

Final design of VLC 2.0 for Mac - NaOH
http://feepk.posterous.com/final-design-of-vlc-20-for-mac

======
iamcalledrob
This looks rather complicated.

I'm not sure whether this is meant to be a media organiser or a media player –
it looks like it may be attempting to do both, but succeeding at doing neither
well.

I would have been happier if the route taken was more similar to QuickTime,
pairing minimal, well considered and incredibly simple UI with VLC's
bulletproof playback.

~~~
iloveponies
I've been told by unnamed Apple employees that VLC is the #2 application on OS
X for bug reports (the #1 being Safari). Whilst I too have had very little
problems with VLC's stability - apparently the whole truth is far different.

~~~
shinratdr
To be fair, it's the number two crasher for the same reason Safari is the
number one crasher.

VLC is very stable nowadays, but just like Safari tons of people use it, and
people ask it to process really random and broken data without batting an
eyelid. Broken or corrupted video? VLC will play it. Half downloaded file in
some obscure format? VLC. Bittorrent download that only got to 75%? Yes, VLC
will play it (glitching through the missing parts).

That does result in crashes, because unlike say, QuickTime which will simply
refuse to play something if it doesn't like the cut of it's jib, VLC will
attempt to play anything and everything you throw at it. Just like Safari will
attempt to render any data you throw at it.

~~~
xenophanes
VLC crashes reasonably often for me. More than anything else (besides Mail.app
after Lion came out, which kept crashing while typing emails... ugh. and still
does, but rarely). The cause is watching videos at 2x-3x speed and then
skipping around in it quickly (usually with the 1 min jump forward command a
few times).

Maybe the video files I'm watching suck, but it shouldn't crash when seeking
or playing just because the data sucks.

On a related note, sometimes the sound breaks. You hear a popping sound and to
fix it you have to do stuff like slow the video down then change the volume.
Then it fixes itself then go back how it was.

This seems to be related to particular videos, presumably they suck in some
way. But it still shouldn't happen. Or at least it should fix itself
automatically without me having to do the equivalent of punching the TV to get
it to try again.

I can deal with sounds getting garbled here and there when playing at high
speed if it can't keep up for some reason, but it shouldn't stay broken
indefinitely until I manually fiddle with the playback speed and volume and
maybe pause/unpause. That is VLC's fault. Glitch the broken parts but then
_stop glitching afterwards_ please. That's how visual issues work (sometimes
some frames are screwed up but it fixes itself at the next keyframe I think).

Maybe higher speed playback is an area that receives little attention and I
guess it can't be the cause of most VLC crashes since most people never use
it. But still, please don't tell me VLC is stable. And there's no reason bad
data should cause crashes or indefinite non-recovery from glitches.

(However, it has gotten more stable over time. It used to crash considerably
more, and there was a nasty bug when a video ended in fullscreen mode (crash?
i actually forgot) which they have fixed, albeit by wasting about 5 seconds of
your time in video ending mode with no way to exit it or use your computer,
before it goes back to window mode or accepts commands.)

------
dekz
I'm currently downloading this now to make a fair comparison. I always saw VLC
as I see VIM, it's an editor, it's great for editing, but it's not an IDE. My
sudden though upon seeing this is something similar, VLC is a great media
player, but I wasn't expecting it to become a Media
Library/Organiser/Environment.

I'll offer some feedback:

    
    
       - This sidebar is useless. Once I've hidden the unwanted   items I am left with Library -> Playlist. I don't care about   Internet/My Computer/Local Network. This design only works in  iTunes because it has more to offer such as Playlists!  
       - There needs to be a way to go back to the previous gui, perhaps a 'Mini mode player'
       - Only 3 options in the Playlist/Library view of columns, "Name, Author Duration".  
       - I'm not sure why My Music/My Pictures/My Videos exists.

~~~
jbk
If you do not like the Media Library, then, don't use it. It does get on your
way.

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shinratdr
Wow, I'm blown away. VLC has always has the best interface in OS X of all
platforms but now the others aren't even comparable. I hope they have big
things in store for the Windows & Linux interface, the lag is even more
glaring now.

In case anyone is looking for a download link, here is 2.0 RC1:
[http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/vlc-2.0.0-rc1/macos...](http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/vlc-2.0.0-rc1/macosx/)

~~~
jbk
Yep, we are going to work on other platforms, in the next releases...

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gurkendoktor
I don't understand the negativity. Am I using the same VLC 1.x as everyone
else? One that has two different windows, one for controls and one for video,
with the one for controls always showing a playlist? If anything, the new
design de-emphasizes the playlist and reduces complexity.

Looking forward to it. I used to use Perian, but Lion's Finder does not allow
one to _not_ show previews of files anymore. Navigating through a directory of
videos with the arrow keys is like walking through a minefield now. Every tap
will trigger the preview generation of some bizarre video plugin and before
you get to the file you want to watch, something crashes. I keep Perian
uninstalled to get rid of the previews now, and use VLC for everything.

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jawngee
The spacing is off. The gap between the maximum volume icon and the toggles on
the lower left is inconsistent with the rest of the spacing in the bottom bar
area, as is the spacing on the gaps between the chrome edge and the button
groups (left side looks like it has a bigger gap than the right).

The search bar border should not be flush with the border of it's containing
view, maybe a 3-4 pixel gap would be pleasing.

~~~
jbk
<http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/>

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schiffern
As long as I can disable the Media Library I'll be fine.

I use VLC because it _doesn't_ thrust another library organization task in
front of me.

~~~
jbk
You don't need to use it. It will work fine, as before.

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Zirro
I began switching from VLC to MPlayerX for most of my media files because I
liked the auto-hiding UI, showing only the video when not hovering the
application. Will this be the same deal? If so, I'll switch back on release-
day.

~~~
Zirro
I've tried it now, and sadly this is not the case. There also appears to be a
very annoying two-second delay between using the soundlevel-controller and the
level of the sound actually changing. I would love to see both of these things
resolved in a release in a not too distant future. If you happen to have had
certain reasons for not making an auto-hiding UI by default, please provide it
as an option instead.

~~~
jbk
Yes, those things are on the track.

The important was to put back all into one Window. Now, this is done, so it
can evolve correctly.

------
uptown
"NB: Development of the interface wouldn't have been possible without a
stipend from Google Inc. as part of Google Summer of Code 2011, which allowed
me to work on it fulltime without worries."

So it's Google's fault.

------
danabramov
I'm staying with MPlayerX because of its non-intrusive, simple design. This
toolbar too bluntly tries to mimic hardware video players, and takes worst
from them.

“Play”, which is about the only useful control the toolbar except for the
slider, is located in the lower left corner between two “Move” buttons. On a
17' screen, it is too easy to miss. This makes it useless. I would _hate_ to
skip a couple of scenes the moment I wanted to pause just because I missed
about 16 pixels.

I can't see the point of “Stop” button. It's not a home video player. If you
want to stop the video, just close the window. If you want to pause, just
pause. You don't need a stop.

Then there are these “play order” buttons. Come on, do you really watch 20
videos in row? There's a YouTube for that. Useless.

Equalizer?

It's painful to see so little space left for the slider. _People use toolbar
to scroll through the movie!_ Finding the exact scene will be extraordinary
difficult because unneeded buttons take most of the space.

Do an experiment. Release a beta version that tracks each click. Generate
usage heat map for all controls on the toolbar. Make most used items large and
simple to hit (place them in the center). Get rid of the rest.

I'm also staying with MPlayerX because of its preferences window. Last time I
checked, VLC's preferences were complicated as hell, and there were three
different ways of setting subtitle font, none of them working.

~~~
jbk
> I can't see the point of “Stop” button. It's not a home video player. If you
> want to stop the video, just close the window. If you want to pause, just
> pause. You don't need a stop.

No, _you_ do not need a stop button, in _your_ use. Stop and pause are very
different for Discs and streams (and timeshifting). How do you navigate in
your playlist when the video is just paused?

> Then there are these “play order” buttons. Come on, do you really watch 20
> videos in row? There's a YouTube for that. Useless.

Open a folder of video or audio. You need next and previous buttons.

> Equalizer?

Audio, Music and badly recorded video.

> It's painful to see so little space left for the slider. People use toolbar
> to scroll through the movie! Finding the exact scene will be extraordinary
> difficult because unneeded buttons take most of the space.

This will be fixed in a next release, but this is already what you want in
fullscreen.

> Do an experiment. Release a beta version that tracks each click. Generate
> usage heat map for all controls on the toolbar. Make most used items large
> and simple to hit (place them in the center). Get rid of the rest.

Guess what, we did it... And all the buttons that are present are very much
used. Ouch!

> Last time I checked, VLC's preferences were complicated as hell, and there
> were three different ways of setting subtitle font, none of them working.

[http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss271/onenglish/vlc_prefe...](http://i583.photobucket.com/albums/ss271/onenglish/vlc_preference.jpg)
does not seem complicated to me.

------
yason
And for Linux, we need the robustness and functionality of VLC with the
interface and integration of Totem.

~~~
jbk
What integration is missing?

~~~
yason
The VLC GUI is sort of a mess. I think it's QT but many QT applications look
just fine in Gnome. VLC doesn't. The keyboard shortcuts sometimes work,
sometimes they don't: obviously a focus thing or something. The looks is
different and somehow old. Various widgets aren't standard and don't always
work in a standard way. For some damn reason, VLC toggles the state of the
super key which I use for many keyboard shortcuts, and this means typing text
doesn't work if VLC is running. Moving back and forth is cumbersome: you just
can't use the arrow keys but you have to use shift and or ctrl/alt. Those can
theoretically be configured but my VLC hasn't believed my new keybindings for
years. The popup menus flicker when opened during a movie and they can go
really deep. Changing some settings in mid-play causes restarting the movie
from beginning while some settings are lost after switching DVD
titles/chapters.

There's undoubtedly a lot of functionality in VLC but I kind of prefer the way
of the Gnome school: things should be simple by default, and advanced
configuration can be arranged in some advanced way, if needed. For example,
transcoding into a file could be just a "Save as..." with a simple selection
of formats. Now it opens a complex dialog with several tabs all over. Using
that monster I don't always manage to reliably produce transcoded video files
with VLC that generally open in any other player, and _at least I know
something_ about video encoding and container formats. Even opening a DVD disk
requires clicking through a dialog whereas Totem just... well, starts playing
whatever disk happens to be in the drive.

On the other hand, the quality and robustness of VLC is outstanding. A simple,
Gnome compliant GUI plugin for vlc would make it a true pleasure.

~~~
jbk
> The keyboard shortcuts sometimes work, sometimes they don't

This is fixed in latest versions of VLC.

> Various widgets aren't standard

Which one ? All of them are standard but the volume slider and you can change
it.

> The popup menus flicker when opened during a movie and they can go really
> deep.

I do not understand what you say.

> Changing some settings in mid-play causes restarting the movie from
> beginning while some settings are lost after switching DVD titles/chapters.

This is fixed since a long time.

> For example, transcoding into a file could be just a "Save as..." with a
> simple selection of formats.

Good idea.

~~~
yason
I'm at 1.1.12 that came with Ubuntu. These problems have been around for
years: I'm glad they're fixed now (obviously in 1.1.13?) but I must say they
apparently weren't a priority for the VLC developers.

I'm glad to hear that the keyboard shortcuts have been fixed, too. The
super/Windows key problem was particularly nasty: you couldn't leave VLC
running on the background if you wanted to use other programs.

This apparently means that as of 1.1.13, I can configure away the braindead
movement keybindings. By default, I have to keep shift and/or ctrl pressed to
jump around the movie. Plain left/right do _what_? Go to a mysterious
Next/Prev or something? What's that and who uses that? Totem got the keyboard
controls right here, unfortunately. Totem doesn't even need the modifier keys
because right is a bigger jump forward than left is backward, so you can just
use two keys to jiggle yourself to the right position.

The flickering popup menus can be reproed like this: play a movie (a dvd
preferably), go fullscreen, right-click on the screen and try to navigate to
some other DVD title or chapter. This involves a lot deep submenus and they
flicker frantically while the movie is playing. Not a biggie but this has been
there forever, too, and gives a shoddy impression of the user interface that
adds up.

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nextparadigms
VLC needs quicker access to subtitles, and they need to search for subtitles
on the web, like BSPlayer does it (if they already do this, then it must be
hidden very well, and I'm not aware of it).

~~~
jbk
[http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Subtitles+finder...](http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/Subtitles+finder+1.04?content=141787)

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theone
Too much of negativity...

It seems good to me ! UI is not that bad. Infact I prefer having media list in
app. I anyways don't like current playlist UI (which I use often). Its better
than that.

Moreover, I'd love to have some feature where I can include my media path once
(it may be iTunes Media Library), and the app automatically shows files at
those locations. It'd be even better if it could automatically show Movie
name/thumb imdb link etc.

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phamilton
This feels like Amarok 2.0. Amarok 1.4 was great in its simplicity, then they
brought in a so called UI Design Expert and the whole thing just fell apart.

~~~
pjscott
I've been using the dev branch of VLC for a while now, and the complexity is
very easy to ignore. It's not nearly as bad as what happened to Amarok.

------
veidr
More than the UI widgets, I think the key part of the interface of a video
player is whether the program is smart enough to (at least offer to) resume
playing a video from wherever it was when that file was last closed.

It has always slightly boggled my mind that VLC, and many other players, don't
do this.

~~~
Zirro
MPlayerX (for OS X) does this, but personally I would prefer if it didn't. But
that's probably because I watch a lot of short clips I'd rather have
restarted, than long movies which I'd want to keep watching where I left them.

~~~
dochtman
You know you can turn that off, right?

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peregrine
I mostly turn these features off and get rid of the boarder and controls and
just have a floating video.

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rrrazdan
Can we have a better UI for subtitles? Maybe double clicking on a subtitle
file automatically adds it to the current video, just like GOM. I seem to
remember behavior like this on the Windows VLC. That seems to be my only peeve
with VLC, as a non-native English speaker.

~~~
jbk
You can drag and drop them.

Double-clicking could be a cool idea, add it to our trac, and we'll code it.

------
g3orge
Lately I'm using the excellent MPlayerX from the Mac App Store. It's lighter
and easier.

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abbott
all i need is a windowless experience. minimal UI please? I've been a VLC user
for 4 years until I realized I wanted a minimal UI footprint. It's video! UI
is secondary.

I've been using MPlayerX, anyone else tried it?

~~~
shrikant
Ctrl + H (at least on Windows) drops you to a "Minimal Interface". That's an
option in the "View" menu as well.

Granted, it still shows a window title bar, but this _is_ pretty minimal..

------
squealingrat
All I need from VLC is the option to automatically save where I left off in a
video so when I relaunch it, I don't have to manually navigate to where I was
last.

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hellweaver666
I don't really see the need for VLC on the Mac. I use quick time with the
Perian plugin and I can play pretty most common filetypes. What does VLC offer
that my current setup doesn't?

(incidentally, I rarely watch video directly on my Mac these days. I mostly
stream to my xbox with Rivit or to my iPad using Air Video).

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jphilipson22
I'll be keeping that 1.X download handy. Interested to at least give this a
chance.

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evilvoidhamster
that looks much cleaner than previous designs. congrats.

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whalesalad
Oh no it looks horrible.

~~~
Zirro
While I'm not saying that I don't partially agree with you, please provide
your reasons for thinking so.

