
15 years of VLC and VideoLAN - bpierre
https://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2016/15-years-of-VLC
======
gregschlom
A little know fact about the VideoLAN project is that it was started so that
the student organization could justify the need to replace the old networking
infrastructure of the campus with a brand new high-bandwidth fiber optics
network. They really wanted to deploy a fiber optic network but the school
would have never approved it so they thought "OK, we need something that uses
a ton of bandwidth, let's make a video streaming app".

They proceeded to start the VideoLAN project, with the VideoLAN Client (VLC)
and VideoLAN server, and streamed movies and public television channels to the
whole campus.

Interesting how it came to benefit everybody.

Source: I studied there and had a chat with one of the original creators of
the project once.

~~~
wlesieutre
On a related note, VLC's traffic cone icon comes from a club member drunkenly
stealing one, which then ballooned into the organization collecting them and
eventually inspired the icon.

[https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=9792](https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=9792)

~~~
Eric_WVGG
Interesting. It’s a terrible, stupid, confusing symbol for this project.

[edit] if the point is to be cryptic and appealing to nerds, it succeeds in
spades [/edit]

~~~
ojiikun
and the part-eaten fruit of the apple tree is any more wonderful, smart, and
enlightening a symbol for a computer / phone company?

~~~
Piskvorrr
Not at first sight. On second thought, it hits you:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_knowledge_of_good_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_knowledge_of_good_and_evil)

------
SwellJoe
I briefly operated an audiovisual services company (that lost a tremendous
amount of money, but that had nothing to do with VLC), and after trying loads
of players, came back to VLC. It allowed all of the stuff I needed and that
many other players (including expensive commercial ones) failed at.

It plays literally _everything_. We regularly had sponsors show up the day of
the show and hand me a USB drive with their ad reel on it. With no clue what
the format would be, I would always be able to say, "yeah, we can put it in
the playlist for tonight".

It has excellent playlist abilities, and excellent means of controlling the
playlist. Our shows often included multiple sources (live video, sponsor reel,
feature, short, trailers, etc.), and being able to manually select the right
things at the right times with keyboard shortcuts was great.

It actually allows one to kill _all_ on screen displays, and can be reliably
configured to always open video on the secondary display (projector) and
controls on the primary display (laptop). This is shockingly difficult with
every other player I used. They would _always_ have problems getting things
onto the right display, or would show some kinda bullshit on the screen. This
is particularly true of the DVD and Blu Ray capable players; they're an utter
shit show, even if you pay a bunch of money for them.

So, thanks! I love VLC bunches. I've donated in the past, and will certainly
donate again.

~~~
stordoff
> It plays literally everything

In the ten or so years I've used it, I've only come across one file that VLC
wouldn't play (excluded DRMed files) - a (possibly malformed) 24hr long MP4 I
recorded a few years ago. Pretty much everything chokes on it (VLC crashes
straight away), though oddly enough Windows Media Player handles it fine until
you try to seek to a different time.

I've dabbled with other media players/codecs in the past, but usually end up
back at VLC not long after due to its versatility. Impressive stuff.

~~~
NamTaf
I recently used this amazing little utility:
[http://slydiman.me/eng/mmedia/recover_mp4.htm](http://slydiman.me/eng/mmedia/recover_mp4.htm)

It helped me recover some GoPro footage that went corrupt. You feed it a known
good video from the same camera/same settings and then it basically uses the
structure of the good footage to rebuild the bad footage. It worked a treat
after I found a good file for it.

Have a look at it, you may find it helps you out.

~~~
stordoff
I don't currently have access to the drives it is stored on, but I'll give it
a go next time I do. Thanks for the suggestion.

------
dopeboy
In the earlier days of mainstream desktop linux (~2005), video codecs were a
complete shitshow. VLC was a godsend during those times - it just worked.
Still the first thing I apt-get after a fresh install.

If you're reading this team VLC, thank you for your work. Ways to contribute
to VLC:
[http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html](http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html)

~~~
Kluny
Quicktime on Mac OS remains a shitshow to this day. I still have not figured
out how to use third party srt files for subtitles.

~~~
Keyframe
You can use VLC on OSX as well. It works great!

~~~
kapuetri
When watching h.264 VLC consumes lots of CPU when QuickTime doesn't. I don't
know why.

~~~
astrosi
I assume that it is because QuickTime is using your GPU to decode the h.264
but VLC isn't.

There is support for hardware accelerated h.264 decoding in VLC; you just need
to enable it. I think the option is in Input and Codecs tab in the
preferences.

------
noonespecial
A client once gave me a lecture about how FOSS couldn't possibly produce
software with the quality of commercial and was really just a parasitic
element on software development.

He pulled up a video talk by some "expert" on the topic.

Oh yes, he used VLC.

Thanks for the classic "umm.. you know..." moment VLC project.

~~~
naasking
> FOSS [...] was really just a parasitic element on software development.

That's a weird claim. It's not like FOSS is taking tax money or forcing people
to pay for something they don't use. How else could it possibly be parasitic?

~~~
noonespecial
It was a long convoluted argument. It went something like, "if all of those
communists hadn't just made all that stuff for free then lots more people
would have jobs building it". Also it all violated patents and was inherently
inferior (but by its dastardly and audacious existence, prevented the better
commercial stuff from being made). As well as costing the jobs. ???

It was about as coherent as cooked spaghetti.

------
gesman
The most difficult challenge was to survive constant pressures from crapware
for bundling deals.

Filezilla and alikes succumbed to that long time ago while VLC stand above the
crowd.

Kudos, hats off and happy birthday!

~~~
jbk
> The most difficult challenge was to survive constant pressures from crapware
> for bundling deals.

We receive 5 of those offers per week, with VLC. And the amounts proposed are
very very tempting.

~~~
slipstream-
Would be nice to see the text of those offers, like the way the rpi foundation
released the text of the offer they got (I've started to investigate the PUP
ecosystem, and now said ecosystem includes the shittiest Indian winlockers and
fakealert trojans, designed to get less knowledgeable user to call fake tech
support)

~~~
jbk
mail me and I can send some of those.

------
pkroll
Since several people have said "it opens everything!" I thought I'd list a
couple it doesn't handle: HYMT codec (multithreaded version of Huffyuv, useful
for lossless capture of HD) UT Video codec various versions (also a
multithreaded lossless codec set, I believe some versions VLC can play... but
not the last several), oh and some FFV1 variants (clearly ffmpeg's fault, but
still). All the above work fine with MPC-HC on Windows, if you have the codecs
installed. VLC is still my player of choice, but as I've used HYMT and UT
Video a lot, I've missed having them supported.

~~~
jbk
Send me those files.

We should have fixed both in the last version.

~~~
slazaro
Slightly off-topic: Do you also look for files that play okay, but the audio
and video are off-sync? Also, files where audio stops playing when seeking,
for a few seconds? That seems to happen a lot to me.

~~~
jbk
Yes, we do.

------
ggambetta
VLC is amazing. As a friend put it, _" VLC will open everything, even a can of
tuna"_. Thanks for VLC, VLC devs.

------
colordrops
I love VLC's engine, but have never been a fan of its UI, especially the
configuration interface. How well separated are the UI and engine? Building a
new UI for VLC seems like a fun project.

~~~
tnigro
You might want to check out VLC for Windows Store. We're trying new UI and
user experiences and will release soon an update on Windows 10 with an
improved design (cleaner and faster).

~~~
arm
I’ve had a pretty poor experience with VLC on the Windows Store.

I tried it on my tablet (an HP Stream 7) running Windows 8.1, hoping to use it
to play the music from my iTunes library (by copying the _Music_ folder in
iTunes’ _iTunes Media_ folder from the computer that I use iTunes on to a
microSD card inserted in the tablet’s microSD card slot).

Unfortunately, it had a number of issues:

Issue #1:

It seems that VLC doesn’t like the directory structure iTunes uses to store
your music (when you’ve checkmarked the option in iTunes to 'Keep iTunes Media
folder organized'), which consists of the top level (the 'Music' folder)
containing folders named after each artist, which in turn contain folders
named after the albums of each respective artist, which in turn contain the
actual music files for those albums.

The reason I believe VLC doesn’t like this way of having the music organized
is because after letting VLC read this music folder, VLC showed the albums in
a completely non-sensical way (it was showing duplicate entries for the same
album, with tracks in those albums being split between the duplicates (despite
the music files containing ID3 tags!)).

Issue #2:

There’s no way to tell VLC _not_ to search for information on the tracks from
the Internet. It shows some of my songs with erroneous album art, etc. My
songs that come from actual albums already have the album art embedded, so I
don’t need VLC applying completely irrelevant album art to songs that aren’t
actually from an album!

Issue #3:

It’s _extremely_ slow (on my HP Stream 7)!

――――――

I ended up switching over to MediaMonkey on the Windows Store, and while it
has a host of issues of its own (it doesn’t show notifications for songs with
album art, the UI gets glitchy after using it for a while _(stuff like not
showing text in the app anymore, so you can’t see your track names… which can
only be rectified by closing and reopening it)_ , etc.), at least it actually
shows the contents on my _Music_ folder perfectly organized (no duplicates or
other such issues), it doesn’t try searching for metadata on the Internet, and
it’s actually _fast_.

------
janvdberg
My favorite VLC story is about this guy from Syria providing patches while
being bombed. I heard jpkempf tell his story this weekend at FOSDEM (video
isn't up yet).

It was featured on HN couple of weeks ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10580208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10580208)

------
jrcii
I just want to say that VLC is one of the finest pieces of software I've ever
had the privilege of running and the contributors to the project should be
proud of themselves. It is fast, reliable, and robust. I suspect many who use
it don't realize how powerful it is. Its command line interface offers the
ability to integrate the automation of complex multimedia processes. It runs
everything I throw at it.

------
oxide
I'll never be able to say enough good things about VLC, it changed the way I
interacted with video permanently. I haven't thought about a codec in years.

only wish I found it sooner.

------
douche
Maybe there is a plugin or something that provides this, but I wish VLC had a
little bit better library management. It gets very tedious trying to import a
large library and fix meta-data.

I suppose if you go too far in this area, you just end up reimplementing
Kodi/XMBC, though.

~~~
jbk
We are exactly working on that. If you see the Android and iOS versions of
VLC, they have those library features.

It will come on desktop.

------
thekevan
My first reaction was, "Fifteen, shmifteen! When's that Chromecast support you
promised coming?"

In all seriousness, as they say, VLC just opens everything. Thanks for it!

~~~
jbk
>
> [https://github.com/robUx4/vlc/tree/cc_master_intf_snd2](https://github.com/robUx4/vlc/tree/cc_master_intf_snd2)

Should be what you want.

~~~
thekevan
Thanks but to be honest, I am clueless on how to install it or use it on my
Ubuntu machine.

------
agumonkey
I'm not entirely sure, but it seems that [http://formation-
debian.via.ecp.fr/](http://formation-debian.via.ecp.fr/), a famous debian
tutorial (at least in early 2Ks) came from that school too. That's what made
me get into debian without too much pain.

------
coverband
I used to promote VLC at every corner, until they dropped the ball on 4K
support big time. Even with a good mid-price graphics card, they're unable to
utilize the GPU hardware effectively, and if you don't have a good amount of
CPU power, the app chokes when it's asked to play 4K video. Ridiculous, since
even the integrated Intel graphics on CPUs are now capable of playing 4K
without any trouble.

~~~
Laforet
Out of interest, which media player do you use now? Are they cross-platform
like VLC?

~~~
Thaxll
mpc-hc is the best for Windows.

~~~
mariusmg
SMplayer says hi :)

------
jackfoxy
I was very pleased to learn I could delay or advance the audio track on videos
where the audio and video were out of sync, but I never did figure out how to
save a video with the tracks properly synced and gave up.

------
juli3n
The best French-born software IMHO :)

~~~
masklinn
That's a pretty lofty claim. Remember, Fabrice Bellard is french which makes
FFmpeg and QEMU[0] french-born software as well ;)

[0] and some other less prominent stuff:
[http://bellard.org](http://bellard.org)

------
aerovistae
fucking amazing software, as good as it gets. kudos.

------
dudul
One of the greatest pieces of software I've ever used! I have yet to find a
format of video it won't open.

------
harshreality
vlc 2.2.1, latest desktop release, has a possible code execution bug relating
to 3gp (which doesn't have to be the file extension). Most distros have
patched it, but the videolan releases don't appear to be patched since they're
2.2.1 and since the file modification for one mirror of win32 2.2.1 is last
April (of course it would be pathologically stupid to release patched binaries
without a new release, but it's possible, and they don't appear to have done
either).

[https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2015-59...](https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2015-5949)

~~~
dmix
Not many people open random remote video streaming links in VLC...

------
orik
does network 2000 have any relation to foobar2000?

~~~
tyrust
Your question had me interested, so I looked around a bit and found this forum
post from "Peter" [0]:

>"foobar2000" is indeed a piece of random gibberish I had to type into
"project name" box when creating a new project in MSVC, on the day all this
started. IIRC I spent about 5 minutes on thinking about it - I wanted to get
things working ASAP rather than worry about the name.

That forum profile has a link to Peter Pawlowski's website [1] and has been
active since 2001, so I'd like to believe it's really him.

[0] -
[https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?PHPSESSID=j8ru3u6374lh2vvh4...](https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?PHPSESSID=j8ru3u6374lh2vvh4gcmpjb965&topic=9784.msg98900#msg98900)

[1] - [http://perkele.cc/](http://perkele.cc/)

------
ausjke
Use it all the time. Thanks for the great project!

Wish SRTP can work well someday.

~~~
jbk
Technically, it already should. File a bug report with a sample!

------
blisterpeanuts
I use VLC every day. A great multi platform app, very useful contribution to
the open source community. Keep up the fantastic work.

------
why-el
By far my favorite VLC feature is when it picks subtitles automatically when
they are named the same as the original video file. :)

------
ljk
never realized VLC has been around for so long!

~~~
xufi
Yeah amazing isnt it Its a great player

------
GTP
Seems that vlc 3 would have chromecast support. I'm looking foward for that.

------
kowdermeister
Is it me only who experiences a rather slow startup time with VLC on Windows
10? Once it's loaded it rocks (as long as I want to watch videos). For music,
it's not the best tool, but it does the job.

------
seivan
Still wished I could have VLC as an engine inside QuickTime or whatever's
native to the platform/OS.

Is that possible or do you have to source the web for several obscure codecs?

~~~
lmm
OS-specific things are OS-specific. ffmpeg (the primary backend decoder used
by VLC and many other OS projects) is a great cross-platform library that can
play most things, but you need some kind of platform-specific wrapper (e.g.
ffdshow on windows) to hook it into the OS' native services and make it
available inside other apps.

