Yet another blog for JBKempf - Tag - Windows

State of VideoLAN

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Wed, 11 May 2011 12:42:00 +0200

It's been a long time

It's been a long time since the last time I wrote something long enough around here.
But the cool thing is that it is due to being working quite a lot on VLC and different projects...

So, how well is VideoLAN? How well is VLC?

In this post, I will come back on a few points that happened in our last year.

1. VLC

VLC is doing quite well actually, but some things could be better...

1.1.0

VLC 1.1.0 was out last year, in June.

This release was a tremendous success, and probably the one where we've had the best success for launch.

The focus on GPU decoding and some HD codecs was very well welcomed by users, as was the improved Qt interface.

Of course, 1.1.0 had a lot of bugs, since people still refuse to test our betas and RC versions, and as usual, 1.1.1 was ready and out in less than a month.

1.1.x

The 1.1.x-bugfix branch is quite stable and feature-full.

We still have notorious issues with PulseAudio, DVD Unicode path and Font caching on Windows. But all of them have been fixed in the git master.

1.1.0 to 1.1.9 updates

We've done 9 minor additional releases in 11 months from 1.1.0 to 1.1.9. And 1.1.10 is imminent...

While, this is a bit annoying for the users, seeing the poor update mechanism in VLC, this is mostly due to numerous security issues found and fixed in VLC.

This shows that a very small team, like VLC's can care enough to support and have a strong security focus... Even when people are volunteers.

Numbers

Since the switch to SourceForge, for mirroring the downloads, VLC has been downloaded 237 millions of times, in 11 months.

The repartition per country, is the usual one as seen on my numbers post. And 57% of those downloads were done through the upgrade systems of VLC; the rest came from various websites, including the VideoLAN website.

VLC team and development

Unfortunately, the VLC core team is still very small, and I might say smaller than before. The Bus Factor of VLC is still too low.

However, the number of next-to-core VLC developers and the number of VLC contributors has increased quite a bit.

With this increase, the process for reviewing patches and the quality of code entering VLC has improved a lot. This is good for VLC's maturity.

On the same topic, a lot of code has been cleaned up and outdated modules have been removed.

VLC 1.2.x

I will speak of VLC 1.2.x in a later post. But, you should know that VLC 1.2.0 is in a good shape and development is still happening at a very fast pace.

2. VideoLAN

But VLC isn't the only thing happening in VideoLAN.

The VideoLAN association is in a good shape, having fixed all the assets issue we might have had in the past and allowing developers to work together.

Websites and machines

The main VideoLAN website was redesigned and simplified a lot to stop confusing our users. The users feedback was quite good, on this part.

The other services have been cleaned, removed and improved a lot (major software upgrades, spam fighting, uptime improvements).

The main external websites are now:

Software upgrades: libdvbpsi, libdvbcsa

libdvbpsi has seen one major upgrade and a change of license: it is now LGPLv2.1.

libdvbcsa has seen one major upgrade to increase speed.

Phonon-VLC has seen several upgrades in the last year and is now perfectly working on Linux/KDE, Mac and Windows. Most of the rough edges have been fixed now and it will gain maturity this summer, once again. The amazing work from KDE folks, like apachelogger, is to be noted.

libbluray and libaacs

We have welcomed 2 new libraries into VideoLAN: libaacs and libbluray.

Those 2 libraries are focused on Blu-Ray integration for video players, and are still in early development.

Events

On the communication and community work, VideoLAN schedule has been quite full too.

We've been to various events like FOSDEM, CeBIT and LinuxTag.

We've been part of GSoC 2010 and GSoC 2011, like every year since a few years, and we've been also to participating to the first Google Code-In.

And finally, we've celebrated our 10 years of open source in February.

Conclusion

VideoLAN and VLC are now quite mature projects and the last year has re-stated this matter of fact.

VLC 1.1 was quite an important success for the users, and VLC 1.2 is on the way.

However, the fact that the core team is still mainly composed by a handful of volunteers can be worrisome for the future.

We need your help and we are quite confident for the future!

On the road to VLC 1.1.0 part 1: faster

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:29:00 +0100

Let’s go on with the first part of my articles to introduce you to VLC 1.1.0.

Decoding HD

In these days of HD video, speeding of decoding is more and more critical, and VLC has not shine on these aspects lately, especially on H.264.

VLC 1.1 should partly fix those issues, with:

faster CPU decoding, especially on Windows,
GPU decoding on Windows Vista/7 and on Linux,
DSP decoding with OpenMax IL on embedded Linux, like Maemo.

GPU decoding

Using DxVA2 on Windows Vista and 7 and VAAPI on Linux, the decoding stage of VLC framework can now be done by the GPU.

If you have a compatible GPU, especially an nVidia, it should go way faster. VLC should consume less than 10% of your CPU and your CPU shouldn’t be at full speed anymore.

It even works on Ion/Atom machines! This is cool for HTPC.

DSP decoding using OpenMax IL

VLC has a new decoder that can use OpenMax IL codecs for DSP decoding

If this is chinese to you, it means that VLC is almost the same speed and energy consumption than the native player on the N900.

OpenMax IL in VLC can decode and encode most of the codecs: Mpeg2, Mpeg4, H264, H263, WMV1, WMV2, WMV3, RV10, RV20, RV30, RV40 and aac, amr, mp3.

Better audio pipeline

Also, the audio pipeline has been reworked, (and accelerated on ARM devices), so that we less conversion occur and better filtering happen.

Of course, audio is not that critical today, but it just makes VLC a better audio player.

Less Ram and Less threads

VLC 1.1 should use less threads as Rémi wrote.

VLC 1.1 should also use less Ram than 1.0.5, even though, this might not be very visible in all situations.

Conclusion

VLC 1.1.0 should be faster to decode, using less CPU and able to leverage GPU and DSPs; it should use less RAM and less threads. What more do you want ?

Update Part 2: Better

VLC 1.0.3 is out!

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:40:00 +0100

Again? A release? Why ?

Instead of enumerating the features that VLC 1.0.3 brings you, let’s talk about why we had to do yet another release.

Speeding the development

With the 1.0.x branch, we decided that we would speed up the release cycle for minor versions, for a few reasons:

we didn’t want major bugs to stay around for too long,
we find it easier to track regressions,
we can fix crashes and potential security issues in a better timely fashion.

That doesn’t mean we were careless about the quality of older releases, it means that now we care MORE about user feedback and quality. This is unlikely to change…

Therefore, since 1.0.0 has been out, we have had:

1.0.1, 3 weeks after 1.0.0.
1.0.2, 8 weeks after 1.0.1.
1.0.3, 1 month after 1.0.2.

1.0.3 is important for Windows users

On Windows, VLC up to 1.0.2 used a way to scale the video that seems to be unsupported by the lastest drivers for Windows 7 (and now affects some Vista drivers too, because they backported the improvements…) and therefore the quality of the video was very bad and pixelated. VLC 1.0.3 fixes that.

Moreover, since VLC has now earned the logo for Windows 7 compatibility, we had to fix this huge bug. :D

I hope you understand our point and have fun with it.

VLC 64bit running on Windows 7 64bits. 1st!

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:13:00 +0200

64 bits and Windows

64 bits VLC is a "hype" topic those days in our community.

On Windows, we couldn’t have a 64bits native version, because of lack of correct compiler (No, Microsoft Visual doesn’t fit in correct compiler section.

Fortunately, the mingw-w64 hackers are making a new one, and they ROCK. Huge thanks to NightStrike and ktietz!

VLC Win64

So, I have been working a bit on it. And two days ago:

Voilà :D

Don’t expect something complete soon, but still

Update to Vista SP1 (follow up) Failure 0x800F0826

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:36:00 -0800

Here I am, updating some old posts, that I had forgotten about...

Vista Update post

The first one is an update to a one-year-old post about a problem: during Vista SP1 update

Remembering the Issue

The issue was that:

And then Vista tells me it couldn't install my computer because error 0x800F0826.

And I was thinking of waiting for final release to fix it... Of course, it didn't work.

This happens when Vista Ultimate is used on a multiboot machine.

Solution

The solution was to give back the bootloader to Vista Bootloader and not Grub. So, configure again the Vista Bootloader and write changes to disk.

Then reboot and update to Vista SP1.

Reinstore Grub as your main Bootloader using the usual tools :D

MacBook install: triple boot: linux, windows, Mac OS

Jean-Baptiste Kempf — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:17:00 +0100

This details the installation of a MacBook white, shipped in the beginning of 2008.

Set up Mac OS X

Updates

First before anything, update to the latest MacOS X.5.2, and all the necessary downloads... Reboot as many times as needed

Software

Then, install VLC, Firefox 3 béta, Adium and Xcode if you need it.

Done.

Quite easy, so far, no ?

Install Windows XP

Be sure to have your Windows XP SP2 CD and a legit license number.

Bootcamp

Go to spotlight, look for Boot Camp assistant or find it from your Applications folder.

Run it.

Prepare a disk space for Windows ( 16GB is ok, I think )

Quit and re-run it.

Install Windows with your CD Rom inside.

Reboot and wait during all the Windows installation that is long and needs a couple of reboots. Mine did fail once, for no obvious reasons.

Windows XP

Once you have your complete Windows XP installation, you will see a Boot Camp icon on your task bar. Keep it.

Put the Apple OS X CD-ROM in, and let it do all the installation of the drivers. It may require some reboots, but at the end, you have a very new and completely functional Windows XP!

Reboot

Do your Windows Update and reboot and again, and reboot, and again... Until nothing appears there.

Launch the Boot Camp assistant and Default Mac OS HD

Mac OS again

Reboot to mac OS. Be pleased.

Linux

This should work with any distribution and was tested with Debian and Ubuntu

Resize

Go to Applications/Utils and launch Disk Tool

Split and resize the main partition in order to have a new partition that you name Linux and format in HFS. (16GB here)

Check everything.

Reboot on linux

Put your linux live CD and reboot

Press `C` to boot on the CD

Launch your live-CD and install linux.

Install

During the install I deleted the new partition and added two in place:

One root partition /

One swap 1GB

Finish everything, reboot

You should be careful to install your grub in your linux partition and NOT in the MBR, to let reFit do it correctly.

rEFIt

On Mac OS X, install rEFIt and configure it quite quickly.

Reboot and use rEFIt to boot on linux using the "option" key.

Configure linux

You have all you want working except the wireless... Which is a Broadcom BCM4328

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

Find in your Windows partition your wireless drivers:

sudo su

cp -r /media/Windows/WINDOWS/DRVSTORE/bcmwl5_**/ /root/

mv bcmwl5_*** bcmw

cd bcmw

ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

ndiswrapper -l

ndiswrapper -m

modprobe ndiswrapper

ifconfig

Updates

Uncomment what is needed in your sources.list.

Reboot.

Problems

If you have any issues, like not having the linux partition shown anymore, reinstall grub on your linux partition with a live-CD.