Talk:VLC media player

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Contents 1 proprietary codecs? 2 BBC Shrodinger 3 Purchase by Microsoft 4 VLC and Ubuntu 5 Origins of the Pylon logo? 6 Softy Award 7 VLC and the FIrefox plugin 8 VLC and ISO files 9 Filled with inaccuracies 10 My edits 11 self contradiction 12 Wrong changes 13 VLC media player can set the playing video as wallpaper. 14 Merge VLC and VideoLAN 15 Sources are not someone's opinion 16 Legality 17 Promotional wording? 18 Use of computer resources 19 Wow 20 VLC player uses a rootkit? 21 Screenshot of VLC 22 Version history 23 Clarify abilities

[edit] proprietary codecs?

The issue I'm interested in doesn't seem to be covered here, namely, how does vlc support proprietary codecs? It's GPL, yes? So how does it deal? (The question is, can we rely on this and not have the rug yanked out under us later by some corporate maneuvering?)

Many codecs have been reverse engineered by ffmpeg folks or other VideoLAN folks, that is how. Code license and Codecs patents are not the same at all. 81.57.128.178 00:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

And in general, there's still a little too much "marketing" in this article: I'd suggest "highly portable" could just be "portable", and saying it "gained distinction" is a bit much, and so on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Doom (talk • contribs) 16:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree on the highly portable, gained distinction does not strike me at all 81.57.128.178 00:03, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BBC Shrodinger

Unless I recall incorrectly, VLC supports the Dirac format used by the BBC for their *entire* archives. That's certainly worth including. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.122.209.106 (talk)

I think you recall incorrectly. I see no claim on the VLC features page that it supports Dirac, nor do I find any evidence that the BBC archives are available in Dirac format. —Mcoder 14:34, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, VLC wiki confirm that VLC can read Dirac. 164.129.1.42 12:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it was recently added.[1] It should be available in 0.9.0. —Mcoder 21:58, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Dirac was already supported in previous stable releases of VLC. 0.9.0 just features an update to the VLC module to support newer versions of libdirac (0.6.0 and newer if my memory serves me well). dionoea 13:02, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Purchase by Microsoft

(please forgive my untraditional post position, but I think this deserves attention)
I remember going to the videolan page at one point, only to find that it had been purchased by Microsoft for an undisclosed amount (although the web site still offered it for download; they simply stated that development would discontinue and features would be integrated into the next windows media player). That message has since disappeared, and I can't find any mention of it anywhere. Can someone research what happened and document it in this wikipedia article? Maybe that message on the homepage can be found on archive.org. I'll try to find it their in the mean time.

QUINTIX 02:58, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Nope this is wrong and has never been discussed anywhere in the project. I am on the project team. 86.194.189.77 22:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

They did post that as an April Fools joke. The message was later removed and replaced with another that claimed they were collaborating with Apple. --Mcoder 12:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] VLC and Ubuntu

> sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

look for a line near the top like

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main

and change it to

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted universe multiverse

(and the next one as well - you get the idea) this adds the universe, restricted and multiverse file repositories

vlc is in universe

save and then

>sudo apt-get update

>sudo apt-get install vlc

of course the site you use for update can vary, but the point is that the universe is usually missing from the parameters.

Erm, what the hell? Not relevant, at all, to this page... --Kiand 17:34, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Regarding: vlc is in universe. Well, I should certainly hope so- where else would it be? parallel universe? That would be nothing less than madness.

[edit] Origins of the Pylon logo?

Erm, why does VLC have a traffic cone for a logo? Does anybody know? Erm?

It has nothing to do with the product, I know. I think they just thought it looked cool. Why does Linux have a penguin? Why does Apple name Mac OS X releases after big cats? Who knows... Marketing, I guess.

I was about to ask the same question. I like the VLC media player, but I find the logo extremely out of place - even moreso than other nontechnicaly logos and nomenclature (Tux the Linux penguin, Apple's Tiger/Panther/etc. OS upgrades). Do traffic cones really encourage people to download something? It's downright baffling - then again, the program IS made by the French. 69.118.235.3 20:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

See [2] Apparently drunk college kids collected traffic cones & so VLC decided to adopt it. Someone should write this up in a trivia section if we can get additional confirmation - Karnesky 07:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Just to clarify what the forum post linked to states, the kids in question were members of VIA[3] which is an association which includes the club VideoLAN which of course makes VLC. Hobophobe 23:27, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that libdvdcss has the same icon. [4]

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.64.240 (talk • contribs)

That page is part of the VideoLAN Developers' Website, so has the VideoLAN cone. libdvdcss is one of many programs maintained by the VideoLAN team (it's used as part of VLC), so that's why it's there. developers.videolan.org is the place for the source code, plus information if you want to help with development. Also check out the Wiki. --h2g2bob 17:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Softy Award

Should it be noted that it won a Softy Award from Maximum PC in 2006? Just wondering what happens when something wins an award... --209.12.51.206 19:18, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

If we start adding awards, the article will get ten times longer ;-) --h2g2bob 15:03, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] VLC and the FIrefox plugin

Could somebody please provide a source or link for this comment (part of the article): On Windows, Linux, and some other platforms, VLC provides a Mozilla/Firefox plugin, which lets people view some QuickTime and Windows Media files embedded in websites without using Microsoft or Apple products. Thanks. --Ozzyprv 03:48, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Um, one just needs to look at the Windows & Linux versions. I can vouch for the Win version, as I have installed it on several computers. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 05:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

VideoLAN documentation has it: http://www.videolan.org/doc/play-howto/en/ch04.html#id293936 --H2g2bob 10:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you.--Ozzyprv 13:24, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] VLC and ISO files

VLC can play or access iso files? I think you can't say it can access iso files because it is not a iso editor. VLC handles a .iso file as a single media file.

VLC does do ISO files, using libcdio. I don't have an .iso to hand for me to check this on, but I'm pretty sure it's a case of just opening the .iso file, eg vlc dvd://the_iso.iso --h2g2bob 15:02, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Filled with inaccuracies

A lot of "features" that are "only in VLC" as stated on this article are also in Mplayer/xine/gstreamer or any project based on those. This article NEEDS some serious cleaning up. Liquidtenmillion 14:50, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

You are welcome to ;)

I changed a lot the article lately, there is no "only in VLC".

[edit] My edits

I've had a go at editing bits of this article to fix it for the {{tone}} tag, which I've now removed. However, there's still a few bits where I'm not sure what to do:

• Interfaces - I moved that into Design Principles, but does it need it's own section, or to be moved? If so, where!?
• Readable formats - I have no idea what to do with this - is it OK as it is, should it be removed? Should it be made into a table or something? I don't know.

Any comments welcome. Also, feel free to fix these yourself :-) --h2g2bob 14:55, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] self contradiction

"VLC supports all codecs and all file formats supported by ffmpeg. Notably, the codec pack built into VLC is so comprehensive that in some specific cases, such as Vorbis, DVD Video and DivX playback as well as parsers for Ogg and Matroska file formats, it is the only application that can play the video and audio files "out of the box". However, this feature is not unique to VLC, as any player, including MPlayer and Xine, using the ffmpeg libraries can play those formats without need for external codecs."

How can it be the *only* app to do this if the feature is not unique to this app? --Danny Rathjens 21:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that obviously doesn't make sense. I removed it from the article, but feel free to reword it. —J. M. 02:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong changes

User:Arite commits from 25 april, 2007 are wrong.

A VLC media player developer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.129.1.42 (talk)

What exactly is wrong? https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/632 seems to indicate that Shorten does not work. RealVideo (RV40) is listed as a project for Summer 2007, meaning it's not done yet. --Mcoder 16:24, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

There was written that "Real Video 9 and 10 are not supported. VLC media player can only play the audio on some .rm files." Moreover, RV10, RV20 are realvideo and are correctly played. RealVideo is not RV40 only...

Moreover the Nut is supported, since libavformat uses it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.129.1.42 (talk)

"Real Video 9 and 10 and not supported." - True.
"RV10, RV20 are realvideo and are correctly played." - Also true, but these formats are rarely used.
"Moreover the Nut is supported, since libavformat uses it." - Does this actually work? Since VLC has many of its own demuxers, it doesn't always use libavformat, so I never assume VLC supports a format just because libavformat does. --Mcoder 13:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, every format supported in libavformat should be usable in VLC.

[edit] VLC media player can set the playing video as wallpaper.

How can I do it? Wikifan21century 05:37, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

On Windows I have an option on my right-click menu called "Wallpaper". Selecting this sets the video track to be displayed as the wallpaper. I'm not sure how to achieve the same effect on a non-Windows OS because I use other media players under those. Everlone 14:54, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

It's not possible on other OSes (of course this kind of question would be better suited for the VideoLAN forums). dionoea 13:05, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge VLC and VideoLAN

I am against the merge since VideoLAN is a team project that host many software projects, and VLC is one of the most known one, but not the only one.

Agreed. However, the VideoLAN page needs to be expanded to mention more of those other projects (linking to their pages, of course). —Tom W.M. 06:36, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreeing with above - expand the VideoLAN page, but as the VLC media player is well known it should remain in its own article. Think outside the box 14:41, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with keeping the two articles separate. While VLC is a part of the VideoLAN project, I think that it is significant enough to warrant its own article. -JM, 29 July 2007, 22:17 PDT

[edit] Sources are not someone's opinion

VLC used to stand for "VideoLan Client", but that meaning is deprecated[1].

The Source used to state this argument is just a opinion of a person. The way the sentence is writen now is like it is a fact. A good source to state this sentence would be a web page from the developers/owers of vlc themself.

The only thing i could find is that VideoLan server is decrapted not the name VLC. And in my opinion decrapted would mean it is no longer a Client in this case it stil is a Video Lan client.

Now a days a lot off applications are hard to seperate from client and server.

http://wiki.videolan.org/Intellectual_Properties states the official source. Moreover, the blog of this person belongs to a developer of vlc media player. Please revert your edit.

[edit] Legality

I think the article needs a discussion of the legality of VLC in various jurisdictions, particularly pertaining to DeCSS and the provisions of the DMCA.80.175.118.157 09:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that already covered in the libdvdcss article? --Goldfndr 05:53, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Promotional wording?

I'm concerned about the wording of certain pieces such as "It is one of the most platform-independent players available" which sounds like advertising. Perhaps a change to "VLC is platform independent" to say the same thing without sounding like a promotion. Reading just the first few paragraphs of the article I have found a few examples of this type of wording. Certainly not a big deal, it just sounds less professional the way it's currently written. Efeinberg 19:20, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with your reasoning (if it is indeed one of the most platform-independent players available, that's a fact, not an advertisement). The comment is sourced in the article. If you take issue with the source, I'd look into that. Again, however, it's not as if the article reads "It's great software in virtue of its platform-independence". If an article on a type of car included the fact that said car was the fastest in the world, I wouldn't read that as advertising. If accepted guidelines are against me here, however, feel free to press on; I don't care if the article is changed or not, but maybe my thoughts may influence how you take the sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.28.18.17 (talk) 18:40, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Use of computer resources

This is a self-interested question, but I believe it is of wide significance as well. The reason I mostly use Winamp is that it doesn't eat up much of my resources while playing music (this changes with video, I guess). So, how power-hungry is VLC relative to other players? Will my 256MB laptop be able to execute its Web browsing and document-editing well while playing a video clip on VLC? --Cryout (talk) 21:17, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

It is usually less consuming for MPEG2, 4 and MP3, but higher for H264.

[edit] Wow

To finally know the person behind the media player, how cool is that!

Have a wonderful day, God Bless...........

Rianon Burnet 14:37, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] VLC player uses a rootkit?

When playing back xvid bicubic encoded 720x576x25fps content, VLC Player consistently shows 3-4% CPU usage on 800/1800MHz AMD Mobile Sempron CPU laptop, according to several measurement tools I tried. This is objectively impossible on this kind of low-end CPU machine for simple lack of computing power (by the way MS's WMP10 uses 65%, DivX player uses 45%).

Therefore VLC player must use some kind of hidden process for the actual decoding and render-to-display work, a hidden process whose existance and resource comsumption is not visible in any task manager or rootkit discovering utility I tried (so it must be a very sophisticated code).

Maybe VLC Player is a well-intended software, but the use of process hiding (rootkit-like) techniques is inherently dangerous and risky, because such invisible processes can be hijacked by the hackers to spread actual malware in stealth mode (see the Sony rootkit scandal).

This hazard should be mentioned in the WP article for the sake of security-conscious users. 91.83.23.150 (talk) 11:48, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I am a VLC developer and I trust the guy making the binary releases for not putting rootkit in it, and the FFmpeg developers for writing highly optimized code. Feel free to download the source code, check it, run it, and compare the speed. --funman —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.171.216.191 (talk) 18:34, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

There are no rootkits in VLC, the source is opened and you can check it by yourself and rebuilding it. The fact that VLC uses overlay and highly optimised DivX decoders can explain it. Moreover, if you enable postprocessing on VLC, you will see the CPU usage go up.

[edit] Screenshot of VLC

Regarding "Screenshot of VLC (GUI in French)" -- why is this in french? am i reading the french wikipedia here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.252.24 (talk) 02:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to add another one. VLC being originated from a french school, and France being the most represented country among its developers (since some students of this school have a project to work on VLC) I just find that cool.

Looks like someone's already changed it... Nuwewsco (talk) 19:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Version history

Wouldn't it make more sense to simply remove this section? atm there's almost no information for versions prior to 0.8.6e - it's just a relatively large, blank table; and even if it was filled in, it would hardly be encyclopedic (WP:NOTE)?

If there's no objections...? Nuwewsco (talk) 19:43, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the table has more contents than it had in March, but I don't see the point of it. Really, even if it had all the fields with question marks filled in, it wouldn't serve any good purpose in the article. Why have this in an encyclopedia? — Marvin ^talk 18:21, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree with that (now removed). ISTM that this is the sort of information that really ought to be on the VLC WWW site, rather than here anyway Nuwewsco (talk) 19:38, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clarify abilities

I use and like VLC but am also aware of its limitations, however this article has claims for what VLC can do that might apply to versions from 2006 and 2007 and no longer apply due to various factors.

For what it's worth here are my thoughts:

There are several APIs that can connect to VLC and use its functionality:

Should this clarify that APIs are for programmers and not ordinary users?

On Windows, Linux, and some other platforms, VLC provides a NPAPI plugin

Isn't this a plugin for use by programmers and not users? Also is it still true in May 2008? I read the cited source and the part up to "The Mozilla plugin" could be considered Ok for an advanced user, but what follows is either out of date, or for a script writer or webmaster, certainly not for an ordinary user. The plugin alone does not allow the user to view contents, teh user must write some detailed javascript calls to access th VLC objects. Also the advice for the Windows mozilla plugin does not work for 0.8.6f on Vista, and maybe not for other Windows systems.

VLC can read several formats, depending on the operating system VLC is running on.

I feel the article should qualify what is meant by "can read", as I know that this depends on more than just the operating system, it depends on the media server too.

I just noticed that the first MMS wikilinks to Multimedia Messaging Service - I suspect it should link to Microsoft Media Services, i.e. the "MMS:" protocol. VLC includes MMS in its list of protocol in its File / Open Network Stream / dialog.

RTSP is missing from the input protocols - is this correct? I have managed to get VLC to start playing a rtsp stream (BBC Radio 1 with Real Audio ".ra" extension), although it breaks up after a minute or so. In fact why are all the "UDP, HTTP, RTP, RTSP, MMS," protocols listed under output? Doesn't VLC use them on input?

-84.222.3.119 (talk) 23:31, 2 May 2008 (UTC)