| VLC is certainly the program I always recommend to everyone,
| since it reads all formats and its GUI is perfectly serviceable
| for most people. But I never use VLC myself to watch video files,
| simply because VLC is, and have always been, for years,
| consistently slower when seeking in all the commonly used file
| formats which I encounter. It's not exactly _slow_ , it's just...
| noticeably not as fast. It is especially bothersome when skipping
| through a video to skim it, which I often do. I currently use mpv
| (https://mpv.io/), which is much faster at skipping, even though
| mpv does not have a GUI to speak of.
| teraflop wrote:
| By default, VLC tries to seek exactly to the timestamp you tell
| it to, which may requiring reading and decompressing a
| significant number of I-frames.
|
| Various other players, including mpv and MPC-HC, will instead
| just snap to the nearest keyframe and display that instead.
|
| Try turning on "Fast seek" in VLC's Input/Codecs preferences
| tab. It's still not _quite_ as fast as other players, in my
| experience, but it 's significantly better.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _Try turning on "Fast seek" in VLC's Input/Codecs
| preferences tab._
|
| That _is_ a bit better, but still not close to what mpv does.
| That option also causes VLC to sometimes get "stuck" while
| skipping, i.e. when you skip many times in quick succession,
| sometimes the playback gets to a certain point, and any skips
| will then not skip past that point - you will have to wait a
| few seconds for normal playback to progress a bit, and then
| you can skip again. This interrupts your flow, makes you wait
| (and forces you to partially watch a section you _expressly_
| wanted to skip), and is, needless to say, very disruptive
| when skimming a video.
| Nition wrote:
| MPV does seem super fast in general. I had a 4K HDR video
| file recently that the default Windows player couldn't play
| (black screen with only audio), VLC played but playback was
| choppy and the colours were washed out, and MPV played
| perfectly smooth with correct colours.
| BadInformatics wrote:
| There are a fair few MPV GUIs out there. I believe Celluloid is
| available in the main Debian repos.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I've noticed the same thing! And now I'm curious why that is.
|
| I would have thought video seeking would be the same in any
| player for any given specific codec/file.
|
| What could explain why VLC really is noticeably slower?
| astrange wrote:
| There might be an accuracy/speed tradeoff. mpv encourages
| skipping with keyboard shortcuts rather than clicking in a
| timeline, but I don't think it actually guarantees those
| shortcuts will skip the same time ahead.
|
| It also might be pre-decoding to enable trick play (rewinding
| etc).
| hudo wrote:
| Maybe in next 20 they will fix scaling issues when using screens
| with different DPI settings
| jbk wrote:
| This is a Qt bug, which VLC uses for its UI.
| totaldude87 wrote:
| This is so popular for so many years that, I questioned why
| someone would use a VLC cone for traffic diversions ( when I
| first saw one)
| myself248 wrote:
| Oh thank goodness I'm not the only one!
|
| Normal cones here are just plain orange, monolithic, all one
| color. I'd never seen the style with the white stripe in
| person.
|
| Until about 2 summers ago, some appeared at a construction
| site, and my first impulse was "Ooh, VLCs in the wild!"
| Springcleaning wrote:
| Congratulations!!!
|
| Three feature requests: 1) Make it possible to disable the
| playlist feature completely. 2) Make it possible to start it a
| second time with another video concurrently. 3) Make it possible
| to use a list of regex on subtitles, to filter out SDH and other
| stuff I don't need.
| vkolencik wrote:
| 2 is possible (Preferences > Interface > uncheck "Allow only
| one instance").
| matriculate wrote:
| I'm likely going to get downvoted to oblivion but as good as the
| video player application is, the development experience when
| trying to incorporate the SDK into your own software is utterly
| miserable.
|
| I've given up trying to use it after searching for a solution and
| not being able to find one and asking in the support forums. I
| presented a clear description of the issue and example code and
| was rudely told to not ask developers to write my app for me.
| It's happened a few times in exactly the same way over the years.
| Each time, I foolishly think it will be improved and spend even
| longer polishing my question, making sure the same old code
| builds etc. It's always the same. Miserable.
|
| Charitably, I see so many messages along the lines of "I wantz to
| build video app- pls helpz" which must get tiring but not as
| disappointing as asking sensible questions and proving source
| code.
| vanillax wrote:
| I recently co-authored an entire re-write of the VLC flutter
| plugin for android and iOS. This may help.
| https://github.com/solid-software/flutter_vlc_player
| jbk wrote:
| > the development experience when trying to incorporate the SDK
| into your own software is utterly miserable.
|
| It's not miserable anymore, but yes, it's far from good. If you
| are not doing something very simple, it can be very hard, and
| there is no support team to help you.
|
| Examples should be better those days, but the road is long to
| go.
| comprev wrote:
| I've been using it for years and will continue to do so for as
| long as I can.
|
| Plus the Xmas hat and snow on the famous orange traffic cone icon
| always makes me smile each winter :-)
|
| Thank you!
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| My young daughter has grown up with VLC playing our "home
| movies". We usually end up watching videos from the prior year
| around Christmastime. The "Christmas cone" (as she calls it) is
| something she associates with the season. This year she even
| asked if it was "Christmas cone time" yet.
|
| The cone needs to be festooned as a conical "party hat" on
| February 1. If I had art skills I'd make this happen.
| kypro wrote:
| I thought it was way older than that to be honest.
|
| I must have been using VLC for around 16 years myself. When I was
| a teenager my friends and I would film our weekend bike rides
| around the city - sometimes uploading them to Google Videos back
| when that was a thing. I remember often struggling to get the
| video formats to play on Windows Media Player because back then
| there seemed to be a lot of competing formats and WMP didn't
| always support them. Just off the top of my head I remember, 3gp,
| mp4, avi, wmv, divx, mpg & m4v. I was having trouble getting a
| video to play one night and a friend told me to try VLC and I
| haven't looked back since.
|
| VLC just works. It's also light weight - which was import when
| comparing to RealPlayer and Quicktime on an early 2000s PC. The
| UI is also extremely clean and simple when compared to other
| media players (especially those in the mid-2000s).
|
| Now 15 years later I'm still using VLC almost every day. It's
| probably the second or third thing I'll install on a new system.
| Quicktime player is pretty decent on Mac, but it doesn't play
| everything and there are things it doesn't do that I use all the
| time on VLC like the 100%+ volume.
|
| I can't imagine how much time and many headaches VLC has saved me
| over the years. It's easily one of the best pieces of open-source
| software ever made.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Thank you for the excellent program! It seems to be the only
| video processing library that I can use for all Apple systems,
| and, unfortunately, I need to use it, because RTSP...
|
| There's very few dependencies that I will include without too
| much hesitation, and VLCKit is one.
|
| But it is...large...
| tzury wrote:
| The creator of VLC player Olivier Pomel founded a company about a
| decade later and called it Datadog.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Cool! TIL. I've seen Datadog job postings for positions near
| Boston. I should apply.
| tombert wrote:
| I don't have any questions directly, just wanna say that I love
| VLC, it's one of the first programs I install on any computer,
| and I will continue to use it as my primary media-viewer for the
| foreseeable future.
|
| The number of features that the devs have packed into VLC is
| staggering; I've been using VLC for almost 15 years now, and I
| still find new things about it occasionally. Fun fact (though
| probably not as surprising to an HN crowd as it is to most people
| I tell this to), VLC can also be used to convert media to
| different formats, AND works as a quick ad-hoc media server if
| you want to display something on a TV. This can be really handy
| if you have a video file in a weird format and want a way to
| quickly watch it on a device that doesn't support weird formats.
|
| I think I'm going to donate. Keep up the good work folks!
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I only found out fairly recently that it can stream youtube
| videos (mostly, it does fail sometimes for seemingly no
| reason), which is great for those of us who end up clicking too
| frequently (read, all the time) on the related videos tab.
|
| It also mean that you don't see the ads, but there are
| extensions that can do that too.
| malwarebytess wrote:
| There are extensions that add youtube ads to vlc?
| 7786655 wrote:
| I assume tomjen3 was referring to browser extensions that
| block ads on the YouTube website.
| tombert wrote:
| I didn't know that! That's so awesome!
|
| See, my point stands...there's still a ton of cool features
| that are available in there if you dig around.
| jcynix wrote:
| Yes, it can play YouTube videos. And it can even show you the
| link to the video in ints info no, so you can download it.
| That's what I used before youtube-dl appeared on the scene.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| I found out it will work with karaoke files!
| jbk wrote:
| CDG files? yes :)
| bugBunny wrote:
| Same here, I have it literally everywhere, TV, mobile, laptop
| at home, at work... Thumbs-up guys
| legohead wrote:
| Same -- it's one of the first programs I install.
|
| I wish the video conversion was simpler, more intuitive, and
| provided better feedback. My impression is you have to "stream"
| to convert a file, and then it just sort of happens without you
| knowing when it's done. And the settings are...odd. Selecting a
| framerate/resolution is still old school - provide some common
| defaults, or % choices to match the video's ratio. Very clunky.
| --- I just tried it and it keeps repeating itself trying to
| overwrite a file, had to force close it, though it did convert!
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, admittedly typically when I do video conversion, I use
| ffmpeg nowadays, just because I am comfortable enough with
| the command line and it's easier to script.
|
| That said, whenever my dad needs my help with any video
| stuff, trying to talk him through ffmpeg command line args is
| tricky, and while VLC's interface is a bit weird, I've
| managed to talk him through how to use it. It's not ideal,
| but considering that it's free, works, and supports basically
| every format imaginable, we forgive it...certainly better
| than when I was using AutoGordianKnot as a teenager :).
| _fzslm wrote:
| handbrake is also pretty great from a user-friendly point
| of view :)
| tombert wrote:
| Handbrake is great, though IIRC it doesn't encode into
| any weird formats. For reasons too annoying to go into
| here, we needed to convert some weird Intel Indeo file
| into a WMV/ASF, due to some weirdness of a program that
| he needed to use for work only supporting WMV stuff.
| mrec wrote:
| I set up a Win10 box recently and was kind of stunned to find
| that the built-in Media Player is now b0rked to the extent that
| it can't play media. Practically _any_ media. Even with codec
| packs installed it won 't play any of my hundreds of h264 DVD
| rips, it won't play the few WMVs I still have kicking around,
| it won't even play bloody _MP3s_. I think I found one weird-
| codec MP4 and a couple of ancient AVIs it deigned to accept,
| but that was it.
|
| Or I can spend 30 seconds installing VLC and be 100% confident
| that it'll handle anything I throw at it. If I could fit a
| Lascaux cave wall into a USB port it'd play it.
|
| Congrats to everyone involved in making this software. The
| world would be a sadder and more frustrating place without it.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I remember 'back in the day' anytime I would set up a friends
| PC I would go and download the latest version of "K-Lite
| Codec Pack Mega". And one day a friend told me about VLC and
| it changed my life (from a media-player standpoint).
|
| Thank you VLC!!
| asciident wrote:
| Software that lasts over 10 years should be celebrated.
| Software that is still just as relevant after 20 years is
| extraordinary. If VideoLAN were a startup, it'd be a unicorn.
|
| VLC (and ffmpeg) are nearly singlehandedly keeping the
| world's media accessible. Otherwise, video would probably be
| a walled garden (subscribe to Adobe Cloud, share to Youtube,
| etc.).
| tombert wrote:
| I have not run Windows in any serious capacity in about 12
| years, but I don't remember Windows Media Player being _that_
| bad, and I thought that Windows now had a license to H264
| built in, so I 'm actually a bit surprised that a rip
| wouldn't work. Any idea what the issue was?
| mrec wrote:
| No idea. I'd been using Win 7 before that where Media
| Player mostly managed fine (probably with codec packs). VLC
| had audio glitching issues on that box but doesn't on the
| new one, so I quickly lost patience with trying to debug
| MP. Diagostics and codec help links are utterly useless.
| rconti wrote:
| I built a win7 HTPC about 6 or 7 years ago after not having
| used windows in AGES, and it blew my mind how awful it was
| finding codecs. Learning to avoid spyware and viruses really
| does require practice, and when you haven't spent the past
| decade visiting sketchy download sites, you really lose an
| eye for what's what.
|
| I still recoil at the thought of being told "no, that's a
| container, not a codec!"
|
| TBH, I'm still surprised at how awful some video stuff is.
| I've actually had about 5 false starts trying to make Plex
| work, and I'm trying it again (yeah, I never learn). Now the
| codecs and transcoding and stuff works on modern hardware,
| but it simply refuses to index content that you don't rename
| to please the master. It's absolutely insane. Software
| designed to make your life harder, not easier. There's a
| reason I just point Kodi to a NAS share. (speaking of awful
| configs.... but at least it plays!)
| luizfzs wrote:
| Thank you VideoLAN team!
|
| This thread is so wholesome!
| jbk wrote:
| As usual, please don't hesitate to ask questions about VLC,
| VideoLAN or related projects (x264, dav1d, libbluray...)
|
| _Disclaimer: VideoLAN president_
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| What's the history behind using a _traffic cone_ as a logo?
| dmd wrote:
| Why not ask something that isn't in the Wikipedia article?
| muizelaar wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201125184135/http://nanocrew.
| n... for those who don't want to dig through wikipedia.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| All I get is that it's an "in joke" of sorts that has just
| never changed. What I'm asking is: is there anything more
| than that? Such as: why hasn't it changed (not that it
| should)?
| jbk wrote:
| This story involves drinking students and internal jokes :)
| rhplus wrote:
| It was created by a group of students at an urban university
| in a country where the legal age to drink alcohol is 18. Such
| conditions often lead to collections of traffic cones.
| stormdennis wrote:
| So if it had been made 10 years earlier it might have
| featured a traffic cone AND a shopping trolley!
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| VLC is the best program I have ever used.
|
| Dumb joke: When it turns 21, what would be the drink that VLC
| would like?
| gspr wrote:
| > Dumb joke: When it turns 21, what would be the drink that
| VLC would like?
|
| VLC is French, so it's been drinking great wine since it was
| 18 ;-)
| kgwxd wrote:
| The legal drinking age in France is 18 :)
| nolok wrote:
| It's the buying/selling age. There is technically no legal
| drinking age in France, but rules about minors (parent
| responsability under rule of "common sense", parent must be
| present if under 16, illegal to have the minor drunk no
| matter what).
|
| Eg your parents giving you a small glass of champagne at
| new year when you're 12 is legal.
| easytiger wrote:
| It's not that dissimilar in the UK, or at least that was
| the case.
| nom wrote:
| IIRC the drinking age on private property in the UK is 5
| years. So there is a limit :P
| nolok wrote:
| There is no minimum legal drinking age in France*, the limit
| is only for buying/selling.
|
| * illegal to get a minor drunk no matter the age, parents
| must be present if the minor is under 16, minor is under
| parent supervision and responsibility in any case (source : h
| ttps://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%82ge_l%C3%A9gal_pour_la_co..
| . )
| jbk wrote:
| > Dumb joke: When it turns 21, what would be the drink that
| VLC would like?
|
| We're French, we don't wait the legal age to drink. :D
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Okay, I'm flying over there after COVID.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Whatever it is, it should be consumed from this pitcher:
| https://barmagazine.co.uk/wkd-serves-up-traffic-cone-
| pitcher...
| znkynz wrote:
| x265 playback on Windows seems challenging; nearly impossible
| to seek in files using slider bar?
| akvadrako wrote:
| Why doesn't VLC have good support for casting? I mean LAN is in
| the name - I shouldn't have to use a half-baked Chromecast
| solution that's proprietary, can't be a server and can't
| display most subtitles.
| jbk wrote:
| Because Chromecast is not done for push, but for pull. And
| because noone cares enough to fix it, I would guess...
| akvadrako wrote:
| Casting is all about push
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > Chromecast is not done for push, but for pull.
|
| What does this mean?
| franzb wrote:
| I like VLC but why is it so difficult to set the volume at
| exactly 100%? Or did I overlook an obvious way?
| roelschroeven wrote:
| The easiest way that I found is using the up and down arrow
| keys: the set the volume to multiples of 5%.
| 5555624 wrote:
| The easiest way, I know of, is to to just under 100% using
| the sliding scale in the lower left corner and then go to the
| Audio menu and increase the volume. A click on Increase
| Volume goes up to the nearest number divisible by 5 (i.e. at
| 97%, clicking Increase Volume goes to 100%; at 92%, you need
| to do it twice).
| jimduk wrote:
| Was working with the x264 crowd fun or exasperating or ...?
| Video-encoding is such a polymath topic (compression,
| perception, optimisation) and that code was so smart. I clearly
| remember mb-tree coming out and x264 quality/bitrate
| performance changing from good to supergood, and reading Dark
| Shikari's check in note about taking the implicit dependency
| graph and using it to propagate the relative quality of the
| blocks and it was a 'wow' moment. Also the Loren Merritt quote
| page still holds up well
| http://www.x264.nl/developers/Dark_Shikari/loren.html . Thank
| you
| jbk wrote:
| > Was working with the x264 crowd fun or exasperating or ...?
|
| Pretty fun, tbh.
| ksec wrote:
| I really wish Dark Shikari and Loren Merritt had continue to
| work on x265 or some other video encoder.
|
| 80%+ of all Video on the Internet are still on H.264 / AVC.
| And vast majority of them are encoded through x264.
|
| Their contribution to Video Encoding can not be understated.
| amir734jj wrote:
| How was VideoLAN started? I remember "Media Player Classic" and
| "K-Lite Codec Pack" were popular back then and when I installed
| VideoLAN and it blew my mind. Extremely fast, no buffering and
| very lightweight. I am 26 but I have been using VideoLAN as
| long as I can remember. The best media player.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| My memory is that early VLC was actually a bit slower than
| MPC, at least on my low-powered Windows 98 PC of the time
| (cobbled together for schoolwork from spare parts). There
| would be skipping or a loss of sync between audio and video
| on some heavier clips that didn't happen on MPC.
|
| But what I primarily remember in making the switch was that
| VLC could play _everything_ I threw at it, right out of the
| box, without installing a bunch of sketchy codec packs. And
| that also allowed me to basically just throw the VLC binary
| onto my flash-drive, and then be able to open any videos as
| needed from parents '/friends'/school computer by just
| plugging in the usb stick. It was definitely a game-changer.
| xzel wrote:
| The last bit 100 times over. The pain of trying to play AIV
| and DIVX files 15 years ago was generally miserable. To me
| VLC saved me from codec hell on, iirc Windows ME, and I've
| never looked back. Downloading and installing codec packs
| back then felt like it was a dice roll to getting a virus.
| It was also the only player I've used that could easily
| play FLV videos back then. Honestly, VLC is the only
| software I shove on friends computers if we're trying to
| play video.
| jbk wrote:
| The video at the end of the press release explains the story.
|
| But in _tl;dr:_ form:
|
| Ecole Centrale Paris campus network was managed by students.
| In 1995, they wanted a faster network, to play video games,
| and upgrade from their Token Ring network.
|
| The Univ did not want to pay so they went to see partners,
| and one said "put the satellite feed on your network to
| justify the need for a better network. We'll pay for it,
| instead of having 2000 dishes and decoders.". This PoC
| "Network 2000" was a success. Some students restarted the
| project in 1998 and called it VideoLAN.
|
| In 2001, VideoLAN and all the software projects (Server,
| Client, network, libraries) became GPL. VideoLan Client
| became VLC. Community added Windows, macOS support.
|
| In 2008, I created the VideoLAN non-profit to escape the
| university and make VLC grow.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| Ah I have fun memories of configuring Token Ring networks
| and playing with Novell NetWare to get my lab to connect
| properly. I can see why you'd want to upgrade from that
| though, 4Mbps was pretty pokey, even back then.
| a-dub wrote:
| was "network 2000" multicast? how similar/different was it
| to xing streamworks (commercial multicast mpeg suite from
| that time)?
| jbk wrote:
| It was an ATM backbone, but the routers did not support
| mcast. So they cheated to do multicast on a non-multicast
| network.
| Debug_Overload wrote:
| Thank you guys for the great work! VLC is just great.
| rootsudo wrote:
| 2008 makes sense, about the time where k-lite codec pack
| and media player classic started to be eclipsed! Wow. Thank
| you for the best video player out there, for all those
| exciting, strange and exciting codecs!
| dfsegoat wrote:
| Yeah. It was a game changer with respect to being very
| obviously lightweight + purely functional, and it was very
| cool to me that it was available on linux and windows. It may
| have been the first cross-platform app I ever used.
|
| I forgot about those K-Lite Codec packs and all that - even
| back then that stuff had bloatware with it, which was why vlc
| was so refreshing.
| jorl17 wrote:
| Do you "like" the IINA project, assuming you're familar with
| it, and is there anything you can "take" from it? What are your
| thoughts on it?
|
| I used to always install VLC in all my machines. One day, I
| found a file that had wonky audio -- it randomly sped up and
| slowed down, but in a somewhat bearable way (it was a
| 2h-movie,) like some weird flutter was going on. I didn't make
| much of it at the time. Later, I got another file that would
| randomly lose audio. As in, sometimes, the audio would cut for
| a while and then come back. Except I used to replay this file
| often and noticed it happen in different places every run --
| this got me thinking it could have been a software issue.
|
| At the time (this was roughly 4 years ago, I believe), I
| happened to see IINA mentioned somewhere, and I therefore gave
| it a go. It seemed to consume more CPU, but it didn't have the
| wonky audio in neither of these files. I became a fan and,
| while I keep VNC installed "just in case", I get this feeling
| that IINA has higher compatibility and a better interface. For
| example, IINA has what seems like a better algorithm for
| finding subtitles from a path, and it's just more well
| integrated with macOS.
|
| I wish I could go back to VLC, but I keep feeling like it's
| going to fail me or that the UI isn't as polished/well-
| integrated into macOS. I hate that I feel this way because I
| honestly feel like I'm "betraying" this wonderful piece of
| software that is VLC.
|
| I guess there isn't really another question. I'd like to say
| thanks, and here's to hoping that in the near future I'll go
| back to VLC. You have done a remarkable job and I think you
| should be extremely proud of yourself! VLC rocks! :)
| gspr wrote:
| Thank you, the organization and of course the maintainers of
| all this wonderful software that you maintain! I recently
| tracked down and reported my first bug in one of the projects
| and the maintainers made the experience an absolute joy!
|
| To the question: I keep hearing from my younger peers that they
| don't see any value in out-of-browser software. To me, that's
| their loss. But if this attitude is prevalent, do you feel you
| are having a harder time attracting talent than say 10-20 years
| ago?
|
| Merci encore une fois !
| jbk wrote:
| > But if this attitude is prevalent, do you feel you are
| having a harder time attracting talent than say 10-20 years
| ago?
|
| A lot lot lot harder than in the past. You have no idea...
| gspr wrote:
| Are you worried about the VideoLAN projects going forward?
| Should other foundational free software projects be worried
| too?
| jbk wrote:
| A bit, to be honest. Which is why we're doing some
| professional work to fund it.
| FabHK wrote:
| wow, I had no idea indeed. Interesting (and dispiriting) to
| know.
|
| (It is frustrating already that when you say that you
| program, a certain kind of youngster asks "frontend or
| backend?", and when you say neither, they say knowingly,
| "oh, fullstack!" (>_<) )
| therealmarv wrote:
| When will VideoLAN focus on color accuracy (colors are slightly
| off by default)? I suspect most users don't notice but e.g.
| Quicktime on supported formats adjusts colors according to
| monitor color profile and video color profile and it's visible
| for trained eyes. I can adjust manually my VLC too in colors
| but it's not exact science and just by comparing and personal
| feeling. I wished I could optimise videos as good as my TV is
| doing it in VLC (but this is also beyond colors).
|
| Thanks VLC!
| jbk wrote:
| > When will VideoLAN focus on color accuracy
|
| Next major release of VLC.
| jdofaz wrote:
| Any word on AC-4 support? It was the first thing I threw at VLC
| that it couldn't play. :D
| jbk wrote:
| Under development
| paulz_ wrote:
| Hey jbk just wanted to take this chance to say thanks! VLC has
| been year over year some of the most consitently good software
| I've ever used. Thank you for all the hard work I'm sure goes
| into making a killer product.
| ACS_Solver wrote:
| I just want to say thank you. VLC remains one of the best
| pieces of software I've ever used. It just works, and while I
| mostly use it as a simple player, any time I needed some more
| advanced features, they were also there. Most unusually, VLC
| doesn't get worse with time like so much modern software does.
| No bloat, no ads, no removal of settings, no inexplicable UI
| redesigns for the sake of redesigning. Truly the gold standard
| of software.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| Do you view videolan as a platform that should support an
| endless array of features and plugins and codecs, or do you
| view it more like a product that needs to keep cutting the fat
| as time moves on?
| jbk wrote:
| "Plays it all." but we're working so that new features don't
| slow down the player, at runtime.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Will there be a way to turn off all of the extra library
| functionality? I just want a video player. Like QuickTime
| Player but with more format support.
| jbk wrote:
| > Will there be a way to turn off all of the extra library
| functionality?
|
| yes.
| mFixman wrote:
| Somehow, VLC is both one of the programs with the most useful
| features and the least bloat I've ever used.
|
| What does your project management do right to find the right
| features without adding bloat? This is the kind of thing giant
| software companies struggle with, and they have the advantage
| of feature-tracking scripts on their programs.
| jbk wrote:
| > What does your project management do right to find the
| right features without adding bloat?
|
| 3 answers:
|
| - limited resources
|
| - modules: adding features is often just a new module, which
| does not slow VLC.
|
| - only devs :)
| rakoo wrote:
| First of all, thank you for VLC, for choosing the GPL, and for
| being one of the too few examples of French excellence in tech
| ! I can only sympathise with stories in Grandes Ecoles
| involving "found" cones :)
|
| What's coming for the next 20 years? Are there any challenges
| that the VideoLAN project has unique expertise on that it can
| bring out ?
| aantix wrote:
| What are the best settings/codecs for upscaling video to 4K in
| real-time?
|
| Or is there a post-processing solution to upscale video for
| VLC?
|
| I've seen some impressive neural net solutions for upscaing,
| but they haven't been open source.
| astrange wrote:
| I'm not sure open source really applies to an ML model, I
| suppose you can obfusticate it to "close it". Regardless,
| prior art here is open source
| (http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Nnedi3).
| jbk wrote:
| In VLC 4.0, we'll add RAVU, NNEDI3 and a few other to
| upscale.
| kome wrote:
| I love VLC! Thank you for your work.
| LoathsLights wrote:
| I always loved using VLC, but I watch a lot of tv shows and as
| far as I know there's never been a good way to remember
| playlist position (except from some plugin I never got to
| work). Has this ever been a feature you have considered adding?
| jbk wrote:
| > Has this ever been a feature you have considered adding?
|
| Next major release
| gostsamo wrote:
| Can you add to VLC a support for reading subtitles with the os
| screen reader? Currently only PodPlayer supports that after KMP
| turned into an adware.
|
| Also, if you can offer native accessibility support would be
| much better for screen reader users. Currently, I need an
| extension for NVDA to use the VLC player.
| Bayart wrote:
| >Currently only PodPlayer supports that after KMP turned into
| an adware
|
| Potplayer became adware too...
| jbk wrote:
| > Can you add to VLC a support for reading subtitles with the
| os screen reader?
|
| it's already doable. But it does disable the display of
| subtitles.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Hi, if it is possible, I really can't find where and how.
| getoj wrote:
| https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=145522
|
| First result on google.
| devindotcom wrote:
| Curious whether there are/were plans for a VLC-lite that
| eschews the many more advanced features (transcoding,
| streaming, etc) and focuses purely on playback with as little
| overhead as possible?
|
| Maybe I missed this discussion already but as much as I love
| VLC sometimes it feels like I'm using a semi truck to drive to
| the store and back.
| jbk wrote:
| Technically, most of those features are only in modules, and
| you can remove most of those already and have a functioning
| VLC.
|
| We don't remove them, because besides disk space, they don't
| take any CPU or RAM of the user.
| barkingcat wrote:
| Want to thank you and your team for such an great piece of
| software!
| [deleted]
| jorvi wrote:
| Are there any plans for an UI refresh?
|
| I've seen people on macOS switch to IINA in droves because the
| interface looks very slick and modern (yet functional!). I
| understand VLC is not in the business in chasing the latest UI
| fad, but the first thing people who don't know VLC notice about
| it is how archaic it looks.
| jbk wrote:
| > Are there any plans for an UI refresh?
|
| yes, for 4.0
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Will the old interface remain as an option? I'll be pretty
| disappointed if I wake up one day and the classic VLC
| interface is gone.
| einpoklum wrote:
| The VLC player is incredibly popular. And a bunch of libraries
| that are part of the project are also pretty well-known (less
| so by end users I suppose). But - I have rarely, if ever, seen
| uses of:
|
| * VideoLAN Server
|
| * VideoLAN Bridge
|
| * VideoLAN Channel Switcher
|
| The press release doesn't focus on them much, either. I don't
| see them on the project page. Can you describe what happened
| with them?
|
| Also - how you've chosen projects you've started more recently
| (like multicat or the VLMC editor)?
| jbk wrote:
| > Can you describe what happened with them?
|
| They are dead. VLS features are now done with DVBlast. The
| other are useless with modern networks.
| dantheman wrote:
| Congrats!
| zests wrote:
| What happened internally when you discovered that you were
| given a false severe grade CVE? I remember seeing many articles
| suggesting users uninstall VLC.
|
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-13615
| jbk wrote:
| > What happened internally when you discovered that you were
| given a false severe grade CVE?
|
| Nothing, but we knew it was going to be a shitstorm.
| Clickbait articles are very annoying.
|
| As for the CVE system, it's utterly broken and idiotic.
| RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote:
| Are there plans to sandbox / harden VLC against security
| vulnerabilities? While my jolly roger days are long gone, and
| virtually all media I play are from trusted sources, VLC
| probably ranks top 5 by attack surface among the software I run
| regularly.
| jbk wrote:
| Yes, there is a big project on that those days :)
| PurpleFoxy wrote:
| The problem could also be solved by putting vlc itself in a
| sandbox. There is no reason a media player should have direct
| access to all of your files anyway. I wonder if the flatpak
| for vlc is set up with strong sandbox rules.
| jbk wrote:
| > The problem could also be solved by putting vlc itself in
| a sandbox
|
| It cannot, no. See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409234
| londons_explore wrote:
| How do you fund your work? Have you had to take a pay cut to
| work on VLC compared to working on similar commercial tech?
| jbk wrote:
| > How do you fund your work? Have you had to take a pay cut
| to work on VLC compared to working on similar commercial
| tech?
|
| VideoLAN does not make any money outside of donations.
|
| I have a startup, called Videolabs since 2013.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| This might just be my own environment, but it seems like VLC's
| ability to stream from Youtube breaks very frequently.
|
| Is that just a side-effect of Google constantly updating their
| YT infrastructure, or do you believe they are intentionally
| introducing changes to sabotage the ability for third-party
| programs such as VLC to render their streams?
| jbk wrote:
| They change the layout of the pages often, to block VLC and
| youtube-dl
| dedosk wrote:
| Would you port VLC UI from Qt to something like Electron or
| some other web-based solution? I hope not, but checking in
| terms of UI toolkit trends and solutions...
| jbk wrote:
| > Would you port VLC UI from Qt to something like Electron or
| some other web-based solution?
|
| No. We're moving some parts to QML, but that's C++ (and the
| part that are JS are moving to C++ in Qt6)
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Thanks for continuing to produce a clean, pain-free, DRM
| headache free, lightweight, awesome product.
| jbaber wrote:
| Simplement: merci!
| phreeza wrote:
| Why the traffic cone?
| simlevesque wrote:
| Toutes mes felicitations, merci d'avoir cree VLC et d'avoir
| utilise la license GPL !
| fabiensanglard wrote:
| Chapeau bas!
| einpoklum wrote:
| It is indeed not trivial at all that a large official
| organization decided to contribute a significant
| program/project under the GPL rather than a permissive license.
| Thanks goes to the Ecole Central Paris for that part.
| ericra wrote:
| I love VLC and have used it as my primary media player on every
| machine for as long as I can remember.
|
| I recently started exploring the command line options and I wrote
| a short (very basic) article on getting started with the VLC
| command line in case anyone finds it interesting or useful:
| https://ericra.com/writing/vlc_commands.html
| tunap wrote:
| Hip, hip... Hourrah! Hip, hip... Hourrah! Hip, hip... Hourrah!
|
| Excellent work to all involved. Thank you.
| nateberkopec wrote:
| Seeing a bunch of people walking around with traffic cones on
| their heads at FOSDEM a while back really made me appreciate what
| a strong and vibrant contributor community VLC has. Thank you to
| everyone who contributes!
| john37386 wrote:
| It's really an awesome software. It just works! I heard back in
| the days that they got some sponsors to improve security. Since
| it's running on so many computers, I was wondering if anyone is
| aware of any security issues. On my side, I didn't heard of any,
| but I also didn't really look deep into it.
|
| Anyone has thought on the security side of VLC?
| dvt wrote:
| Congrats to the VideoLAN team! I'm 34, and I've been using VLC as
| long as I can remember :)
| easytiger wrote:
| I've been on Linux since circa 2000. I was using mplayer2 to
| play most media. VLC was a big advance as it seemed to work
| better with videos with encoding issues in terms of recovering
| the stream and whatnot.
| astrange wrote:
| Pretty much all players are just libavcodec, so the only
| differences are coincidences or default options, not original
| research in the player app. This goes double for encoding
| apps.
| dopeboy wrote:
| I remember the days of trying mplayer2, totem, and countless
| others. Everything just worked with VLC.
| nom wrote:
| First of all, thank you so much for your amazing software!
|
| Second, are my files bitrotting or has the quality of some
| decoding plugins degraded over time? I mostly observe issues with
| WMV and MKV files that I don't see in other players.
| jbk wrote:
| Absolutely not normal. Disable hardware decoder ?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-01 23:00 UTC)