That's me.
However, I am not the VLC creator, just the one working on it since 10+ years. And I created the non-profit organization.
See the AMA for more details ;)
However, I am not the VLC creator, just the one working on it since 10+ years. And I created the non-profit organization.
See the AMA for more details ;)
And that is perfect.
You've now been added to my regular donation cycle. I'd rather provide for longevity than a lump sum where I forget to keep contributing.
VLC should be the goal for most every application's settings menu. It is not just a menu to change settings, it's a menu that leads to discovery and learning. It's pretty much perfection.
I can just use the regular settings, or I can click advanced. If I do, I can look around and find new things. I can then take a little while to learn about what those new things are, what they do, and how they impact me.
It is pretty much perfect. I still haven't learned all there is to know about it. I still haven't tried every setting. It's just a video player - yet it has that many options.
I like complex, it gives me something to learn. I love it when I find something I don't already know.
Believe it or not, this is stresses a lot of people out, especially considering to the average user a lot more than half of the settings aren't going to be intuitively or immediately apparent.
I'm with you, I enjoy this aspect of things - I like to pick and pull things apart to figure out how they work, to mod them and make them mine and if I'm luckily/diligent, sometimes even make them better lol; be it by way of themeing or breaking out the code editor. but not everyone is like that.
Advanced preferences are complex, so it's like about:config
I used that to segue into quite a rant about how I lamented the lack of complexity in software. I extended it quite broadly into things like it being a sign of declining intellectual curiosity, about how aiming for the lowest common denominator was bad for those who understand computers, and even extended it to my dismay at the lack of decent help files.
It was long and rambling, touching on many subjects, and I think I should turn it into a more formal essay.
Anyhow, VLC gets the preferences options perfect. The UI can use a bit of work and the UX is a bit rough, but the multitude of options makes up for any shortcomings it may otherwise have. I haven't even really bothered to learn the command line options, which is actually a little strange for me. I spend quite a bit of time in the terminal.
And no, no... I made it a point to inform people that I wasn't wanting computing to revert to the older days. No, software wasn't better back twenty years ago. The Internet wasn't better and computers weren't better.
What was better was that programs actually had options. They had preferences. They had multiple ways that they could be configured. They could output and process work differently.
I guess my final message was a plaintive request that developers bring back my buttons. I miss those buttons. I get a hamburger icon that expands and the entire options, if it exists at all, is actually just a theme picker. Some software doesn't even have exit as a menu option. If I want to close an app on a mobile, it may actually mean finding a task manager just to close it. It gets even worse if there is no back option and I want to begin anew at the application's start screen.
So, I just wanted to take an extra minute and explain a bit more and to thank you. I already set up a donation and the project should get a donation every month, assuming I did it properly. VLC doesn't just do what it says on the box, it inspires me to learn, to discover, and to keep being curious.
I think all of those things are much more valuable than a video player. Anyone can write a video player. It takes someone special to write one that plays videos and encourages curiosity, growth, and learning.
Which is rather a long way to say, "Thanks, again!"
A software that does the right thing for everyone without any settings is several orders of magnitude more complex than a software that just lazily requires its users to configure it.
I agree with this. Even if the customer is a world-class developer.
> Anyhow, VLC gets the preferences options perfect. The UI can use a bit of work and the UX is a bit rough, but the multitude of options makes up for any shortcomings it may otherwise have.
I don't see how they're even close to "perfect". Yes, there are a lot of options, but when the average user doesn't know what options he might actually want or need to enable, that's not exactly, well, helpful. Here are a bunch of issues I have with the current set of options on the Simple page:
1. Interface: "Resize interface to video size". What in the world does this mean? If I play 1080p video on my 1600x900 monitor will the video suddenly expand beyond the monitor size and I won't be able to close it? Why would I want that?
2. Audio: "Enable audio"... er, you can already mute or set the volume to zero on your computer whether globally or for VLC itself, and you can set the volume near zero within VLC just for playback too, and you can mute the volume within VLC. Why in the world is there another option in Preferences? What's the difference? Is this supposed to be intuitive?
3. Audio: "Replay gain mode: None/Track/Album" in the "simple" options... you expect a non-"advanced" user to know what this means? And the tooltip is ever so helpful: "Select the replay gain mode"!
4. Video: "Use hardware YUV->RGB conversions"... this is a Simple setting? How/why is an average user (or even a power user) supposed to care about this? Do you ever worry about it?
5. Video: "Enable video"... er, why not just let users hide the video from the video playback (e.g. drag & collapse, or with a button)? Why in the world is this a global setting for the entire player?
6. Codecs: "x264 preset and tuning selection"... even as a developer I have literally no idea what "ultrafast" and "slower" and "placebo" as well as what "film" or "psnr" or "grain" imply, or why I would ever need to change them. Isn't this a clearly advanced setting? These are the kinds of drop-down options you expect to a hastily-written GUI front-end of a command-line tool that just expects the user to "know" the right thing to do somehow.
etc.
Putting all possible options there is half the battle. The harder part is making it so the user would actually use them. VLC still has a long ways to go for the latter, unless its target audience is multimedia experts.
Don't get me wrong VLC is an incredibly useful and great software available on many platforms, both UI and UX have improved a lot since the early days but still confusing. This arguably bad UX is the reason VLC is a second class citizen to MPC-HC / smplayer on all the computers I maintain.
What part is confusing? What is confusing in VLC that is not in the other ones? The main UI has max 10 buttons.
Especially when comparing with MPC-HC and smplayer and mplayer, which are 3 different look, UI and UX...
Sorry, you just sound like the usual hater...
(note: I understand that linking to other software might come off as offensive, but I truly feel there is a place for both. VLC is pretty much irreplaceable for many, many things)
Thanks VLC team for all the good years !
No need to wait for a slow site to load and having to click through multiple confirmation screens (Paypal)...
I don't need the ability to dispute: I am not going to change my mind later about this donation.
I don't need to buy BTC: like many bitcoin users I already have some in my possession, ready to be spent at any time.
For a donation transfer speed doesn't matter, but for actual purchase it's a lot more than 30 s last I've tried
It's important to understand the difference between a broadcasted transaction (tx received by most Bitcoin nodes, "0-confirmation", 1-2 seconds) versus the transaction being included in at least 1 block ("1 confirmation", ~10 minutes). Some merchants accept 0-confirmation tx, while others require 1 confirmation. But in almost all cases it's fine to accept 0-confirmation transactions:
• ordering physical goods online (an order takes more than ~10 minutes to be shipped & delivered anyway)
• ordering virtual goods/services (eg. paying for VPN: the vendor can simply cancel the service if the tx is never confirmed)
• any low-value real-world transaction (eg. paying for groceries... no one will bother with a double-spend attack to steal groceries)
• etc
If they don't check with PayPal to discover this the money is given to a different organization.
What would be iTunes-ifying it?
Les héros de l'Internet, c'est Aaron Swartz, Jimmy Wales et Sam Hocevar. Pas moi :)
And all the VLC people are.
I made a donation to VLC and encourage every people to do so.
You rock.
It seems to me that your response was seemingly the right moral thing to do. However, I can also see a lot of practical benefits of having a pile of cash to improve open software.
Yes, I did. But only if the terms are fine and moral. That never happened.
I’ve been using VLC for 6 years and nothing has compared.
When do you expect the cast to chromecast feature to make it into the stable build for Mac?
Thanks for your work, you should have taken the money ;)
Seriously it just means that your work is that valuable.
jbk, you have a lot of good submissions. To bad I haven’t seen more of them up on the HN-board.
Added to my donation list too.
Well, I'm not pushing a lot...
I only have ETH in my wallet... will try to donate later.
Spyware and hacking is not a clean business model, as far as I am concerned.
But, you know, you can invest in my startup, if you prefer :)
Emacs Magit author just finished one. People gave enough for him to work for about a year.
Patreon also requires creators to regularly post updates and provide goodies to their subscribers. What could the VLC developers even give to their subscribers except publicly available changelogs? The devs should - and I believe also want to - rather develop the player instead of thinking about what to give to maybe 50 people on Patreon every other week.
It's better to send donations via SWIFT anyway but most Americans here can use Paypal a lot easier right now instead of waiting for a never coming Patreon campaign or complicated wire transfers with high fees.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-mig...
translate: why not accept and not care because opensource so someone fork or even yourself on the long term