VLC - Yet another blog for JBKempf

Monday, August 24 2009

VLC 1.0.0, 1.0.1, a backward look

By JBK on Monday, August 24 2009, 01:22 - VideoLAN

VLC 1.0.0, 1,5 months ago

So, VLC 1.0.0 was released almost 7 weeks ago, at the time of this writing.

VLC 1.0.1, the bugfix version of 1.0.0, was released almost 4 weeks ago.

VLC 1.0.0 was downloaded around 13 million of time, during the 3 first weeks of the release, and that is a very high download rate. VLC 1.0.1 is around 13 million downloads too.

Was VLC 1.0.0 a success ?

Well, YES, because:

we had a lot of downloads,
many good reviews,
a lot of testing was done (more than 3 months between feature freeze and release!),
server hold still (even after the 1,3Million visitor in the first day),
no major regressions and issues.

But, we had a few issues that were important:

WMV could have no audio with low caching values,
mpeg2 videos could freeze the video after seek,
some flv videos were unseekable,
some VC1 video could crash the windows build.

That is why we released 1.0.1 quite soon after 1.0.0.

3 weeks between 1.0.0 and 1.0.1

Is that much?

Well, yes/no.

The first week after the release was totally focused on maintaining the servers running, answering the mails, and press (not much of those, fortunately).

Then, the second week was compilation of the main issues and tryout to fix most of them.

And then, you got your 3 weeks time, with the win32 codecs updates and setting up the release…

1.0.2 soon?

Well, as far as I see, except some SSA updates and v4l2 fixes, there is no rush to release…

If an important security issue arrives, then we will release a 1.0.2, but no roadmap is set yet.

Conclusion

As far as I am concerned, VLC 1.0.0 was a great success, let’s hope 1.1 will be as good!

3 comments

Friday, July 10 2009

VLC 1.0.0 goes above 3 million in less than 3 days!

By JBK on Friday, July 10 2009, 00:43 - VideoLAN

1.0.0
VLC

UPDATE: After exactly 3 days, we are near 3.5Million

As you should know now, VLC 1.0.0 was out 61 hours ago (2 and a half day ago).

In order to not kill the servers, the download counting was deactivated. After reactivation and recounting, VLC 1.0.0 has been downloaded more than 3 million times in less than 3 days.

The VideoLAN website has seen more than 1,5 million unique visitors (and 0 advertisement) and around as many have downloaded through external websites directly linking to our repository.

On the first 48 hours, the counting was around 2,3 million.

Of course, this is a bit less than Mozilla Firefox, but still those are impressive numbers.

no comment

Tuesday, July 7 2009

VLC 1.0.0 is out.

By JBK on Tuesday, July 7 2009, 12:52 - VideoLAN

You know that this blog has been a bit quiet, because I had a lot of work to do.

This new version includes:

Live recording
Instant pausing and Frame-by-Frame support
Finer speed controls
New HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0, …)
New formats (Raw Dirac, M2TS, …) and majors improvements in many formats…
New Dirac encoder and MP3 fixed-point encoder
Video scaling in fullscreen
RTSP Trickplay support
Zipped file playback
Customizable toolbars
Easier encoding GUI in Qt interface
Better integration in Gtk environments
MTP devices on linux
AirTunes streaming
New skin for skins2 interface

Have fun!

5 comments

Thursday, May 28 2009

VLC 1.0.0 RC 2

By JBK on Thursday, May 28 2009, 14:14 - VideoLAN

1.0.0 RC2

VLC 1.0.0 RC2 (Second Release Candidate) is out!

As all releases of VLC 1.0.0, it introduces:

many new codecs (True HD, DD+, AES3, RV40, SCTE-20, dirac…)
various playback core improvements (frame-by-frame, live-recording, instant pausing, etc…)
interface improvements
interface customization
better multi-channel audio support
better subtitles support
global hotkeys
better integration in GTK environments
better integration in KDE
and so many other bugfixes

Skins contest

And there is a Skins2 contest going on!

Please spread the news!

4 comments

Saturday, May 23 2009

last.fm, libre.fm and scrobbling

By JBK on Saturday, May 23 2009, 11:09 - VideoLAN

Introduction

You may have followed the ongoing dispute around last.fm. You may also have no idea what scrobbling is (it is a way to post the music names what you listen to).

Some alternative exists.

VLC and last.fm

VLC since 0.9.x can scrobble on all platforms to last.fm database and website. Since it was cool addition, and VLC gets more and more audio support, this seemed a good idea and people liked it.

VLC and libre.fm

Some of you know the alternative to last.fm: libre.fm. It is a free software platform that gets your scrobble and will display them, like last.fm.

So far, it is VERY limited compared to last.fm

VLC 1.0.0 and libre.fm

VLC 1.0.0 is able to be configured to scrobble to any scrobbler (like libre.fm): Configuration of VLC to use libre.fm.

Position of VLC team

So far, the default stays on last.fm, but the possibility to scrobble to something else is here. We will see how the future goes.

Do as your heart tells you and share your music!

no comment

Want to include vlc in your Qt application?

By JBK on Saturday, May 23 2009, 10:36 - VideoLAN

Qt and VLC

Well, we have a very easy howto for you: libVLC in Qt .

This will output the video inside the widget that you want using QWidget::winId() method.

This has been tested on Linux and Windows, using libVLC 0.9.9.

Need

If you can't build your application easily, remember to install libvlc-dev or to use the SDK for windows from the .zip files of the releases!

Participate

Don't hesitate to complete this!