VLC Media Player 0.8.4 is out

mctk writes "This new release features many improvements including a new VLC cone, new Mac OS X wizard and extend controls dialogs, tree playlist skins2 support, HTTP interface CGI handling, linux binary codecs loader, UPnP and Bonjour service discovery, shoutcast stream forwarding, new languages... Have a look here for the full list of changes. Binary packages and the source code are available on the VLC download page." Always been one of my favorites on any platform.

Re:vlc - I like

[alphakappa]

One of the greatest features of VLC is that it will let you save any media that it can read. So whether it is a movie file or a streaming movie, it will let you save it to a file (or broadcast it). That is pretty much how *most* applications in other areas work - if you can read a file, you can save it too, but no other mainstream media player will let you do this for media files.

Simply one of the best

[quadra23]

Always been one of my favorites on any platform.

I agree from my own experience. In fact, I find files (or discs) that either work strange or not at all on other media players (such as Windows Media Player or WinAMP) run just (or very close to) perfect on VLC. The capability to play VCD, SVCD, DVD, DVD (with menues) was a feature that I also found make the player even more flexible.

Does anyone here have experience with VLC for running your own streaming server? Also, anyone know if they are going to add capability to play RealPlayer files? I find RealPlayer as a major bloatware and RealAlternative (no offense, just from my experience) looks too much like (and as featured limited as) the original media player in Windows 95/98. For a good reference here's a full table [videolan.org] of all features available on all the various Operating Systems that VLC works with. Very good product and highly recommended!

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[uiucmatse]

Yeah, I agree wizards are usually awful. However, in VLC on OS X, it operates more like a "Save As..." command. There's no egregious handholding, it's just a far more Mac-like way to transcode video than digging through the standard method. Oh, and I don't like the new icon.

Anime

[Parham]

A lot of people recommend this very player for anime playback. Anime tends to come in a lot of formats (avi, mpeg, mkv, ogm) with a lot of codec requirements, and this player seems to have become a favorite in the anime circles. This is one of my favorite players and it's completely replaced most of the other media players I used to use.

Re:Wake me when it plays WMV3 on the Mac

[Teilo]

Try WMV Player [flip4mac.com] if you want an alternative to WMP on OS X. It lets Quicktime Player play any WMV file. It's not Open Source. It's not free. But it actually works better than WMP on a Mac.

I believe it's not the matter of 'doable'

[wesley96]

There are at least two solutions to decoding WMV3 video stream in OS X. But you know the first one is a horrible Microsoft implementation and the other one is a licensed codec package from Flip4Mac [flip4mac.com] that you have to pay. Currently, neither can't do what everyone wants... WMV3 video + MP3 audio in AVI container, which is the biting deficiency, and compounded by the fact that some anime file releases use exactly THAT format thanks to the existence of WMV9 VCM in Windows. Ugh.

As for VLC, it needs an OPEN-SOURCE decoder. Specifically, it'll be adapting something that ffmpeg [sourceforge.net] guys are doing. That team has been tackling WMV3, a.k.a. VC-1 / VC-3 / WMV9 stuff for about a year now. They put preliminary support in, what, February? Apparently, peeps have so far gotten the key frame to decode, but it freezes there.

So what I'm saying is, it's nice to donate to VLC guys, but help ffmpeg guys first.

Re:Very Buggy for Me

[tholomyes]

From the README.MacOSX.rtf:

14. VLC does not start anymore or does strange things
Delete your preferences and try again. You can use the script "Delete Preferences.app" on the disk-image to do that. If you want to do it by hand, delete "org.videolan.vlc.plist" and a folder called "VLC" in ~/Library/Preferences (your personal preferences-folder inside the library of your HOME). If this does not help, see 13.

Site slashdotted, mirror

[EspoManiac]

Download from mirror at this location:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download_soft.php?d=115 8&s=171 [free-codecs.com]

Re:Plugin

[jZnat]

Same plugin architecture (the Netscape plugin architecture that is), so it'll work in Mozilla, Netscape, Firefox, etc. Just copy it to your ~/.mozilla/plugins/ directory (%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Plugins\ in windows IIRC).

Re:vlc - I like

[magefile]

I use VLC with srt files. Granted, I'm using a Mac, but I bet it works on Windows, too. Your video/audio file must have the same name as the srt file (except the extension, obviously), then while the video is playing, select the Video menu. The bottom option should be the "Subtitles Track" option - just pick the one you want.

Use MPlayer for windows

[coder111]

I'm using mplayer windows binaries with all the non-free DLL codecs, it plays everything I throw at it. It's fast, stable, and I can use same thing under windows I do use under linux.

You should try it too. http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ [mplayerhq.hu]

--Coder

Re:One of the bigger perks...

[J. Random Luser]

is that it is Region 0 out of the box. Apple's DVD player allows you to set(change) a fixed region 4 times before resorting to some hack to start again. I assume if MS abides by the MPAA rule then WMP behaves similarly. Meanwhile VLC just plays any DVD I chuck at it, never asks what Region.

Re:Ignores DVD Region Code

[Anonymous Coward]

I pay a four-digit sum for a computer and they won't throw in the $40 fee for the full fuctionality? Really clever, Jobs

The extra charge for QuickTime Pro predates The Return of The Steve.

Among other things, the amount of money Apple has to pay organizations like the MPEG-LA [mpegla.com] for patent licence fees varies with whether Apple's customer is "Pro" or not. Moreover, for some formats Apple must pay the patent holders or their agents varying fees for reading and creating (or exporting) video and audio.

For "Pro" users who use QuickTime as part of their day jobs, $40 is pretty small. Adding $40 to the bills of the hundreds of thousands of other Mac users whenever they buy a new machine or upgrade to QuickTime generally wouldn't make them happier. It'd delight the various patent holders other than Apple, though!

Yes, it's annoying, but that's the patent system for you...

On the other hand, QuickTime Player's "reminder" panes and other enticements can be distracting, but it's not as if there aren't various possibly legal workarounds.

Re:vlc - I like

[Anonymous Coward]

When opening the media you can tick the box Subtitles, browse for the .srt file and voila..

I am using this for a long time now..

IMHO the subtitling needs some tweaking. PowerDVD has got great subtitling-function but the one in VLC is kinda crappy (sorry)

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try hitting g and f for audio de-synchronization, it is not a new feature.

VLC and others...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use many different players due to the hopeless muddle of codecs available. Basically, I can play any video file you throw at me if you give me enough time. This list shows just how bad it really is:

VLC: For use when PowerDVD gets the shakes, media player classic doesn't work, windows media player doesn't work, the Zoom player doesn't work, Quicktime doesn't work, and for streaming over a network

Media Player Classic: The awesomest player in the world due to its small size and ability to play RealMedia and Quicktime files (usually), the ability to play Windows-based codecs without dropping frames like in VLC, and for use when sites give links like in Amazon (for the audio previews, copy the location and paste it into the "Open File" dialog box).

Zoom Player: A good backup. Both this and MPClassic come with the Real Alternative pack.

Quicktime Player: Good for when all other Quicktime-playing software fails and H.264

PowerDVD: When VLC refuses to play the AVI or MPG file with issues, PowerDVD has an awesome capability - it just skips frames instead of freezing, and it ALWAYS keeps in sync.

Windows Media Player (definitely not to be confused with MPClassic): It's kind of ok, and so far has only shown its worth when playing H.264 codecs provided by the Combined Community Codecs Pack. Oh yeah, and MP3s don't sound too bad either.

DivX Player: Released by the DivX Labs, the latest version is much, much more stable and offers post-processing for ATI video cards. It can clean up your heavily compressed AVI file very nicely, but does require a noticable amount of resources to do so. PowerDVD (I'm pretty sure) can perform slightly the same job for a fraction of the processing time, though I could be wrong since I haven't tested it all that much.

Winamp: The venerable Winamp has shown itself a resource hog in its older days. When will they actually begin to optimize it instead of adding new features or security fixes that shouldn't be required in the first place? I have 2.9 for sentimental reasons, though I use version 5 for my music, coupled with HQProcsoft to milk as much from my Audigy 2 card as possible (uses software resampling - I now have audio resampled to 9600 and an output bit resolution of 32). HQProcsoft is like aural candy, and Winamp's music plugins like the Pacemaker and the visualizations are quite simply, awesome. Not for use for video files unless you want to clean the audio up. You will notice a substantial improvement using HQProcsoft in conjunction with video files though (warning: wmv is not supported by HQProcsoft)!

I use every single one of those players regularly, trying to find the one which shows the best picture and sound for any single video file I am viewing. I have actually not used Winamp all that often for video files, preferring Windows Media Player Classic for most of my needs (where else can you get such an awesome interface with instant access to subtitles, audio types,etc.?). I'm not recommending you do what I do, but hopefully what I've said above will help you choose. As a rule of thumb, you should only really need windows media player classic and VLC for most applications. Though with the rise of H.264, anything could happen.

Re:Ignores DVD Region Code

[myspys]

It should be noted that the newer Powerbooks will ask you for a new region code and if you select Cancel it will automatically eject the DVD, thus rendering it impossible to even try with VLC :-/

Re:Ignores DVD Region Code

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't really true - you can still play all region dvds fine by turning off autoplay then using vlc.

Re:Simply one of the best

[Anonymous Coward]

Real Alternative is a codec, not a video player. Are you sure you're not talking about Media Player Classic? That's one of the best (if not the best) media players out there. And it's definitely not lacking in options.

The drawback with VLC

[vuzman]

Many people claim that what's so great about VLC is that it doesn't need codecs to playback video files. Yay! Well, that's just not true, in fact, that's quite impossible. All video files are encoded somehow, and in order to playback the video it must be decoded first. Hence the codec.

VLC uses the libavcodec codec to decode video. This codec handles a lot of different formats (see list [wikipedia.org]) where codecs usually just handle one format. This approach has benefits and drawbacks. The obvious benefit is that the codec-hunting days of yore can be dispensed with. The less-than-obvious drawback is that a multi-purpose tool is almost never as good as a dedicated tool. The truth is that VLC very often doesn't playback video with the same quality as players using dedicated codecs.

I recommend using a player with dedicated codecs. I use BSPlayer [bsplayer.org], as it is easy on the resources, stable, with extensive, configurable features (it is ugly though, so change the skin for your own sake). Other players are probably just as good, but after having tried all the popular ones, this is my favorite. Install codecs only when necessary; use GSpot [headbands.com] to figure out which is needed. Do not use codec packs, they are evil.

This being said, I do use VLC as a can opener for the occasional weird video file. For this use, VLC is great!

Re:Mac OS X wizard?

[TheRaven64]

Right now, going with the 'stealing focus' pain in the ass beats out the 'choosing File-Open Disk, Ok' pain in the ass.

Somewhere near your mouse, you will find a device that looks a bit like it, but hat around 100 buttons and isn't designed to be moved. Familiarise yourself with this device - you will find it useful. To play a DVD with VLC, hit command-d, then hit enter.

You will, however, still find that VLC plays the audio track with the number of the last one played, not the one with the same name. This can be irritating, since some DVDs of TV shows put the audio tracks in a random order and you need to manually select English every time.

Re:vlc - I like

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're wrong. MPlayer has broader OS support than VLC but nothing stops you from using both. Personally I use MPlayer for everything but DVD's.

Here's a Windows version: http://mplayer.sunset-utopia.homeip.net/ [homeip.net]

I doubt that VLC can be run on all of these:

Amiga
BeOS
BSD
Linux
Mac OS X
MorphOS
QNX
Windows
Zaurus