VideoLAN will have a booth at SCALE 10x, the Southern California Linux Expo, at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport Hotel this week. The event takes place next week-end from January 20-22. The booth (#74) will be manned by Rémi Denis-Courmont and me. Feel free to drop by and have a look at our forthcoming 2.0 release of VLC media player!

VLC 1.1.12 is now available from videolan.org and through the internal updater. As said in the previous news item, this release fixes the optical audio output broken in the last update as well as on OS X Lion. Additionally, the update includes a fix for a security issue in the included HTTP server (which is admittedly rarely used by most folks) as well as a few other minor improvements, e.g. a crash in the About panel when using the Japanese locale. ...

VLC 1.1.12 will be released within the next week. Most importantly, it includes a fix for the optical audio output (S/PDIF) on OS X Lion, so you can enjoy your multi-channel movies again in a proper way. Additionally, VLC no longer crashes when using the Japanese locale. To give it a try, feel free to fetch a pre-release build from nightlies.videolan.org. Please note that these pre-release builds require Mac OS X 10.6 or later. The actual release still supports OS X 10.5 Leopard of course.

Similar to the playlist view on Windows and Linux, VLC for Mac will get a sidebar in version 1.2. This way, you can easily access your media folders and media shared on the local network and the internet. Future versions will evolve to a full media library. That’s what it looks like so far: More media aggregators will be added until the release. As you would expect, of course you can hide this sidebar if you just need a playlist without any clutter.

In addition to the previously announced improvements, VLC will also make use of OS X Lion’s native fullscreen mode. This way, VLC runs in a separate virtual desktop to your other apps, which simplifies multi-tasking quite a bit. Instead of VLC’s usual fullscreen button, you’ll see Lion’s native control in the upper left corner of VLC’s video window: If you don’t like the native mode, especially since it can be less useful when using multiple physical screens, you can choose to continue to use VLC’s own fullscreen mechanism.

The completely re-worked interface of VLC for Mac will feature a so-called Drop Zone in VLC 1.2. It will always appear within the main window in case that your playlist is empty. While a similar feature was hidden in the timeline background of current VLC releases, we hope that this will make VLC even easier to use. Click here to have a look at a detail of the new main window.

As part of my Google Summer of Code project, I had a look at VLC’s open panel on Mac OS X. After simplying and re-arranging the file tab and adding new options to the Capture tab (used to access webcams and other video input devices), I re-wrote the disk tab which allows you to open DVDs, etc. Starting with the current nightly builds, VLC can autodetect your inserted media as DVD, Audio CD, VCD or SVCD, and well, yes, as Bluray disk. There is no longer a need to select the type of disk, while all previously available features are still there if you need them. ...

Another update for VLC will be available shortly. Here are the Mac-specific improvements with a main focus on full compatibility with Mac OS X Lion. While some GUI fixes and improved handling of the Apple Remote were already silently added to VLC 1.1.9 and 1.1.10, here are some more noticable: Fixed scrolling direction if the input device’s signal is inverted Updated the auhal audio output to the latest API Disabled window restoration for privacy reasons Regrettably, the screen input module will remain unavailable in VLC’s 1.1 series for Mac OS X Lion. ...

In preparation of a future Mac OS X release, I’ve updated VLC’s audio output module for Mac OS X to the latest API. Feel free to get a nightly build and report any problems you might have. Nightly build for Intel-based Macs (32-bit) Nightly build for Intel-based Macs (64-bit), 10.6 or later only Nightly build for PowerPC-based Macs Of course, these builds can be installed alongsite your current VLC installation. ...

As part of the modernization of the Mac OS X interface, one of the major aspects is the feature synchronization between the Qt4 interface used on Windows & Linux and the Mac front-end. A bigger deficit of the current Mac versions is the lack of direct access to various effects included within VLC. Previous posts demonstrate panels for Audio Effects and Track Synchronization. Today, you’ll get an insight on the new Video Effects panel, if you click here. ...