Month: February 2012

Update: VLC 2.0.1 is out! Please make sure that you updated.
A 2.0.1 Q&A is available here.

 

Fullscreen mode doesn’t work on my 2nd monitor anymore… is there a way to fix this?

Yes, this is due to the way the fullscreen mode was implemented by Apple for OS X Lion. To get VLC’s own mode back as well as working output on your 2nd screen, disable “Use the native fullscreen mode on OS X Lion” in the Interface category of VLC’s preferences. You can find the preferences in the “VLC” menu next to the “Quit” item.

Please note that you need to restart VLC after changing this setting!

 

Is there a way to see the both playlist and video at the same time?

Yes, disable the “Show video within the main window” option in the Interface category of VLC’s preferences. You can find the preferences in the “VLC” menu next to the “Quit” item.

Please note that you should stop the current video playback prior to changing this setting!

 

Can I disable the media library?

No, you can’t. However, if you decide not to use it, it’s just a small entry in the sidebar, which takes no processing power and a few kilobytes of memory only.

 

You introduced a new playlist… can I disable it?

Actually, the playlist was introduced in VLC 0.5.0 nine years ago. Every single file you watched with VLC since then was added to the playlist for playback. Possibly you didn’t notice. That’s due to the fact the playlist is emptied on quit. On the next run, there is no way to find out what you played (except for the “Recent files..” menu, which can be optionally disabled).

 

The time line slider looks weird or draws incorrectly. What to do?

This is a minor bug in VLC 2.0, which is already fixed for VLC 2.0.1.

 

The crop menu does strange stuff. It definitely doesn’t crop. What to do?

This is a major bug, which wasn’t reported prior to our final release of VLC 2.0. In the current version, both the aspect ratio menu and the crop menu perform the same action. It will be fixed in VLC 2.0.1.

 

Why is there this annoying “creating font cache” dialog?

When using VLC 2.0 for the first time, we need to check your installed fonts to display subtitles and other On-screen graphics. The short re-appearance of this panel when starting a 2nd clip is already fixed for VLC 2.0.1.

 

Your main window is really big now. How can I make it as small as it used to be?

In VLC 2.0, you can’t. We will include a fix for that in VLC 2.0.1.

 

It seems like I cannot use my accessibility tools with VLC 2.0. What can I do?

Use the gray interface style instead of the black. In fact, the gray style is enabled by default and fully supports common accessibility tools. We added support for these tools to the black interface style in VLC 2.0.1.

 

I’ve got a problem with a tool called Handbrake. What to do?

Please check the vendor’s website. They got a new version of their software as well as documentation on how to solve your issues.

 

So, when will VLC 2.0.1 be out, since it seems to fix all the issues I got?

Probably within the next 8 to 10 days from now (monday, Feb 20).

Update: we had to delay the release slightly. It should be available in week 10, probably friday night.

 

Is there a way to track the progress on VLC 2.0.1?

Sure! Have a look at the 2.0.1 milestone in our bug tracker!

 

I noticed a bug which is NOT mentioned here. What to do?

Have a look at the 2.0.1 milestone in our bug tracker. If your problem isn’t listed there, create a ticket please. To do so, you can log in using any OpenID account including your Google account, so there is no need to register. Please describe your problem as detailed as possible and feel free to attach screenshots or testing material if appropriate. Thank you for your support!

 

Update: VLC 2.0.1 is out! Please make sure that you updated. 
A 2.0.1 Q&A is available here.

Our new major release was published today. Get it from videolan.org.

VLC 2.0 includes the following Mac OS X specific changes:

• Completely re-written single window interface
• 2 interface styles: Lion gray and QTX-like black
• Full access to VLC’s video and audio filters
  • new Audio Effects panel adding Compressor and Spatializer filters
  • new Video Effects panel for color and geometry adjustments, and more
• A new panel to synchronize audio or subtitle tracks with the video
• Re-written Open Disc functionality with automatic media detection
• Native fullscreen support on OS X Lion (can be disabled if desired)
• enhanced AppleScript support
• support for VLC’s lua-based extensions, which which allow you to get info about the current movie from Allociné, post to Twitter, fetch subtitles automatically, etc.

On all desktop platforms, VLC 2.0 includes these major enhancements:

• multi-threaded video decoding based upon ffmpeg-mt
• greatly enhanced Matroska / MKV playback
• updated codecs including 10bit support
• re-written video output with major speed improvements
• enhanced subtitle display
• and much much more

 

VLC 2.0 for Mac requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later. We provide separate packages for PowerPC-based Macs. For Intel-based Macs, there are 3 packages available: separate 32bit and 64bit packages plus a Universal Binary including both variants. Note that the 64bit binary requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later.

Get it here!

Edit: I’ve just published a Q&A article answering the most questions regarding this new version. Click here!

 

Here a few more screenshots:

There are even more screenshots available on flickr.

While preparing VLC’s 2.0 release, I silently updated VLC’s plugin for EyeTV. The new version fixes playback issues with HD content received via DVB through the EyeTV application.

The plugin is available for download now and also compatible with earlier releases of VLC.

Since the release of VLC 2.0 is approaching, I thought it was time to publish its final interface design by Damien Erambert.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf and me started to collect ideas for this interface in the summer of 2008. After slightly chaotic approaches and a few near death experiences for VLC’s Mac OS X port, we’re really proud of the result.

The interface of VLC for Mac as you know it dated back to the 0.7.0 days with various additions until the 0.8.6 release (in 2008!). Since then, it was more or less unchanged with minor optimisations here and there. A re-write called Lunettes appeared in late 2009 and finally converged in VLC for iOS.

VLC 2.0’s interface for Mac is dramatically different from its previous revision, both technically and usage-wise. Playlist and video output share the same window, service discovery modules can be easily accessed through a sidebar and various audio + video filters are available through the respective panels. Besides that, the interface is noticeably faster and easily expandable. Speaking of that, we also added support for VLC’s lua-based extensions, which allow you to get info about the current movie from Allociné, post to Twitter, fetch subtitles automatically, etc.

For the main window, you’ll have the choice between a gray and a black window style.

VLC 2.0 will be available later this week on videolan.org. Enjoy!

NB: Development of the interface wouldn’t have been possible without a stipend from Google Inc. as part of Google Summer of Code 2011, which allowed me to work on it fulltime without worries.

VLC 2.0 on Lion:

 

 

 

 

VLC 2.0 on Snow Leopard and Leopard: