VLC 3.0 release

by jbk on 2/9/2018, 3:15 PM with 294 comments
  • by peatmoss on 2/9/2018, 5:02 PM

    VLC is one of those programs that has really proved itself a stalwart of the FLOSS community. I feel like VLC is in a rare category of software that is great because:

    1. It's existed for long enough that we know it won't just go away and break our hearts. (I used VLC to play videos on BeOS back in college in the late 90s.)

    2. No matter how many iterations it goes through, it's still intelligible to would-be time travelers from the past. I.e. didn't get caught up in the "must change the UX around for change's sake" epidemic that still seems rampant.

    3. It's always had acceptable performance, perhaps owing to being born in a time of no goddamned Electron apps.

    4. It's dependable across platforms, even platforms that I'm unfamiliar with or don't like. Need to play a video on Windows? I don't even know what crapware to download, because I download VLC, because I know VLC runs on Windows and will greet me as a familiar friend in this strange and foreign land.

    My hat is off to you, VLC!

  • by mtmail on 2/9/2018, 3:41 PM

    From a 2016 interview https://interviews.slashdot.org/story/16/08/26/1338246/the-s... (also https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/7hqusx/this_is_jean...)

    "Well, it's important to remind people that we don't make money out of VLC and that there is no business model around it, we're not Mozilla or Facebook. VideoLAN only receives donations and that's not enough to hire someone. VLC developers are either volunteers (the majority since VLC started) or have their consulting business around open source multimedia."

  • by ausjke on 2/9/2018, 4:25 PM

    3.0 Highlights:

      * VLC 3.0 "Vetinari" is a new major update of VLC.  
  * VLC 3.0 activates hardware decoding by default, to get 4K and 8K playback!  
  * It supports 10bits and HDR  
  * VLC supports 360 video and 3D audio, up to Ambisoncics 3rd order  
  * Allows passthrough for HD audio codecs  
  * Can stream to Chromecast devices, even in formats not supported natively  
  * Can play Blu-Ray Java menus: BD-J  
  * VLC supports browsing of local network drives and NAS

  • by bpicolo on 2/9/2018, 3:35 PM

    > Can stream to Chromecast devices, even in formats not supported natively

    So excited to stream media to my TV via a non-crapware application.

  • by Sir_Cmpwn on 2/9/2018, 3:43 PM

    >VLC 3.0.0 is the first version of "Vetinari" branch of our popular media player.

    Also:

        ~ > curl -sI https://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/3.0.0.html | grep clacks
    x-clacks-overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett
    I don't use VLC, but I gained some more respect for them today regardless.

  • by ewams on 2/9/2018, 3:48 PM

    Congrats on the release. VLC, or "the cone", as some non-technical people call it is a household name. We have not been able to use it as a verb yet but when you can answer so many questions with "just use VLC" you know you have an amazing product. Thank you for the hard work and keeping VLC relevant.

  • by stryk on 2/9/2018, 4:42 PM

    I can't seem to find the 64bit build of the 3.0.0 release on the web nor on the FTP. Is there not one? Further, are there any advantages of using the 64bit versions over the 32bit? Any disadvantages? [edit - just saw this in the changelog: * 64bit version of VLC for Windows is recommended. And there is another post in this thread about it which I did not see, apologies, it looks like they will be arriving in a little while.]

  • by bane on 2/9/2018, 4:29 PM

    This is great! I was trying to play some somewhat obscure media files the other day with foobar and it wasn't doing a great job of it. Then I remembered that VLC must play it and not only did it, it played them almost flawlessly.

    In the way a smartphone has replaced dozens of other pieces of electronics in most people's lives, VLC kind of replaces many other pieces of software. Sustaining a project like this to 3.0 is a huge accomplishment.

  • by avtar on 2/9/2018, 3:35 PM

    I didn't spot this in the release notes but looks like the UI will now accommodate high-DPI displays in Windows:

    http://bradshacks.com/vlc-3-hidpi/

  • by TheKarateKid on 2/9/2018, 7:28 PM

    Can someone explain how VLC is able to skirt around codec licensing issues?

    How has VLC been able to play mp3s, DVDs, and other media formats natively when other players were forced to pay licensing fees, hence the need to buy media players 10 years ago?

  • by yakk0 on 2/9/2018, 4:12 PM

    Nice! I tried a 1080p mkv video on 2.2.8 before upgrading and it used around 8-9% CPU. After upgrading, played the same clip and it was under 1%. Nice performance increase there!

  • by sergiotapia on 2/9/2018, 5:25 PM

    Congratulations VLC team! I remember yours being the first software I used that "just worked" with anything I threw at it. It was incredible.

    I stopped using VLC because of the whole Rebuilding font cache issue every time I opened it. It soured me a little more every time until I finally just stopped using it. I wonder if that issue is fixed.

    May be time to revisit VLC 3!

  • by Aissen on 2/9/2018, 4:01 PM

    For an Android-specific features breakdown: https://geoffreymetais.github.io/features/vlc-30/

  • by deanclatworthy on 2/9/2018, 4:30 PM

    Congratulations on the release. VLC has been my player of choice for quite some time now. I've been using the 3.x nightlies for some time now to get hardware decoding of 4k. Is there any way to see whilst a video is playing: a) Is the video being hardware accelerated? b) Is HDR being displayed? Most TV's pop up a little HDR icon in the top right if it is.

  • by wolfgke on 2/9/2018, 3:40 PM

    Will there be 64 bit builds for Windows?

  • by screye on 2/9/2018, 6:03 PM

    I have been using DAUM POT player instead of VLC for a good few years. Can someone who has used both, point me to areas where VLC is better ? (VLC's fast forward has never quite worked well for me)

    I really like VLC as an organization and its open source nature. But, until now I have found it to be lacking in some areas as compared to POT player.

  • by marlebone on 2/10/2018, 12:17 AM

    Hrrm. Gave it a spin with a HDR 4K video on a non-HDR screen with default settings. Washed out, over-saturated, unwatchable colors.

    Tried finding tone mapping options. Apparently, those are only available for the OpenGL for Windows output. Changed to that (automatic is D3D11). Great, nice colors. Full-screened. Then back to windowed. Crash. Happens on many (but not all) 4K HDR MKV files here.

    So yeah, not really working at all that well. Back to Potplayer for now (I had been using VLC for years, but for 4K videos it just wouldn't work all that well).

    Nice on the Chromecast features though! :-)

  • by book_mentioned on 2/9/2018, 3:51 PM

    I was looking to see if VLC supported resuming stream playback yet, it looks like it might have for a long time. At least I found a new option to try!

    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/790216

    (CLI --http-reconnect /or/ Advanced (All) Preferences > Input/Codecs > HTTP(S) > Auto re-connect)

  • by jimmcslim on 2/9/2018, 9:35 PM

    Wasn’t there some project going on to provide a WebAssembly build of VLC for the benefit of archive.org? Anyone know the progress of that?

  • by harrisjt on 2/9/2018, 5:50 PM

    This is a great release. I've been using potplayer for a while now and have had great experiences, any reason to switch?

  • by thinkMOAR on 2/9/2018, 3:45 PM

    still on osx: VLC 2.2.8 is currently the newest version available.

    when you check for updates.

  • by mrguyorama on 2/9/2018, 6:24 PM

    Is there any way for someone very much unfamiliar with large C projects to contribute?

  • by sp332 on 2/9/2018, 3:40 PM

    What format does ambisonic audio get stored in? I remember over a decade ago they had a method for storing the various harmonics in Vorbis streams in an Ogg container, but I don't remember that going anywhere.

  • by fs111 on 2/9/2018, 4:47 PM

    Thank you, VLC maintainers! Keep up the good work!

  • by poisonborz on 2/9/2018, 5:32 PM

    Most stable player on Windows by far, and the best and feature rich player on Android.

    I only wish they had the post processing chops of madVR...

  • by lanius on 2/9/2018, 8:19 PM

    I accidentally selected "always continue playback from where you left off" for audio files instead of restarting from the beginning, how can I undo this change? I don't see any relevant settings in preferences (on macOS 10.12).

  • by ihuman on 2/9/2018, 3:54 PM

    >BD-Java menus and overlay in Blu-Ray >BluRay text subtitles (HDMV) deocoder

    Does that mean this version includes libbluray? Right now, if I want to play a BD I need to use an older version of VLC that was compiled with libbluray.

  • by c8g on 2/9/2018, 4:54 PM

    How to install it on KDE neon? snap version looks like a virtual machine (mouse pointer??) :)

    https://i.imgur.com/Lqip3H7.png

  • by on 2/9/2018, 8:41 PM

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  • by vinay_ys on 2/9/2018, 6:51 PM

    Streaming h.264 video from Mac OSX to Chromecast is eating 100% CPU. Why is this happening? Is there a setting to not do transcoding?

  • by manigandham on 2/9/2018, 5:47 PM

    Very nice, congrats to the team for this. The scrubbing speed is still not quite as smooth as mpv but way better than before.

  • by nishitd on 2/10/2018, 10:06 AM

    I noticed that you seem to have made improvements to VLSub as well. Is that true? It's much faster than it used to be.

  • by master_ant on 2/9/2018, 7:41 PM

    I've always had great experiences with VLC, on any platform, for as long as I can remember using it. Cheers!

  • by wnevets on 2/9/2018, 4:47 PM

    So glad chromecast support was added.

  • by trackofalljades on 2/9/2018, 5:15 PM

    Happily installed it on my Macs, but sadly still no 3.0 in the iOS store (at least in Canada).

  • by nwah1 on 2/9/2018, 3:34 PM

    Why was the release cycle so long?

  • by thefounder on 2/9/2018, 5:28 PM

    This looks awesome but I see no decoding for atmos/dts:x/auro.... :(

  • by maximedev on 2/9/2018, 5:03 PM

    is the iOS version 3.0 in review? I don't see it on the Apple Store.

  • by pmoriarty on 2/9/2018, 4:17 PM

    How does VLC on linux compare these days to mpv?

  • by ambicapter on 2/9/2018, 4:43 PM

    Is there chromecast support on MacOS as well?

  • by kirankn on 2/9/2018, 5:54 PM

    Many thanks to the VLC folks. Awesome work.

  • by petagonoral on 2/9/2018, 4:38 PM

    super!

    just downloaded it on windows.

    UI now renders good on 2k screen.

  • by daveheq on 2/9/2018, 7:19 PM

    Still not as good as dead Winamp for music.

  • by deep-c on 2/9/2018, 10:58 PM

    cool

  • by bhnmmhmd on 2/9/2018, 3:48 PM

    I wish the macOS version were as mature as the Windows one. Many shortcuts are missing, video is stuttering if played from external HDD, audio equalizer settings can't be saved and their values are not shown on the equalizer, etc.

  • by micheldlebeau on 2/9/2018, 3:50 PM

    Thanks a lot for the commitment to all the contributors of the project!

  • by vram22 on 2/11/2018, 9:41 PM

    VLC also has a Python API.

    Google vlc python api.

  • by __s on 2/9/2018, 8:53 PM

    I would totally sell my child for 1M. Easy enough to invest in another one

  • by nkkollaw on 2/9/2018, 5:07 PM

    They are great, but I really wish VLC looked better.

    You can tell from their website that design isn't their cup of tea.

  • by kljuka on 2/9/2018, 3:47 PM

    Yet it's such a shame that on Android phones it's kind of useless because you can't disable screen rotation (for playing a video in bed for example).

  • by ttoinou on 2/9/2018, 6:27 PM

    What about trying to monetize the software ? Just say that it "cost" 19 USD / year / family and leave the software libre, no license number / checking, nothing. (= Just trust the user and ask them to make a yearly donation for each home)

  • by z_open on 2/9/2018, 4:00 PM

    Is VLC even worth using these days? When last I stopped using it it seemed to be pretty far behind the other players in terms of HD video playback.