VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. (business web hosting).
Release: VLC media player 0.8.5 (2006-05-066 May 2006) This new Release features many improvements, including MacIntel support, a statistic system, the support of DV inputs on Linux, improvements in the Audio CD playback (CDDB), many new and improved video filters, a new AJAX HTTP interface, Winamp 2 Skins support, a Mozilla plugin on Mac OS X (PowerPC only), a new default skin..
Changes between 0.8.4a and 0.8.5
Core support:
- Statistics collection (bitrates, packets, connections, …)
- Support for downloading updates
- Updated strings
Input:
- Initial support for RTSP-over-HTTP (to allow NAT traversal)
- Linux DV (Digital Video - Firewire) input
- Improvements to the Audio CD input
- - Separate playlist entries for the tracks
- - Support for CDDB
- Support for more DVB (satellite) encryption modules
- Improved subtitles encoding support
- Improved support for playing MP4 files from the Web
Decoders:
- Cook (Real audio) support
Playlist / Services discovery:
- XSPF playlist support
- Podcast support
- Updated Shoutcast to use new listing
Audio output:
Video output:
- New video filters:
- - magnify: allows you to zoom on part of the image
- - gradient and edge detection: “cartoon-like” effect
- - bluescreen: overlay parts of a video transparently on another one
- Logo video filter: can now loop through multiple images
- RSS video filter: display feed images. Support for Atom feeds.
- Improvements to the subtitles rendering
Stream output:
- Initial support for throttling users on VOD streams
Interfaces:
- System to inform the user and request information
- - HTTP authentication
- - Fatal errors
- - …
- wxWidgets
- - VLM (VideoLAN Media Manager) control panel
- - Improved media information panel (shows statistics, metadata, …)
- - Drag & Drop support in the playlist
- Skins2
- - New default skin
- - Support for Winamp 2 skins
- - Improved playlist handling
- - Support for popup menus, animated bitmaps, equalizer, …
- OS X
- - Embedded Video output
- - new Go-To-Specific-Time feature
- - Video cropping and aspect ratio changing while playing
- - Improved media information panel (shows statistics, metadata, …)
- - support for processing multiple items with the wizard in a single run
- - option to save selections in the wizard for a session (default enabled)
- HTTP
- - New default interface pages for VLC and VLM (including a mosaic wizard)
- - A bunch of new RPN functions
Windows Port:
- MSN messenger “Now playing” support
OS X Port:
- Mac-Intel compatibility
- Enhanced support of various audio output devices
- Growl “Now playing” support
*Nix port:
- Ability to log to syslog
- Root wrapper to avoid running VLC as root
Developers:
- New libvlc API (not finished yet)
- Java bindings
- A bit more automatic testing
