VLC hits 2.0

After many years of work, Video LAN Client (VLC), the all-powerful free/open video-player, has hit 2.0, with an amazing roster of new features. The new version is called "Twoflower," and it cuts through DRM like butter, disregards patents and plays and converts pretty much any video you throw at it.

With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC.
Twoflower has a new rendering pipeline for video, with higher quality subtitles, and new video filters to enhance your videos.
It supports many new devices and BluRay Discs (experimental).
Completely reworked Mac and Web interfaces and improvements in the other interfaces make VLC easier than ever to use.
Twoflower fixes several hundreds of bugs, in more than 7000 commits from 160 volunteers.

VLC reaches 2.0

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tylerkaraszewski

VLC is the greatest video player ever made. I will go upgrade.
- http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
  
  I beg to differ; unless VLC 2 supports PureVideo and has the options necessary to banish frame tearing, I’ll stick with Media Player Classic. It’s the only thing that’ll run smoothly on my system, for some reason. Maybe cause its authors seem to care more about performance than anyone else.
  
  Also, I haven’t seen a media player that comes close to KM Player’s sweet, sweet interface and vast array of hotkeyed options. Best media player interface ever, by like 150%.
  - http://twitter.com/raginghamsterx Dan
    
    kmplayer? time to upgrade to potplayer: http://potplayer.en.softonic.com/
    
    it’s programmed by the original creator of kmplayer and is still updated/supported.
    - Daniel A.
      
      I heard about that split off, but I just got an update on the original (now titled “KMP+”) about 1 month ago — i’m at version 3.1.0.0.
      
      I do keep VLC installed as my “swiss army knife” if some arcane video file won’t play, but nothing beats KM for me.
MostlyDifferent

VLC has been my player of choice. Just downloaded the new one… already crashed once, and I can’t figure what it wants to do with the My Pictures folder. I’m concerned that it seems to be trying to look and behave like iTunes or Windows Media Player with the new version. As long as it still plays files as well as it has, though, I’ll keep using it.
inkfumes

I loved the previous version, it plays more formats than MPEGStreamclip but didn’t do too well on the file conversion, hopefully V2 addresses that.
http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman

Loooong time VLC user. I was thinking “I’d happily pay for this if it wasn’t free” …so I just went and donated a bit of cash. http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html#money
morkl

Hey, it sounds kind of like they made VLC useful again! Swell!
http://www.mcelhearn.com/ Kirk McElhearn

“cuts through DRM like butter”? Actually, it only plays Blu-Ray discs without DRM… So, no, it doesn’t cut through anything.
- CpnCodpiece
  
  My guess is that Cory was referring to VLC’s ability to cut through FBI warnings and ignore region codes on DVDs, Blu-Ray support is only in beta.
  - t3kna2007
    
    I didn’t get that at first but you must be right. That part of VLC is a godsend. It’s my player of choice. Windows Media Player can bite me.
    
    However, the home-recorded video DVD I’ve been playing with VLC all week now doesn’t work with 2.0. No idea what the problem is but if it won’t play then it’s back to 1.0.2 Goldeneye.
    
    I did try out some audio with 2.0 and that was fine. Pink Floyd the Wall. Both discs; I had to be sure and give it a thorough test. ;)
http://grumer.org/ Avram Grumer

And they’re still supporting MacOS 10.5 on PPC!
Anne Onimos

It’s a wee bit buggy, as you might expect from a 0.0 release. Case in point: I tried the new spatialilzer filter, and it seems to have killed audio, not only in VLC but for the whole system (MacOS), even after I first, turned off that filter, and second, killed VLC.
http://twitter.com/badpauly Bad Pauly

“make VLC easier than ever to use” unless you drag and drop files onto the playlist, cos we broke that.

Just went back to the last stable version.
- teapot
  
  You’re doing something wrong. It works perfectly if you drag & drop, and they even improved it by making the playlist part of the main window. It always annoyed me that it appeared as aseparate window in v1.
http://twitter.com/shay_guy Shay Guy

I was getting tired of opening SMPlayer for 10bit videos. Rawk! Now I just have to wait till the Ubuntu package updates.
- blepom
  
  I’m updated already, so you won’t wait for long :) (11.10)
  - http://twitter.com/shay_guy Shay Guy
    
    How do I get it? Apt-get doesn’t seem to be turning it up.
http://ruskola.myopenid.com/ mmm1kko

I just wish to know how I can prevent it from auto adding the stuff I play to the playlist, I don’t wanna remember to remove the history regularly.
- teapot
  
  Upon reading your comment PRON lovers everywhere just did a collective facepalm.
  
  You can disable Recent Items by following the instructions here. You can find this setting in VLC’s advanced preferences, so click on “All” at the bottom of the Preferences window and navigate to “Interface” -> “Main Interfaces” -> “macosx” and disable the respective setting.
  
  Items being auto-added to the playlist is somewhat confusing… at first it seems like VLC is adding everything you play to the playlist, but this only occurs until you actually close the program. Clicking the little little red circle won’t do, you have to click the “Quit VLC” option or hit ⌘Q.
Grey Devil

Seems buggy, judging by the comments. Think i’ll hold off for a month or two before updating.
- teapot
  
  Don’t listen to them.. test it out for yourself. So far I’ve struck none of the bugs discussed (though I have no means of testing HD video).
MattB

Crashes without error message for every video I throw at it on OSX 10.7.3
- Cowicide
  
  Delete the previous VLC preferences maybe. There’s an applescript in the dmg goodies folder (or whatever it’s called) that’ll do it for you.
coweatyou

For the record I haven’t had any of the above problems. It works perfect for me on windows.
jeligula

I learned early on that VLC was the way to go, simply because it always worked, no matter the format. For simple audio track recording from any source, Audacity is where you want to be. With just a stereo condenser mic, I have recorded acoustic guitar pieces that couldn’t get any better by spending money on expensive music software.
TheKaz1969

Twoflower? Pratchett reference?
- Scurra
  
  I guess all the unstable release candidates are called Rincewind.
adonai

Yep, especially as the previous version was called The Luggage.
- TheKaz1969
  
  Man, it is gonna take a lot more releases to get to Littlebottom.. *sigh*
  - http://www.genreville.com/ Josh Jasper
    
    A cheery thought ;-)
http://jarwadi.wordpress.com/ jarwadi

yes, even vlc is the best video player on my ubuntu box. but what i still dont understand is sound lag or video lag if i play video with certain codec
http://twitter.com/dave1447 David Cooper

I really hate this new UI on OS X. Did VideoLAN even do any research into how people use VLC?

I want a small, fast video player that primarily plays files stored in my Downloads folder. I do NOT want another media library. I hope VideoLAN will offer the ability to disable the media sidebar or at least re-consider which folders are displayed there (seriously, Pictures but no Downloads?).

Also, the controls seem poorly thought out. The seek bar is too small, and things like horizontal volume sliders occupy way too much real estate.
- teapot
  
  VLC’s media library is not like others which will reorganise your files folders under the assumption that the end user is too stupid to know how to maintain a directory tree – it’s merely an additional (and completely optional) function which they have added.
  
  I agree that not being able to add more locations seems kind of stupid, though not including the “Downloads” folder is probably because such a folder’s location is still not uniform across different programs or OS versions (whereas My pics/vid/music have been standard for years now).
  
  The width of the “seek bar” is determined by the window width as is uniform across basically every video player. And who even touches the volume slider anymore?? You know your mouse scroll does the volume, right?
  - http://twitter.com/dave1447 David Cooper
    
    Well it doesn’t seem optional since there is no way to hide/remove it.
    
    That’s exactly my point about the volume slider – nobody really uses it yet it takes up a lot of space that could be put to much better use for a longer seek bar/slider/progress bar.
  - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
    
    “VLC’s media library is not like others which will reorganise your files folders under the assumption that the end user is too stupid to know how to maintain a directory tree”
    
    Not that I want VLC to meddle with my files – but the optional feature on iTunes has saved me hours of manual organising. I guess I’m stupid for saving so much time and effort.
  - http://fishsauce.myopenid.com/ August
    
    “it’s merely an additional (and completely optional) function which they have added”
    
    Yeah, and as other have said, one that you *can’t hide or remove*, so if like me you prefer to watch your videos in a small floating window without all the clunky UI elements taking up screen real-estate in the foreground, you are stuck with a massive, ugly mess of a controller where 2/3 of the stuff is crap you’re never going to use. Exactly the opposite of the streamlined player I’ve come to love. You can hide some of the submenus, apparently, but doing so will actually crash VLC on OS X. (I’m not alone in having that problem, there’s a thread about it on VLC’s own forums.)
    
    The current release doesn’t respect preferences, many preferences don’t take effect until after restart, and some things behave the opposite of how they should, or how they behaved in earlier releases (like if you select ‘lock aspect ratio’ you have to hold a modifier key to scale the player window rather than stretch it)…
    
    I don’t care what’s under the hood. From the standpoint of a user who just wants a video player that will play whatever video he throws at it and otherwise *get the hell out of his way*, this release is a mess.
    
    I have reverted to a previous version, and will stay there until/unless some of this gets sorted.
http://www.zhrodague.net/ Drew from Zhrodague

I just used VLC 2.0 to watch some films I recorded with MythTV. Interface took me part of a second to figure out, and I was able to watch Bob Hope on my second monitor. The full-screen is broken for OSX – it blocks my working display. Stretching the window to the size of the screen worked, and I forgot about the slight inconvenience until seeing this post on boingboing. VLC is great, and I hope to use more of the features of the new VLC – if I need ‘em.

Oh, and MythTV FTW.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  Disapointed they didnt fix the dual screen thing on OSX – was the same in v1.0 and the main reason I never used it. Quicktime however handled this fine, and supports almost all the same formats (with perian/etc. of course).
- acutia
  
  If you turn off the Video option “Black screens in fullscreen mode” it won’t black out a second display. Works for me.
http://twitter.com/Elladrion Elladrion

It’s a minor thing, i know, but I hate the traffic cone icon. Is there a way to make the icons show(for, say, .flv files) a thumbnail of the video like WMP does? Only good thing WMP does right.
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

Playing video on a desktop is hardly a chore (not like it was in the early 00′s, when this might have been news).

For 99.9% of video I can just use Quicktime, hell I could just use quickview if I was so inclined – in fact just yesterday quicktime asked me to upgrade to play a certain video, which I viewed in quickview just fine – how does that even work, surely quickview uses quicktime?

Anyway; give me mkv on my xbox, that I’m interested in.
evanberkowitz

How do you say twoflower? Is it a pair of streams or a pair of daisies?
- http://twitter.com/TMAndersson Thomas M Andersson
  
  I think it’s a reference to the Disc World character, see Terry Pratchett’s books.
  - evanberkowitz
    
    I see. However, with some [admittedly] brief googling, I still can’t figure out if I should say the “flower” part like “flower power!” or like “something that flows” without trying to build up the surrounding context clues from Pratchett’s world.
    - Baldhead
      
      An alternate universe version of the character was named “Zweiblumen” so it would be flower as in power. Yes I know zweiblumen is not an accurate translation but I supect this is intentional on Pratchett’s part.
info

This is the greatest BoingBoing fiasco in my book… I installed this player blindly on my Win7 machine, and I found it an amateurish piece of crap. A few highlights:

* No “drm cutting” thing at all
* If you minimize the player, audio becomes choppy
* Unless you fiddle with options, it opens two windows when playing video (one for video, one for god knows what)
* It can play SOME realmedia files, but not others
* The damn thing doesn’t even stay where it is put, but moves around every time a new file is played
* “Play all” becomes “create a playlist and play it from the last item”

This would be ludicrous if it wasn’t sad. Going back to my MPC player…
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Matthew-Simmons/734286779 Matthew Simmons
  
  Wow. You’ve obviously missed the point of an open-source free media player. I’ve used version 1 for years and it has always played %99 of the video formats I’ve run across. Choppy video has never been a problem even on my older/slower machines, maybe check your hardware.
- SHeadius
  
  This is the greatest BoingBoing fiasco in my book…
  
  A bit on the dramatic side eh?
- marilove
  
  “This is the greatest BoingBoing fiasco in my book… ”
  
  Wow. Do you overreact this much to everything? You must be a blast at parties! Do you sob in the corner when you spill your beer?