
VLC 2.1.0 - jbk
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/2.1.0.html
======
jbk
So, this is our new major release, and I'm going to share some stuff that
should fit better the audience here on HN, and that are not part of the main
announcement :)

First, this is a release that fixes some important architecture mistakes we've
done in 2.0.x branch of VLC. I'm notably speaking of the lag in reactivity,
notably on volume change (that was shared on the mpv thread) and seeking, but
also some grave video settings propagation. I wish we could have fixed and
shipped that earlier, but we couldn't (long release cycle).

Then, this is the first official release of libVLC that is LGPL for most of
what you need as a developer, including the right modules. SDKs for Win32/64,
MacOSX, iOS and Android are getting ready.

If you are a web developer, our VLC plugin now supports Windowless, to fill
the gap between Flash and HTML5 (it should work on IE6,7,8 without too much
work).

If you are on Mac OS, the interface is finally polished after the major
changes of 2.0.0 :)

Finally, we decided, as a community that we will accelerate the major release
cycle of VLC. The fact that we needed 1,5 year to get the fix to some critical
audio core and video settings issues out is way too much. We will move towards
a 6-months schedule with LTS.

Sure, there are other very good players on each platform, but we are doing our
best so that you can play everything everywhere for free, using open source
technologies :)

~~~
sillysaurus2
I have a rather odd question for you. I've been trying to use VLC for forensic
work, specifically for viewing videos frame-by-frame. There's a way to step
forward one frame at a time, but there's no way to step backwards. So it's
really difficult to switch between two frames back and forth to look for
differences. I've resigned myself to capturing screenshots and pasting them
into an image editor then using undo/redo to switch between frames. Do you
have any suggestions for how to do it better?

I know this feature probably wouldn't be useful to anyone but me, so I'm not
really putting in a feature request. Just hoping to discover that someone else
has already figured out a way of stepping backwards frame-by-frame, to
complement the existing "step forwards" functionality.

~~~
keithba
You can use ffmpeg for this. For instance, to output one frame per second:
ffmpeg -i foo.avi -r 1 -s WxH -f image2 foo-%03d.jpeg

See [http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html#Video-and-Audio-file-format-
co...](http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html#Video-and-Audio-file-format-conversion)
for more examples.

~~~
Gormo
If you want an interactive UI and you're on Windows, FFmpeg + VirtualDub is a
great solution for doing this.

------
rafski
I really don't like the idea of the Playlist-driven interface forcing itself
in front. I have no use for Playlist, why do I have to see it, ever?

Even when I launch a file from Finder, I get a split-second blink of the
Playlist. And when the clip stops, I see Playlist instead of the starting
screen and can't drag and drop to play files to it anymore.

When I disable the Playlist by pressing its button on the interface, the
expanding transition of the window when opening a file is oddly jumpy —
hopefully an easy fix in future releases (I'm on OSX 10.8.5). Playlist still
appears at times.

The standalone Controller module from the interface… I miss it, any chance of
it ever returning?

Back to the two years old VLC 1.1.12 for me, it was much better thought-out
interface-wise (Playlist is just a functionality, not the driving feature and
Controller is still there) — and it still plays every file I need it to.

I will of course keep checking for updates.

~~~
riffraff
I didn't like the interface since 2.x came out, but I thought I'd give it a
shot.

In the time since,

* I have never used the playlist on purpose once

* I kept wanting to put the video always on top in a tiny window while I do something else, and always visible controls/strange resize limit make it worse than before. Compare: [http://imgur.com/c4V9k12](http://imgur.com/c4V9k12)

So I wish the VLC guys the best, but I have moved on to MplayerX and only keep
VLC.app around for some hypothetical case in which the other player won't
work.

I'll keep hoping for 3.x interface changes.

------
ucha
[https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3558](https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3558)

We finally have H264 hardware decoding on Mac. That's the single largest
missing feature that prevented me from completely switching to VLC. I used to
open H264 videos with QuickTime.

Good job guys!

------
shitlord
I am running VLC 2.0.8 on windows, and when I check for updates, it says I am
up to date. Am I on a different release channel? Anyway, I switched to VLC
2.1.0.

~~~
jbk
As with every major release, we usually wait for a week before activating it
for normal people :)

~~~
shitlord
Oh, okay. While you're here, I had one other question that I might as well
ask: why can't I install VLC on my Nexus 4 using Google Play? I've installed a
nighty APK, and it seems to work fine on the device.

~~~
jbk
Because you are in the USA. This will change in the next month.

~~~
shitlord
Thanks for the help!

------
616c
I remember when I first moved to Linux, six or seven some odd years ago for
the first time, and I researched a good media player. I went, unlike others
with mplayer, with VLC. It was one of the first projects that made me think
"how are proprietary software companies not embarrassed to compete with this,
it is SO much better!"

Thank you guys. You are true FOSS heroes.

~~~
hrkristian
I have almost the exact same story as you. VLC is simply a fantastic piece of
work and had been for years. Incidentally that is also my thought on for
instance Gnome-Shell vs. Metro, OSS has so much unique potential.

------
w4rh4wk5
Apparently shuffle is still not working as intended... Man this issue must be
around for ages now.

This problem makes VLC useless as my default music player :'(

~~~
zanny
Why use VLC as a music player when it is suited for a movie player? I use (and
contribute to) clementine (qt based, foss, same class of cross platform-ness
as vlc) because I like watching videos in one program and music in another,
where both are tailored for the task rather than the kind of muddy middle
ground like windows media player has.

~~~
ToastyMallows
Thanks for contributing to Clementine, I use it all the time!

------
jimmcslim
The streaming and transcoding capabilities of VLC appear awesome but are hard
to get to the bottom of. I tried to use VLC to convert a h264 stream coming
out of an IP camera (Foscam) into either a live FLV stream or an iPhone
compatible HTTP stream; it seems like it is POSSIBLE but actually knowing
which sequence of magic whispers to utter is the challenge :-)

~~~
jbk
We are working on it for 2.2

------
john_wilcox
Congrats to the VLC team!

While VLC is excellent and we would like and want to use VLC as a plugin in
our corporate environment, we sadly cannot, because there's currently no way
to configure VLC plugin to use a proxy. In order to get to the internet,
everything must go through the proxy. It would be very welcome if You could
implement this little functionality. VLC plugin should just get the proxy
settings from the browser and it would be done. Ofcourse, bonus points for
SPNEGO.

I have just made my HN accounts only to post this request.

Keep up the excellent work!

Edit: minor typos.

~~~
jbk
Please mail me.

------
devx
When is the VP9 support coming?

~~~
jbk
We are waiting for Google to officially release a libvpx version for VP9
decoding...

It seems to take a long time:
[http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=webm/libvpx.git;a=tags](http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=webm/libvpx.git;a=tags)

------
BoppreH
You can now see the total playlist time and the startup time seems to have
been almost eliminated.

It's great to see significant improvements to the software you use everyday.

~~~
jbk
Glad you like it :)

------
i386
Does anyone like the Mac OS X interface? I've been tempted to hack on it to
make it nicer.

~~~
Hates_
Switching to the dark theme has made it more pleasant for me, but there is
still room for improvement.

------
alan_cx
Been using VLC for as long as I can remember, but recently I have had loads of
audio/video sync problems with VLC. Really annoying since I don't want to use
any other media player, and I've had to. Will this release do better?

~~~
koala_advert
There are keyboard shortcuts to manually sync audio/video.

------
ilitirit
I loved VLC, but since I've started using Daum PotPlayer I just can't go back
:\

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PotPlayer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PotPlayer)

~~~
jbk
Sure, using software violating open source licenses is a great idea...

~~~
ilitirit
I wasn't aware of any violations. Regardless, PotPlayer just seems much better
than VLC. And this is coming from someone who used VLC exclusively for many
years.

In any case, this bit can be found in the Copyrights Tab of the About section:

"\- This program contains the video decoder FFmpeg
([http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu](http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu)) was used, FFmpeg
subject to the LGPL license. LGPL license, refer to the installation directory
LGPL.TXT. The modified FFmpeg sources can be downloaded from the
[http://potplayer.daum.net/devel/ffmpeg.zip."](http://potplayer.daum.net/devel/ffmpeg.zip.")

I don't know if that resolves the situation though.

------
ksec
I have always tempted, and wanted to use VLC. But i have always been sticking
to MPC and its derivative. Currently I am using MPC-BE.

The reason is rather simple. VLC on Windows is just plain ugly. You could tell
this is a Linux software ported to Windows. It doesn't even need to complex
and fancy. Take a look at MPC-BE, plain simple and stylish.

And it isn't all just about the looks. The settings, menu placement, icons,
etc.

I really wish something could be done about it.

------
canvia
Would it be possible to add key frame previews when mousing over the time bar?
Similar to youtube where you mouse over a time and see the closest key frame
so that you can have some idea of what part of the video you are about to skip
to beyond the time. Thanks for the awesome software and keep up the great
work!

------
Daiz
It's a bit funny and sad how VLC has touted new stuff "for anime fans" for a
few releases, yet every time they've done it they still haven't managed to
catch up to the "standard" solutions in those circles. If you're on Windows
(and a ton of people are - the lion's share of VLC users included), CCCP is an
equally simple one installer solution that can be pushed even further with
things like madVR and XySubFilter.

For example, VLC's dithering of 10-bit content still seems to be worse than
CCCP out of the box, leading to banding where there shouldn't be any, and it
seems to be doing something weird to the colors in all the things I tested it
with. I'm not exactly sure what it is, though, as it's not a color matrix or
luma level issue - I'd post some screenshots but I'm at work now. Also, Nvidia
users still seem to have luma level issues out of the box that requires a trip
to GPU settings to fix.

Congrats on the release anyway, VLC has come a long way from the 0.8.6 days as
far as high-end media playback is concerned.

~~~
jbk
> It's a bit funny and sad how VLC has touted new stuff "for anime fans" for a
> few releases, yet every time they've done it they still haven't managed to
> catch up to the "standard" solutions in those circles.

Our goal is not to match the crazy setup people do and spend hours to tweak.

For the 10bits dithering, use the OpenGL output, and it is done.

~~~
Daiz
>Our goal is not to match the crazy setup people do and spend hours to tweak.

Installing CCCP is as easy as installing VLC and gives you better quality out
of the box. Installing and configuring madVR is an extra five-ten minutes of
effort. Hardly a "crazy setup" that would require "hours of tweaking". There's
also KCP which comes with madVR preconfigured, though CCCP offers better
compatibility with a wider range of setups (which is why I personally
recommend CCCP with madVR as a separate optional component on top of it).

Also, at least in the previous version, 10-bit dithering was still lacking
even with OpenGL output, as demonstrated here:
[http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/32677](http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/32677)

I haven't been able to test if the situation has improved in the new version
yet, though.

~~~
jbk
We will have to agree to disagree. CCCP and madVR configuration is not a five-
ten minutes of effort. Especially for most people. Not to mention the non-free
licences...

Last version, the matrix colors were wrong, as clearly explained on the
release page, so it's soooo great to compare with it.

And maybe, if you were not an asshole to us, we might be interested in
listening to what you have to say. Until then, not so much.

~~~
Daiz
>We will have to agree to disagree. CCCP and madVR configuration is not a
five-ten minutes of effort. Especially for most people.

CCCP requires _no_ configuration. It just works. And I said that I recommend
madVR as an _optional_ component, since CCCP already provides high quality
playback out of the box. I've been saying this for a good while now but you
keep talking like I said madVR would be a must and use that as a basis to
claim that VLC is "just simpler".

Installation and basic configuration (the average user really doesn't need any
more than that) madVR on top of that with a guide (and there are plenty) is
five-ten minutes of effort, but as I said, it's not a necessity by any means.

>Not to mention the non-free licences...

All the playback components in CCCP are FOSS with the exception of Haali Media
Splitter, which is more of a fallback at this point. I'm not really sure about
the non-component parts (the installer and settings panel), though. madVR is
proprietary, yes, but it also happens to be the most advanced video renderer
in existence. Unless you subscribe to RMS' worldviews about proprietary
software (in which case you wouldn't be using Windows to begin with), I don't
see a reason not to use it if you have enough interest in high quality
playback.

>Last version, the matrix colors were wrong, as clearly explained on the
release page, so it's soooo great to compare with it.

We were talking about dithering though (which that comparison also
demonstrates), so unless the matrix issue was directly linked to the dithering
issues it's not really relevant (and I didn't mention it either). And as I
already said, I haven't had the chance to compare the latest version properly
yet.

Also, chill down a bit, will you? While VLC likes to advertise itself to anime
watchers, it's an audience that on average cares a lot more about high quality
playback than many others. And if your "goal" is "not to match the crazy setup
people do and spend hours to tweak", then why would you get upset when I point
out that these "crazy" setups (that at their very basic level are as easy to
install and use as VLC is) give better results?

~~~
jbk
> CCCP requires no configuration. But does not update...

> FOSS with the exception of No comment...

> We were talking about dithering though (which that comparison also
> demonstrates), so unless the matrix issue was directly linked to the
> dithering issues

How do you do the dithering if it is not during the YUV->RGB conversions, aka
the matrix? If it is not done there, it is done in swscale like all the other
players...

> Also, chill down a bit, will you?

I am usually quite calm, as you can see on this thread or the reddit one. But
I'm not to people like you, who are at the limits of insults (and not on this
thread, I know). Once you plan to speak correctly, maybe we can talk in a calm
down way.

~~~
Daiz
>How do you do the dithering if it is not during the YUV->RGB conversions, aka
the matrix?

I thought you were referring solely to the fact that in the comparison I
posted, the video was incorrectly converted with BT.601 instead of BT.709 on
VLC's end.

Anyway, I'm home now, which means I can properly compare stuff (at last).
Dithering certainly seems to have improved since the last version and BT.709
is used as well. There's something weird going on, however - the colors in VLC
appear slightly off for some reason (and it's clearly not the usual suspects
of TV/PC levels or BT.601/BT.709):
[http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/42453](http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/42453)

Still, a notable improvement for sure.

~~~
jbk
This is very very far from the "haha, morons, 4K; morons, 10bits" comment you
did...

Sorry, but the color difference is very very slight (if even noticeable), and
are you sure the issue is on the VLC side? Did you try mplayer2 and mpv?

~~~
Daiz
>This is very very far from the "haha, morons, 4K; morons, 10bits" comment you
did...

Uhh, what? I have not written something like that about the new version
anywhere on the internet.

But for the record, I do think marketing VLC as "4K-ready" is silly - there
really shouldn't be anything special to 4K besides the bigger resolution,
meaning that if you have the resources to decode it, you should be able to
play it, and it has been very much possible with other playback solution (and
likely even with older versions of VLC? I haven't checked). In a way, it's
similar to this[1] - what it's advertising is actually nothing new but because
4K is the hot new marketing term of the day they're going to plaster it all
over the damn thing.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/NMN9b8p.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/NMN9b8p.jpg)

------
jackkeline
There seems to be a regression in the hardware-accelerated decoding. Worked
fine in 2.0, now it looks like this:
[http://i.imgur.com/IzSfo0v.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/IzSfo0v.jpg)

(Win64 VLC build on Nvidia hardware)

~~~
jbk
Can you try the win32 one?

~~~
jackkeline
Sure. The Win32 build does the same. I also noticed reliable crashes at
startup with some videos. In a blind guess I updated the video driver (from
v314.07 to v327.23) with no effect. With disabled hardware-accelerated
decoding everything works like a charm.

Give me a note if you would like me to do more testing.

BTW: After the crashes... what kind of information sends the bug report
function to you? Anything privacy related (file name, ip address, etc.)?

------
rgovind
Thanks for making this software. I have been trying to add a RSS-ticker and
stream my video for a month...using ffmpeg. Even after posting on ffmpeg user
gropus, I got no useful responses.

It took me 5 min to do the same using VLC.

~~~
BinaryBrainz
Care to share your results and/or notes? I recently started messing with VLC's
stream output capabilities and would love to see some interesting examples of
what is possible.

------
Dacapa
I had problem with AirPlay in Mac OS X 10.8.5. When using internal speakers
the sound is normal. But when I switch to AirPlay speakers the program hangs
and looses sound. Now I'm going back to 2.0.8

------
duwip
Thanks jb, awesome work by the vlc team - as always.

Could you maybe share some news on the status of the web plugin for the Mac?

~~~
jbk
There is a new one finished. Do you want to try it? Mail me.

~~~
duwip
done

------
sandieman
Clicked hoping for airplay or chromecast support. Maybe next time :)

~~~
jbk
Well, those are difficult because of Apple and Google who do not really want
3rd party solutions.

------
AsymetricCom
* New port to iOS, from iOS 5 to 7, on all iPads and iPhones after 3GS.

Is there any way to actually get VLC on iOS anymore?

~~~
jbk
Yes, use the AppStore.

------
iliiilliili
I've recently switched to Media Player Classic for watchign movies. I tried
not to, because VLC works on Linux, but MPC's video quality is simply
superior, when you put the two side-by-side you can see a difference...

[http://i.imgur.com/oLHiQgR.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/oLHiQgR.jpg)

so when I'm watching a movie, I will switch to Windows and play it on MPC. For
everything else VLC is fine. Annoying, I've tried filters and other fixes, but
nothing worked.

~~~
ComputerGuru
This post is actually devoid of factual content as it stands. Please don't
take it as an insult, read on:

Media Player Classic uses codec decoders you have installed on your PC, VLC
ships with everything it needs to play your videos. In other words, you should
not be comparing VLC to MPC, but rather VLC's underlying codec library (from
ffmpeg, I believe) to the active codec decoder being used on your Windows
machine.

For example, I too use MPC on Windows to get better video - but that's because
I have CoreAVC installed and MPC uses it to play h264 content. CoreAVC blows
everything else out of the water in terms of performance and quality.

What codec are you using on Windows w/ MPC?

~~~
rossy
Media Player Classic does have it's own video renderers, however, which are
responsible for scaling and colour conversion. It also has FFmpeg built in to
decode some more popular formats without relying on system codecs.

The washed out colour in that screenshot can probably be fixed by changing the
video output method (to OpenGL/Direct2D/Direct3D) or changing the default luma
range in the graphics card settings from 16-235 to 0-255.

~~~
mikevm
It's probably the luma range. I remember having this "washed out" color in
KMPlayer and wondered why VLC's picture was darker.

------
nijiko
ACTUAL NEWS ON HACKER NEWS?!

------
ivarious
>For Anime Fans

>New 6.1 downmixer to 5.1 and Stereo from MKV/Flac 6.1.

>Correct YUV->RGB color matrix in the OpenGL shaders.

I like how they put a separate entry for pirates.

