
VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced - Lightning
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/07/18/vlc-for-ios-will-return-to-the-app-store-on-july-19-full-re-write-open-source-licensed-under-mplv2-and-gplv2/
======
antr
I'm a big fan of VLC, it's been my default video app since I can remember.
Can't wait to see it again on iOS.

The "big" feature I would like to see is some kind of "super-easy" drag and
drop feature where I could easily send video files to my iPad/iPhone without
doing the whole Browser->IP:Port->Choose file, etc. A "video file right click
-> VLC -> Send file to iPad (upload in background)" would put a smile on my
face.

~~~
mehrzad
>it's been my default video app since I can remember.

Curious as to what you think about MPlayer, MPC-HC, or mpv, which have mostly
taken the crown in nerd circles as being the de facto video players.

~~~
Camillo
I don't want to go off-topic, but since VLC developers are reading this
thread, here's where MPlayer (I use MPlayerX) is still better than VLC:

\- MPlayer starts much faster.

\- MPlayer loads videos much faster.

\- MPlayer has very convenient shortcuts for skipping forward or backward by
10 seconds (just press the right or left arrow), which are a godsend when
you're watching something in a foreign language and you need to hear a
sentence again. VLC's shortcuts (command-option-arrow) are far less
convenient, harder to remember, and VLC reacts to them _much_ more slowly,
which makes it incredibly inconvenient.

There has been some improvement over the last few years: seeking hardly used
to work at all in VLC, while now it works, albeit slowly. However, it's not
enough to beat MPlayer.

There may be other reasons to prefer MPlayer, but they become more subjective.
The ones I mentioned above are areas where VLC is objectively inferior. It
would be great if it could be further improved.

~~~
hrktb
I've been using both for weird format files and codecs (anything more or less
standard is streamed to the tv directly) and felt that VLC tends to try as
much as possible to read everything, while MPlayerX is more tolerant towards
garbage in the stream and won't bother recovering mildly invalid data.

Part of the lag in VLC when starting a stream might come from a more heavy
handed init process.

This can be a curse or a blessing, I'm happy both approaches are available.

------
cube13
So how exactly has the licensing issue been resolved? Has the core VLC library
been re-licensed or dual licensed under the Mozilla license?

~~~
jbk
See my blogposts on LGPL relicensing of VLC engine
[http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/I-did-
it](http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/I-did-it)

Note that the relicensing was not done for the iOS port.

And the app above the VLC engine is dual licensed GPLv2/MPLv2

~~~
air
Bradley Kuhn (who has worked for FSF for license stuff) says LGPL does not
help. [http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2012/11/22/vlc-
lgpl.html](http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2012/11/22/vlc-lgpl.html)

~~~
chj
Oh, then fuck FSF and drop LGPL. It's their product after all. If they can get
a license change, they can get another, can't they?

~~~
justincormack
But as Bradley says if this was the reason for the license change why did they
not switch to eg BSD? Something that would solve the problem definitively.

------
kzahel
I was trying to install VLC on my android nexus 4 the other day and apparently
it's not in the Play store? I ended up installing "Joe VLC" instead. I wonder
if there will be an official android release?

~~~
jbk
We are not happy yet on the quality of VLC for Android, so it is not out of
beta.

However, you can try yourself here:
[http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/armv7-android/VLC-
debug-...](http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/armv7-android/VLC-
debug-20130714-0125.apk)

~~~
fpgeek
Are there any plans to make the Play Store beta available to North American
users?

From what I recall, the issue was not having NA devices to test against. It
seems like the gaps in chipsets and devices have narrowed (e.g. Qualcomm
chipsets used more widely as LTE spreads, US Note 2 using Exynos 4 like the
international versions, etc.) so I was wondering if anything had changed on
that front.

------
mtgx
Have they made the Android app excellent yet? Last I checked it was still
nowhere as good as MX Player performance wise. I'm just saying they might want
to fix that before venturing into other platforms, especially platforms that
have been very _hostile_ towards them in the past.

~~~
jbk
Those things are orthogonal. This is a false dichotomy. Some people focusing
on one platform does not block other to focus on another one...

------
GuiA
"VideoLAN revealed some very exciting news today: VLC for iOS will be back in
Apple’s App Store by tomorrow (July 19). The company tells TNW the app will be
available for free worldwide"

The original iOS port was made by Applidium; is this still Applidium, or a
separate VideoLan initiative?

~~~
feepk
75% are written by me with major contributions by
[https://twitter.com/gpinigin](https://twitter.com/gpinigin) and some
improvements by Applidium :)

So, it's a VideoLAN initiative.

------
SEJeff
I'd really love to see this integrate with the newish BitTorrent sync:

[http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html](http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html)

------
joejohnson
I couldn't tell from the article: is there a way to stream files over afp?

~~~
lechevalierd3on
No support of AFP. SMB could show up in a later version.

------
sz4kerto
That's all good and fine, but I've backed the Kickstarter project for porting
VLC to Windows RT, and... where is it?

~~~
jasonlotito
You probably missed it then:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1061646928/vlc-for-
the-n...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1061646928/vlc-for-the-new-
windows-8-user-experience-metro/posts/505512)

Unless you were being facetious.

------
Diamons
I much prefer OPlayer. Great features, plays nearly any file I throw at it,
and supports WiFi transfers.

~~~
johnpowell
OPlayer has smoother playback for me. I just tried VLC and the first video I
tried it said the hardware was to slow to play it. I'm using a 4G iPod Touch.
So I converted some some videos with Handbreak using the iPod Touch preset. I
tried about ten converted videos and none of them played smoothly. OPlayer
handles all of them.

~~~
reiichiroh
Does OPlayer have AC3 support?

~~~
autodidakto
Like all the other iOS apps, it had to remove ac3 support.

Oplayer has been my favorite, since it's slowly implementing all the esoteric
features I use vlc for, including subtitle font size adjustment, etc (though
it's not all the way there.).

------
emehrkay
Is network streaming when you can browse windows (smb) shares via vlc? If so,
that would be amazing

~~~
jbk
We are working on that for a later version :)

~~~
emehrkay
Let me pay for this app to help you guys out. I love VLC

~~~
feepk
VLC is free (both as in beer and in speech) and will always be :)

However, you can donate to our non-profit organization, which e.g. paid the
iPad I used for development, as well as a whole lot of other things around VLC
and further VideoLAN projects.

------
mrmondo
As far as I can see it's not in the Australian App Store.

------
phatle
I checkout the source code, build base on guide but fail:(

~~~
lechevalierd3on
Follow this guide to build
[http://wiki.videolan.org/IOSCompile/](http://wiki.videolan.org/IOSCompile/)
Make sure you brew install is fine (brew doctor). It works quite simply.

------
kansas
VLC app used to drain my battery. I moved to Plex and Tonido after the
removal. Hopefully this release doesn't drain the battery.

~~~
0x0
As I understand, VLC is unable to leverage the hardware codecs of the iPhone,
because it doesn't use the official media frameworks, so it has to run stuff
less efficiently in software.

~~~
jbk
No, it's just that the official frameworks are either all or none.
VideoToolbox framework exist but is private so far.

------
captiva12
Instead of downloading media to your iPhone you can use Tonido iOS
([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tonido-file-access-music-
vid...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tonido-file-access-music-
video/id388726418?mt=8)) app to play/stream pretty much all the video formats
directly from your PC, Mac or Linux (or) you can use the app to download the
media and play with VLC.

~~~
untog
Pretty different use case, IMO. Streaming is far less useful on the go than
playing locally stored files.

(and I can only assume you are involved with Tonido, given that half your HN
posts are promoting using it)

~~~
publicfig
Not only that, but one of their submissions is for a "Top Apps" post, that
includes Tonido in it.

