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VLC coming to the iPad
VLC, the play-anything video player for the Mac, may soon be available as an iPad app. App maker Applidium has spent months porting the open source player into an iPad app and has submitted it to the App Store. Now they're just waiting for Apple to approve it; if approved, the app will be available next week, and like its big brother on the Mac, the app will be free. Having VLC available on the iPad would be hugely beneficial. VLC plays far more video formats than QuickTime or the iPad's built-in video support; on the Mac, I've often said that if VLC can't play it, it can't be played. We don't know yet if VLC on the iPad will allow you to move (for instance) AVI files straight into the VLC program via iTunes or if you'll be required to stream files from a Mac to view them on the iPad. In either case, VLC's ability to play almost any video codec out there would vastly expand the iPad's capabilities. That said, there are multiple reasons why Apple might reject this app. "Duplicating functionality" is one possible reason; the iPad already has a built-in video player, though one that's far more restrictive in the formats that it supports. There may be severe battery life issues to contend with as well. The iPad has the ability to decode H.264 video via its built-in hardware, but most other formats would have to be decoded via software, and depending on the format, it could tax the iPad's A4 processor pretty heavily. Finally, it's possible that media providers might squawk in protest at the iPad being able to easily and freely play video from any source -- let's just say that a lot of the AVI files and almost all of the VIDEO_TS folders out there aren't exactly condoned by the media conglomerates and leave it at that. I hope this app does get approved. I don't own an iPad, but being able to play back virtually any type of video file on the device via VLC would be a huge selling point for me, and probably for many others, too.
iPhone devsugar: App Store approval in...one hour?
Approximately one hour after uploading his new application update to iTunes Connect, Bristol-based iPhone developer Rob Jonson of Hobbyist software got the surprise of his week: an official Apple green light. His latest update to his VLC Remote application had been approved and was ready for sale. VLC Remote allows you to control a Mac- or Windows-based VideoLAN playback client from your iPhone, basically duplicating many of the features you'd get from a standard Apple Remote. His update wasn't complicated. "It was a simple problem," he told me over the phone this morning. "One of the buttons stopped working because of a stupid error. I missed a break in a case statement." So he uploaded his bugfix at about 11 PM local United Kingdom time. Just before midnight, he checked his e-mail before heading off to bed. The Apple approval was sitting in his in-box. A recent update, submitted last week, had taken only a day to receive approval. "With 24 hours, I was very impressed. But one hour? I couldn't believe it. Clearly Apple has changed the game." Update: This picture speaks a thousand words. Courtesy of Tom Harris of InsiderApps. This is a different app from Jonson's
Development of VLC for Mac 64-bit is on hold, project needs developers
Development on the 64-bit version of VLC Player for Mac has hit the pause button. The Videolan team is looking for Mac development talent to help move the project forward, and revamp the program's interface to be more Mac-like. While the team says that reports of VLC Mac's death are 'greatly exaggerated,' they could definitely use some help. As we've mentioned before, VLC is a free, open source media player that supports various audio and video formats (MPEG, DivX/Xvid, Ogg, and many more) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and streaming protocols. While the 32-bit version still works fine on Snow Leopard, the 64- bit version (which briefly appeared as 1.0.3, only to disappear again with 1.0.4) is intended to be higher-performance; it also would work more seamlessly with the 64-bit version of Handbrake. The news of VLC for Mac's 64-bit freezeout started today with this post on videolan.org: This is going to sound like a PBS sponsorship drive, but it needs to be said: While VLC is an open source project provided to you free of charge, as with other open source projects, its existence depends on everyone who provides support to the project. This support can come in many forms, such as: - joining the team and contributing code - spending time in the forum helping out other VLC users - making a donation Every bit helps, since without it the community dies and the project with it. As mentioned [earlier] we are in desperate need of Mac developers who can help maintain the Mac side of VLC. If you or someone you know is in position to join the team then please let us know. Until we have more Mac developers then the 64-bit version of VLC for MacOS X will be on hold! Though the new QuickTime X Player has much room for improvement, I've gotten quite used to it and watch all my movie files in it save WMV (which QuickTime plays via the Flip4Mac plugin). For some reason, QTX requires WMV files to go through a loading process before you can skim through the video. On VLC there is no loading process for WMV files before you can skim. This is only one of the many benefits of using VLC, as I'm sure many of our readers can attest. There are still some alternatives to VLC, including 3ivX, FFmpeg and Perian. There's also this little preference pane to make QTX more enjoyable. But these are all alternatives, not replacements for this great app. Here's hoping that the holiday spirit will inspire a few Mac devs to step up and keep VLC moving forward.
VLC 1.0.2 includes 64-bit Mac port and security fixes
VideoLAN's popular cross-platform open source media player VLC 1.0.2 is now available with an important security update. The rest of the release notes are rather terse and nerdy: "BEWARE: this release is not compatible with Tiger. This version introduces many fixes, notably for SSA decoding, v4l2, MacOS interface, ogg/theora, x264 modules and security issues. It also introduces the port to 64bits for Mac OS platform and 2 new languages (Kazakh and Croatian)." I'm not sure what "Mac OS interface" fixes were included (the app looks the same to me, but perhaps it refers to minor fixes rather than major changes), but two things probably jumped out to you: the first is that the app is not compatible with Tiger, although this is not new with 1.0.2 (downloads for older versions of Mac OS X are still available). The second is the "big" news: VLC is now 64-bit. Again, this is not a change that end-users are likely to notice, but if you have been following news about Snow Leopard you know that 64-bit has gotten a lot of emphasis, and it's great to see VLC is keeping up. Someone recently asked why I would use VLC on the Mac when I had QuickTime Player or Apple's built-in DVD app. My answer was two-fold and simple: I use it because when I want to watch DVDs I can press command+D (to open the DVD), press enter, and VLC automatically takes me to the main menu of the DVD, skipping all the ads and previews and other nonsense that the movie companies try to force you to watch every single time you put in a DVD. The other big reason I use VLC is because is has an option (under the "Video" menu item) called "Float on Top" which, as you would expect, keeps the video window above other windows. I was disappointed to see that even QuickTime Player X does not offer a similar feature. VLC may not be beautiful to look at, and its advanced preferences are enough to make a normal person go cross-eyed with confusion, but it is a video playback workhorse, especially when paired with the US$3 iPhone remote control app (iTunes link). Update: 64-bit versions of VLC have been suspended due to lack of Mac developers. However, some may be looking for a 64-bit version of VLC to use with HandBrake. In that case you can still use vlc-1.0.2-intel64.dmg which should be available on the VLC website and mirrors. The file is 19,682,357 bytes (19.7MB in Snow Leopard, 18.7MB in Leopard). (Why is there a difference in file sizes?)
VLC 1.0.0 released
While being a useful tool for several years now, VLC has finally reached that first pinnacle of software development: 1.0. VLC is an alternative media player for Mac, Windows and Linux that handles a wide variety of media file formats without requiring additional software (like Perian) to be installed on your system. It can also be used as a server to stream video on higher-bandwidth networks. Personally, I think it's handy for things like making still frame images of DVDs, or capturing video from your EyeTV tuner. Anytime I have to send QuickTime or MP4 video to PC or Linux users, I recommend they download and install VLC to watch it. The software isn't for everyone: If you're already familiar with VLC, the upgrade is a solid one. Performance is good, and the feature list is tough to beat. If you've never used VLC and you're happy with QuickTime Player (thank you very much), then feel free to pass this one by. Binaries for VLC 1.0 are available for Intel-based Macs running Mac OS X Leopard (and developer previews of Snow Leopard). Source code and other, older packages for PowerPC and earlier versions of Mac OS X are also available. Thanks, Chris!
VLC 0.8.6d improves Leopard compatibility
Since upgrading to Leopard some folks have been having trouble with the popular open-source video player VLC from VideoLAN. Fortunately, the project has just released 0.8.6d substantially improving Leopard compatibility. The changes include video output improvements as well as support for the Apple Remote and various bug fixes. If you're running VLC under Leopard you'll want to upgrade.VLC is a free download from VideoLAN. It's available in both Universal and Intel only builds.[via Accelerate Your Mac]
VLC patched with MOAB fix
See, that didn't take long! VideoLAN's VLC media player has been revised to version 0.8.6a, which closes the vulnerability noted by Month of Apple Bugs and also makes improvements to Full Screen Mode.If you aren't already using VLC for its incredible powers of playback and streaming, now would be an ideal time to start.[via Versiontracker]
VLC 0.8.6 released
VideoLan Client version 0.8.6 just went live over at videolan.org. The new update includes support for Windows Media Video 9 and Flash Video, improved H.264 decoding, better Windows Unicode support, a Fullscreen controller, and support for the Apple Remote. Other improvements include "vastly improved" playlist support, with Shoutcast TV listings, last.fm/Audioscrobbler support, and "live search"--which I'm going to have to play with to figure out what that means. The interface has been updated bigtime and the Linux and Windows UIs are brand new. The OS X interface uses custom artwork by Simon Damkjar Andersen. New hotkeys for crop and zoom are included as well as snapshot support. You'll find lots of new video effects including "Adjust", "Invert", "Distort" (such as Wave, Ripple and Gradient) filters and a "puzzle video output" filter, which sounds cool but not very useful. More details to follow as we get a chance to download and play with the new software. YAY!Thanks Andrew Eller
VLC 0.8.5 released with Intel Mac, Growl support, many improvements
The most excellent jack-of-many-formats VLC media player has just reached version 0.8.5, and boy does it pack a whallop - just check out the release notes. The biggest new additions to write home about are Universal Binary support, Growl notifications, a statistics system, new skin support including skins from Winamp 2 (for those who just can't let go), new video filters, support for downloading updates (possibly due to Sparkle?) and a whole lot more.VLC is a feature-packed media player with support for a boatload of media formats, and is available free for many OSs from VideoLAN.
