VLC 360° Technical Preview | Hacker News Reader

VLC 360° Technical Preview

people.videolan.org

178 pointsSkarredGhost71 comments

Can someone familiar with the project explain why Linux support isn't available yet? I'm not familiar with how VLC's code is structured, other than a Qt-driven interface. I guess I assumed that the backend was cross-platform as well. Does the 360 degree support depend on libraries that are not yet widely available for Linux?

It works totally fine on Linux, without any issue.

We just don't provide Linux binaries, except Ubuntu Snaps, because it is extremely difficult to do.

Just pull the code from the repo and you'll get that :)

> We just don't provide Linux binaries, except Ubuntu Snaps, because it is extremely difficult to do.

Why is it so hard? Do you mean that it would be extremely difficult to make the large number of binaries required for all the different Linux ditros?

Well, it is difficult, because for a media player, you need to have a correct video stack, (which means X11, DRI, mesa, OpenGL etc...) and a correct audio stack (which means pulseaudio) and those are quite hard to ship in a cross platform way.

If you look at the Snap packages of VLC, a LARGE part is not VLC at all, but this graphic stack.

> We just don't provide Linux binaries, except Ubuntu Snaps, because it is extremely difficult to do.

Have you considered packaging with Flatpak [0] as well? Very similar to Snaps, but it'll work with many distros instead of just Ubuntu.

[0] http://flatpak.org/

According to the Flatpak site, you have to install the Flatpak base first, which is only officially available for Fedora, Arch, and Ubuntu, with unofficial/testing/backported ports for a couple other distros. There is no source download I could find on the site, which is necessary to build it for unlisted distros like Slackware (though I suspect its strict reliance on systemd would cause issues there anyway).

This all flies in the face of their marketing statement "The days of chasing multiple Linux distributions are over"; you can't claim a one-size-fits-all system if it only fits six out of hundreds of distros.

Edit: To the downvoters, please reply instead, and tell me why you disagree with what I wrote. If I'm wrong I'll own it.

I didn't downvote you, but here's the source[1].

[1] https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak

Yep, I found the source by searching for it on Github, what I was calling out was the fact that a link to the source from the Flatpak website itself was buried at the very bottom of the "about" section where I missed it completely the first few times I went over the site. It should have been included in the "Build" or at least "Developer" section of the site.

Maybe it's just an oversight on their part, but I find the lack of any discussion of source or licensing (is it GPL, MIT, BSD?) on the site a bit of a put-off. I see from digging into the Github files it's LGPL, but why not advertise that, and the source link, more prominently on the main page? That, along with the other issue I mentioned (catering to only a few distros while claiming support for all distros) gives me pause.

> Very similar to Snaps, but it'll work with many distros instead of just Ubuntu.

Snaps run on a lot of distributions too:

https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/06/14/universal-snap-packag...

> We just don't provide Linux binaries, except Ubuntu Snaps,

You should at least mention on the site that you provide Ubuntu Snaps though.

Does the Linux version support warping scripts via OpenGL? This method has been possible for a few years : http://paulbourke.net/dome/VLCwarp/

360-degree feature request: interpolating 360 degree video from standard 16:9 Lost episode format. This should be doable as most information is there in previous and future frames so a 3d Photosynth (Microsoft) like model can be build. The rest can be guesed or be given a default texture themed by the surrounding pixels (like Philips Ambient), similar as to how people color black and white pictures or enlarge pictures with fractal-based interpolation techniques.

I think what you're suggesting is create the scene based on multiple shots and removing the people? Or just using different scenery shots? Is that correct.

It's actually quite interesting and I think you are correct that you could create a 360 environment from a trove of clips which is 'good enough' to pass.

I do wonder about how the story line unfolds in 360. A film was made with cuts so you didn't have to move around. What happens when an actor on your left is speaking to an actor on your right, or behind you. Do you miss out on bits because you were not looking where the director thought you would? do you feel more or less realism? It's an interesting proposition.

This is actually not as crazy as is sounds. It's surely just a matter of time until we can run a script or app on a movie file and have it generate scenes it can find. The only issue is interpolating the 'physical' location from the scenes.

Having something automatically detect how it all joins together would be pretty impressive, but not impossible, with plenty of horsepower.

Where can I get some decent Creative Commons 360 video resources to play around with this or some decent paid film I can buy made in this format?

I am Looking forward to the watching films with a VR headset when support is added next year. Good stuff jbk and team

My stuff is all Creative Commons: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzGeUG3dR0tKtO0KVkANv...

You can use a plugin to download them. Resolution is not amazing (used LG 360) but decent enough.

Off topic: I absolutely love your DIY posts on Reddit. Appreciate the openness in which you deep dive into your projects.

Thanks!

Well done, I like the possibility to change the "focal length". One thing I don't like on Youtube 360° videos is that they are too zoomed in this makes it difficult to watch.

We spent a large amount of time troll^Wdiscussing about the behaviour of the "focal length", notably whether we should increase the fov, the zoom or both, depending on the angle requested. I have to say that I'm quite happy with what we've decided to use, in the end.

So your comment makes me happy :)

Not to be pedantic, but it should be called spherical video. :P

Not to be pedantic, but it should be called Equirectangular video. :P

Any Linux support (build) yet ? It seems to indicate that it works on MacOS and Windows only.

We usually don't build binaries for Linux, we let the distributions do it, by themselves.

Just a bit of feedback: One thing I noticed, compared to the 2.2.4 version is the errors and warning popup.

On the 2.2.4 version, all errors/warnings (eg: from a playlist which hits some 404s) appear in a small single list window and do not require a click OK to continue.

This new version pops all errors into a separate pop-up which requires an OK to dismiss.

Pretty annoying.

Otherwise, great to see 360 video adoption.

ps: Also, I used to be able to drag the video around (or to another monitor) in the middle of the player screen. Now it appears that I have to grab the title bar.

I get 360 degree video, but is there support for 360 degree stereoscopic video? For example can you load two 360 degree videos taken an inch apart and play together?

Probably not, as this has additional complexity as this would essentially be 3d video/VR, which requires hardware in order to be assimilated by a human in a meaningful manner.

Or just some ability to cross your eyes ;) (if the image is not deformed for lenses)

In what way would you put two 360° camera 1inch apart? Apart in what direction? One would block at least 180° of the other cam.

I guess you would need at least 4 to get the result you want.

It's super cool. Like this:

https://gopro.com/odyssey

https://vr.google.com/jump/

"Advanced computer vision and a whole lot of computing power to transform 16 pieces of video into stereoscopic VR video."

For example 2 fish-eye lenses both recording the same part of a sphere, 1 inch next to eachother in the same plane. Perhaps the blind spots can be interpolated on the basis of the comparing the frames with those of the other camera.

At $340 I think this spherical camera is too cheap to be doing what you're looking for but I'm not sure:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B014US3FQI/

Those 360 stereoscopic videos are usually precomputed. side-by-side or top-bottom videos. But you need a headset to view them, like Vive or Daydream.

We are working on this for VLC.

You can show top/bottom or side-by-side stereo on a 3D TV as well.

Very true. I don't have a TV, so I forget that quite often.

Doable. In a way. But think about the problem, if a '3d/stereoscopic' effect is what you're after.

When you turn your head right, the left 'eye' would be 'looking' at the right 'eye/camera' (at the side). The only way to achieve what you're thinking about is to have the cameras move the same way as the head (ie: 'live' not pre-recorded) on a pan/tilt setup. (There are a few Raspberry Pi projects around that do this).

It's easy enough to play two identical videos to each eye in Google Cardboard, using ThreeJS in a browser. The videos need to be in either 'spherical/equirectangular' format as a texture on a sphere (with a virtual camera in the middle), or using the cubic format (which Facebook uses and open-sourced) projected onto a cube. Look up 'skybox' and ThreeJS for examples.

I've been experimenting a lot with all this stuff over the last year or so :)

Whoa that's pretty impressive.

This is nice and all, but where's the Chromecast support they promised a long time ago?

Promised?

ChromeCast is in all the nightly builds since a very long time.

Will this eventually work with the hardware on my Pixel XL and my Daydream headset?

We hope so, yes.

How to enable stereographic ("little planet") projection?

little planet is not stereographic, but you activate that by zooming out and dragging it as you like.

I wonder when something like this will be available for mpv.

I don't want to be rude, but you really should use the official URL: http://people.videolan.org/~jb/Builds/360/ .

The current link is quite fishy, tbh.

Source: I wrote this page and this build, and I lead VLC development...

Agreed. I see posts like this not being dissimilar to posting a paywalled version of an article when there is an open version available elsewhere. Would be good to have the URL switched to the official link you posted instead.

Hello Jean-Baptiste, first, thanks so much for VLC. Incredible contribution to keep the personal computing free. I have a curiosity, is there any reason for not distributing officially the 64bits version? I guess it would very useful, as lot of heavy users have from 16 to 64gb of RAM. thanks again.

Hey x0f1a,

Just laziness from my side, I have to admit. It is just a preview, so I thought one build using 32bits is fine for everyone, it's not an everyday build.

The nightly builds are still both 32 and 64bits and will work fine, as soon as all patches are in.

You should increase the opacity on the header bar on that page when you scroll down, you get weird interactions otherwise.

Thank you! We've updated the link from http://www.softwarecrew.com/2016/11/vlc-media-player-preview....

Thanks a lot!

What kind of APIs or plugins does VLC have for efficiently sharing live video images between applications in real time, like Syphon [1] and Spout [2]?

[1] Syphon: http://syphon.v002.info/

[2] Spout: http://resolume.com/blog/11110/spout-sharing-video-between-a...

We don't have something beautiful and simple, tbh.

No disrespect is meant to OP, but since I don't know anything about softwarecrew.com and the site looks sketchy as hell, I would offer: https://nightlies.videolan.org/

If this had been posted on medium, nobody would have accused the source of being sketchy. Statements like yours encourage people to publish on big centralized sites, which are easier to control and censor. This centralization slowly erodes the open web, so thanks for that.

If the download link would have pointed to an official VLC site I think nobody would have complained either.

This site has an off feel. If it didn't have the sidebar filled with ads and a "freeware rehoster" look it would fair a lot better. The name is debatable but "crew" has a piracy/hacker connotation for me.

I think lot's of personal or non-central sites fly under the radar but this is the first time I've seen this insinuated that I can remember so I could be wrong.

I don't know what happens on Medium, but I take a dim view of download sites that wrap malware around popular open-source programs, a popular hacking technique that targets the less technically sophisticated. And when I see something, I say something. You're welcome.

No, you really should use this build: http://people.videolan.org/~jb/Builds/360/

There are a few additional patches that are not yet present on the nightly builds. (For example making it work with the mouse on macOS, which you won't get on the NB). All the patches should get in, during the next couple of days.

thank you! Straight from the source, awesome!

This site makes me feel dirty.

Meanwhile, subtitle support hasn't been working for weeks. And it still takes 5-6 clicks to even download a subtitle, while on other players it's either automatic or 1 click away. Why does the VLC team care so little about subtitles? This could be trivial to fix with a small UI change, yet it would have a big impact on people who need subtitles.

It's an open source project, feel free to patch!

Its open-source, nothing prevents you from stepping in and fixing it yourself.

I had no problems with subtitles, and can't find any issue related to it that isn't years old. I'd say if there's an issue its either unknown or low priority from the low demand to fix it.

It is already fixed, in all nightly builds. Just download a build from there :)

VLC probably has a lower barrier to entry than some projects, but this advice still grates every time I hear it. There's a lot of things that could potentially stop someone contributing to VLC, even the ability to build it from source.

You are downloading subtitles through VLC?? How?!

I have had no problems with subtitles.

VLSub (https://github.com/exebetche/vlsub) was widely used so they decided to integrate it in the official VLC software I guess, since I didn't had to download it last time I formatted my pc and reinstalled VLC.

No, the subtitles download has been fixed in all nightly builds since a long time.

Just download a new lua script or wait next week for the update (2.2.5) that will update the script and a few minor issues.

Searched for "vlc vlsub not working" :

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=136182

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