VideoLAN.org - (Open Source)
VLC Media Player is one of the most used media player that supports most o the video and audio formats that deserves to be chisen when it comes to play a movie.
VLC Media Player is a famous open source media player. It can play almost all formats of video and audio including HD: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, AAC, MP3, OGG, AVI, WMV , MOV, VCD, SVCD, DVD, etc and network streams proposed for WebTV, all without having to download anything else. It comes with all the necessary codecs: Flash, Dirac, Atrac3, H.264 PAFF, APE audio, RealVideo, VC-3, Fraps and more.
The application also supports the configuration server as a unicast or multicast on IPv4 or IPv6 networks.
VLC Media Player enjoys many hardware acceleration options, including via the graphics card as well as optimization for multi-core systems (for decoding codecs such as H.264, WebM or Xvid) .
On the same principle as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, VLC handles extensions and skins . There are two types of extensions , the first objective will be to retrieve video content , audio and subtitles on the Internet , the latter offer the possibility to access additional contextual information.
VLC gets also to BluRay, which is, for the moment only partially managed (no support for menus).
Function post-processing optimizes file playback for an optimal picture and sound. In addition, it includes a video converter or audio file, audio and video in real time filters, video streaming function, a wide range of settings that improves the rendering of the image and sound.
# Important changes for users:
* On Linux, known bugs in the ALSA library might prevent audio output. Update to alsa-lib 1.0.24 or later, or use the PulseAudio output instead.
# Important changes for packagers:
* The module cache has moved to ${libdir}/vlc/. The module cache can now be generated at install time except if you use staged installation. In the later case, you can generate the module cache in your post-inst script by invoking 'vlc-cache-gen'. If the module cache is not present and vlc can't write in ${libdir}/vlc/, it will result it vlc taking a long time to launch each time.
* Most X11-related plugins now use XCB instead of Xlib. VLC now uses
- xproto,
- xcb, xcb-shm, xcb-xv, xcb-randr (from libxcb),
- xcb-keysyms (from xcb-utils),
- x11-xcb (from libx11) - only for GLX support.
* On X11 platforms, a _working_ version of xdg-screensaver is typically required to inhibit the screensaver during video playback.
# Access:
* Support for the sftp protocol
* Support for CDDB servers for Audio-CD on the Windows port
* New memory input (imem) access and access_demux module to feed VLC from data in memory
* New avio module to use libavformat capabilities for network streams, like rtmp://
* Port of the screen module from Xlib to XCB
* Port of the dc1394 module from libdc1394 to libdc1394 v2.0
# Decoders:
* Support for DxVA2 for H.264 decoding on GPU on Windows Vista and 7
* Support for VAAPI for H.264 decoding on GPU on GNU/Linux
* Audio/Video decoders and encoders using OpenMAX IL components for DSP usage
* Support for HD-DVB subtitles - Display Definition Segment
* Support PGS subtitles for Blu-Ray
* Invmem module improvements
* Support for Atrac1 audio codec
* Support for SSE3 and SSE4 capabilities in some codecs
* Multiple improvements for subtitles styles .SRT and .SSA
* Support for Indeo5 video codec
* Support for Windows Media Speech (Voice) audio codec natively on all platforms
* Support for AMR-NB audio codec on the Windows and Mac port
* Improvements on the FLAC format (7.1 channels and 88.2/176.4/192 kHz support)
* Direct rendering is always used with H.264 in avcodec module
* Support for MPEG-4 ALS lossless audio codec
* Support for VP8 codec
# Demuxers:
* Support for .aob files from DVD-Audio (MLP and LPCM) (Full disc support is NOT present yet)
* Support for ADPCM in .flv streams
* Support for TwinVQ (.vqf) and AMV (.amv) files
* Various EGP improvements
* Support for embedded subtitles in OpenDML and legacy .avi files
* Many fixes on Matroska support and support for webm format
# Playlist:
* WPL and ZPL playlist support
* Lua scripts for Mpora, Vimeo playback and Rockbox FM radios
* New Play-And-Pause function to stop playback on latest video image
* Podcast images are now displayed
# Video Output:
* Rewrite of the video output core and most video outputs
* Added desktop mode to the Direct3D output module. It differs from DirectX desktop mode, because it hides the desktop icons, but reacts to mouse clicks.
* New x11, glx and xv modules based on XCB
* New deinterlacing modes based on yadif and yadif(x2)
* New audio/video filter to show audio level on the video output
* Enhanced AtmoLight filter with hardware support for
- Classic AtmoLight (http://www.vdr-wiki.de/wiki/index.php/Atmo-plugin)
- Quattro AtmoLight (use just 4 Classic AtmoLights as one)
- MoMoLight (http://www.ambilight4pc.com/momolight/momolight.html)
- Simple serial DMX controller (http://www.ulrichradig.de/ search for DMX)
# Extensions:
* New content extensions lua framework
* IMDb extension
# Audio filters:
* Chorus/Flanger audio filter
* 3F1R to stereo down-mix filter
* Dolby mixer, parameterized equalizer, trivial mixer, scaletempo, bandlimited resampler, linear resampler, ugly resampler, converter_fixed, DTS to SPDIF and A/52 to SPDIF filters have been upgraded to the "audio filter2" API
* NEON assembly audio converter module
* Converter filters have been rewritten and extended to support s32 as input
# Visualization:
* Support of .milk visualization files using projectM libraries
# Service discovery:
* Service discoveries can now be written in lua
* Service discovery for Picture/Music/Video user directories
* Service discovery based on libudev
* Shoutcast Service discoveries are now removed
# Encoders:
* x264, add psy-rd parameter and change default settings
* x264, add profile-limitter same way as x264.exe has, for example #transcode{vcodec=h264,venc=x264{profile=baseline,level=1.2},vb=384,width=320,height=176}
* x264, defaults to crf=23 as x264.exe-does, if bitrate is given, uses ABR and if qp-value is set uses CQP
* libx264-version 0.76 or higher is required
* x264 has tune/preset parameters supported
# Stream output:
* New smem module, streaming to memory
* Allow duplicate outputs to be merged, like: --sout "#duplicate{dst=transcode{vcodec=mp2v},select=es=0,dst=transcode,select=es=1}:std{...}"
# Interfaces:
* Renamed the legacy rc, telnet and http interfaces to oldrc, oldtelnet and oldhttp.
* rc, telnet and http are now implemented using the lua interface system.
# Mac OS X Port:
* Vastly improved VLCKit framework
* A new dialog provider for libvlc-internal interaction without full interface
* Improved update detection and installation by using the Sparkle framework by Andy Matuschak et al.
* New CoreText based text renderer replacing the former ATSUI renderer
* New Video output module (mostly targetting VLCKit)
* Optimised behavior when using the 2009 Apple Remote
# Windows port:
* Integration in Windows 7 taskbar
* Experimental playback of .Midi files is supported through fluidsynth's module
# Maemo port:
* Multiple improvements for N900 compliance and efficiency
* Support for HW accelerated video decoding on N900
* Improvements to the maemo/hildon interface
# Misc:
* new sqlite module
* --save-config command line option not supported anymore.
* Fixed and reenabled netsync module.
# Bindings:
* new C++ wrapper around libVLC: libVLCpp
* phonon bindings are now usable
# Removed modules:
* csri codec: use the libass module instead.
* galaktos visualisation: use the new projectM module instead.
* showintf: Useless in Qt and on Mac OS X
* transrate: broken since too long
* Xlib x11, Xlib xvideo, Xlib glx: Use the new XCB modules instead.
* HAL: Use libudev instead.
* gtk_main, gtk_main2, gnome_main, gnome_main2 and pda interfaces
* WinCE, BeOS and qnx interfaces
* opie, qte and qte_main interfaces
* linear_resampler and trivial_resampler are removed: use the ugly one.
* XvMC accelerated modules: use VAAPI instead.
* MGA (Matroska) for Linux: use Linux Framebuffer (or X) instead.
* opengllayer: use macosx_video instead.
* cddax: use cdda instead.
* cmml and tarkin codecs are removed because they are dead codecs.
* realaudio codecs: use libavcodec
* access_file removed in favor of filesystem
* RTMP input and output: use avio module