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Comment by jbk | Hacker News Reader

So, it's the first time we do a coordinated release of VLC.

We're doing it for desktop (Linux, Windows, OS X) and mobile ports (Android, Windows Phone, Windows RT, iOS) but also for Android TV.

It's been quite difficult, but we're finishing the work we've started 2 years ago to move to mobile: the code base is now ready for that, without hacks.

So, a lot of the cooler stuff for mobile are going to happen for 3.0.0 though...

And for developers, now libVLC should be usable for most platforms, notably to create apps that play videos.

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I have been using VLC as my video player for the longest time. Thank you and everyone involved for all your time and work put into it.

EDITS

Donation link : https://www.videolan.org/contribute.html#money

Thanks for that link, just took advantage of how easy you made it for us.

My humble donation is well worth it to me; I don't think I've found a media format yet that I was unable to play in VLC.

My thanks as well!

just chipped in $5... (very small considering how much I've used VLC over the years on Win, Mac, Linux, Android, etc.)

Just wanted to say thanks for the project, great to have something like this cross-platform and open. Users should, if financially possible, donate when they download it.

We don't do it for the money :)

But I am guessing it doesn't hurt either ;-)

I hope you won't object, I edited my post above to include a link to the donations page.

Money is used for buying hardware, going to conferences, codec bounties and organizing a big multimedia conference.

But if you have one million or two, I got great ideas :D

I'm curious? (but I don't have the $)

jbk - where are you based in France, and can you tell us a bit more about your ideas? :)

I'm in Paris, and I think there are clever ways to create new business around video consumption (B2C and B2B) because there is so much frustration around watching experiences...

But I can go in more details IRL.

When will we be able to hear more about it, if not already?

I hope you're listening, HBO.

> When will we be able to hear more about it, if not already?

Well, it depends if I manage to find the funding for it :)

I also wanted to say thanks. I have faithfully loved VLC for as long as I can remember. You're awesome.

Many of us donated for VLC for WP/WinRT on Kickstarter in 2012 and it's still in very early phases. :(

Totally untrue. Everything is released and usable. This is the point of this release.

Hardware decoding is getting finished now, while we still don't have it on iOS.

Sure, it is usable, though the lack of HW acceleration is 'early phase' for me.

Unfortunately, you need to complain to Microsoft that is blacklisting all the current APIs for hardware acceleration.

If Microsoft was less blocking, you would have hardware decoding since a long time.

Isn't it possible to do hardware decoding of certain video streams as of iOS8? Will you be able to do hardware decoding of MKV-wrapped H.264 files in later releases?

For iOS, we have a pretty good patch to do it, yes.

We just have a weird but with M2TS files, but we will merge it during the next month. Expect it for 2.6.0

Awesome! Thanks for your great work.

Why can't I install it from Google Play Store for Android? This is the link https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.videolan.v...

I get told "This app is incompatible with all of your devices." and for each device says "This item is not compatible with your device". I have 7 different devices on my account, most with Android 4.2+ which is marked as the minimum version.

Because it's the test version of the new app. You need to go to the G+ page to get it. General release will happen soon, maybe during the weekend.

I see a test version from the same publisher https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.videolan.v...

Nowhere on the app's page does it say it is a test version, or why it is blocked from every device, nor give a G+ link. Here is an article which is where I saw this first, along with links to install: http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/27/vlc-gets-first-major-relea...

This is all very confusing, and quite frankly a rather hostile user experience.

I think it's a bit much to hold them accountable for poorly edited articles on venture beat. A hostile user experience is a world without open video players.

The Play Store page could just start with "This software is currently in private beta, and only installable by our testers." How is anybody who arrives at that page supposed to figure it out?

As for poorly edited, here is the press release: http://www.videolan.org/press/vlc-2.2.0.html

It says the Android version is released today. Note no mention that Android is in beta, limited to testers only or anything similar.

I have no issue with VLC and like it well. They have done a great new release, which is welcome. They even went to the trouble of writing a long press release, getting quotes, and apparently talking to people at venture beat.

But then prevent installation of the android version without any clue as to why, undermining that previous effort.

It's a temporary issue and we're having issues to fix it. But we're working on it :)

Same problem here. Can't install it from Google Play on my Nexus 4, Nexus 6 or Nexus 9 because it's incompatible with all of my devices for some reason.

Are you doing any DPI change hackery?

That is usually the most common reason for Play Store errors like that.

> Are you doing any DPI change hackery?

No, it's just the beta version. You need to be in the G+ community.

Some of my devices are rooted, but other than that are as vanilla as they come.

Thanks for the project. I use it at home and work extensively (public education - we have thousands of machines that use it) and have done so for years. It's one of the best examples of free open-source software.

EDIT: I rarely do, but I went ahead and donated $20 (yea, not much, but like I said, public education ;)) via the link someone posted below as well. Keep up the good work!

MediaLibraryKit and MobileVLCKit links on the ios page (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html) seem to be broken - not that I have any need for them, but thought you might like to know.

Will fix tonight

Done

Would there be a way to implement libVLC as a replacement for Quick Look in Mavericks and Yosemite? That would be fantastic!

Right now (as you may know) Apple depreciated Quick Look and it no longer works with far too many video formats even if one has the old version of QuickTime installed with Perian.

When did Apple deprecated Quicklook? I can't find any mention of that. Generally when frameworks are deprecated it's noted here too:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/MacOSX...

Also no mention:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Look

Quick Look's media support is pretty sparse, but that's due to its use of Quicktime X for most video and audio. QL supports plugins from third parties though so... yes. You don't need to replace QL, just build a plugin for it.

AFAIK, there's been problems with building new plugins when it comes to video codecs since these Apple changes:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/technotes/tn2300/_in...

Here's more info on the change Apple made here with details on the issues it has caused with Quick Look:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/114578/quick-look-s...

See the post at the bottom of the link above. In a nutshell, things like Perian that used to allow Quick Look (not to be confused with the QuickTime Player) to preview a bunch of video formats got hosed when Apple switched over to "AV Foundation" or something.

Considering how many less video formats work with Quick Look after "upgrading" from Snow Leopard to Mavericks, I personally consider it "depreciated" at least in principle.

Quite a lot of Mac users (especially those that work with a lot of video formats) have been waiting for something to fix this Quick Look issue for some years now.

The best you can do at the moment is install this to see thumbnails in Quick Look for some video formats:

https://github.com/Marginal/QLVideo

more info on the issue:

https://github.com/Marginal/QLVideo/issues/3

indeed, there are tons of modern QL plugins on GitHub even.

just a few I spotted in a quick search:

https://github.com/sindresorhus/quick-look-plugins

https://github.com/Nyx0uf/qlMoviePreview

https://github.com/Marginal/QLVideo

http://whomwah.github.io/qlstephen/

Do note that current plugins for Quick Look video do nothing more than be able to display static thumbnails of various video formats even if you have Perian installed. Unlike with Snow Leopard and Perian in the past, you won't see the actual video and audio run in Quick Look with AVI, MKV, etc formats.. That's where the libVLC can come in, I hope.

More info:

https://github.com/Marginal/QLVideo/issues/3

Actually I did that years ago with a friend. It's easy to revive.

I among many others would really appreciate that! Link? Can I help out?

If you know a bit about Obj-C, yes, it's quite simple.

That would be very nice, could you put it up on GitHub when you get a chance?

Great work!

Has the move to mobile benefited the desktop in any way? I see an auto-rotate feature.

Yes. Video acceleration, rotation, less performance wasted, and mostly a better libVLC (used by the mobile port, not the desktop).

Any word on why the iOS version has apparently been pulled again?

It is not pulled, it's slow to deploy on their CDN.

Usually, it takes 15 minutes on Android, 30 minutes on Windows Store, and 1 hour on iOS, but today, it's very slow...

Thanks! That's great news.

In iOS I'm seeing 2.4.1 Feb 12th update offered but then 'No longer available' when I hit update

Looking forward to checking out the local streaming changes - DLNA stopped working for me a while ago, although I didn't take the time to figure out if the problem was with PMS or VLC.

jbk - With 3.0.0 do you have any plans to switch the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows installers from NSIS compiled EXEs to MSIs to make it easier to deploy and/or customize which features are installed?

The only reason for asking is that I came across the .wxs files on your Github page. [1] :)

[1] https://github.com/videolan/vlc/tree/master/extras/package/w...

The problem is that it's quite more difficult to compile compared to NSIS.

But yes, if I could, I would move 100% to MSI.

Awesome! Thanks for the attention to improving release management in addition to improving code and features, it is noticed and appreciated!

We're not yet there, but soon it will be flawless.

The Windows app store only shows support for x86 and x64. Did something happen to delay the launch for ARM?

The Windows Store is slow to propagate.

I tried to play something from Plex Server in 2.4.1 on iOS, and get message about AC3 not supported?

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