VLC for Android

49th VideoLAN report So, after two busy weeks, you can get a new weekly report about the VLC and VideoLAN communities! Releases Android 10 days ago, we released VLC for Android 2.0. After a long period of development, we're finally at a ... [More] release that supports more features than the old 0.9.x versions and the 1.7.x versions. UWP And last week, we released the new VLC for Windows 10, numbered 2.0 too. It is a continuation of the work we did for WinRT, the kickstarter, focused on Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows RT. The new application should supersede the old one. Features VLC In the last 2 weeks, we improved the ChromeCast support, notably to work on transmitting the pause status and the title between the device and VLC, and we also changed the interface to scan for devices, since it was a bit confusing. We added support for some uncompressed video format inside MKV, for the AlbumArtist meta-tag inside mp4 and we now support more MicroDVD subtitles styles. Our new Kwallet module was transitioned from using libKwallet to DBus. This will be better to support both Qt4 and Qt5 applications with libVLC, because those versions are not ABI compatible. The core gained a new stream FIFO API, with functions like vlc_stream_fifo_New, vlc_stream_fifo_Queue, vlc_stream_fifo_Write and vlc_stream_fifo_Close. This change, in addition to the new chained_demux implementation in the core, removes the need for stream_Demux (now removed). We also improved the security when loading of DLLs on Windows. And for Android, AudioTrack DTS pass-through was implemented. Finally, numerous fixes were pushed, notably for Direct3D11, our contribs, some in the core, youtube playback regressions, the Mac OS interface, crashes for MMDevice device, and for the MediaCodec decoders. And more that I forget... Android As I said, we released 2.0, and we also pushed 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 to fix the most important crashes reported. WinRT Same, we released 2.0, the first beta version of the UWP application. Fixup releases are coming soon! iOS On iOS, we pushed the promised update and we had a few refactoring, notably on the network login view. libbluray The libbluray code was modified to support 8.3 filenames, like in AVCHD directories we see in camcorders. This is the first step for full AVCHD support in VLC That's all for those weeks! Not too bad See you soon! [Less]

Reimplementing condition variable with futex on Linux and Windows.

VLC for Windows 10 beta If you follow this blog, after a long development period (and a lot of issues), VideoLAN is finally releasing the beta of VLC for Windows 10, numbered 2.0.0. This beta is the first version targeting Windows 10 and running ... [More] on the Universal Windows Platform, aka UWP. Features The Windows 10 application has all the features available on iOS and Android and a few more. Like the classic VLC, it supports a very large number of formats, but it also has a medialibrary triaging audio and video media, a full player with subtitles, audio/video synchronisation, an audio mini-player and a network shares browser! We also support Cortana, Live Tiles, Pining and Continuum! The only important missing feature is DVD/Bluray playback and TV tuners that are not yet possible through the UWP APIs. And of course, it's completely open source, available under the GPLv2.0 license! You should try it now! Video Library We have a medialibrary, with video management: and a video player with subtitles, subtitles download, chapters, audio/video sync: We even support a PiP mode to browse your library while playing a video: Audio Library We have, of course, audio management, sorted by albums, artists, and you can get detailed information about artists. Dark Mode If you live in a cave, you might prefer our Dark Theme: The accent color is, of course, modifiable and it will change the VLC cone color too! Network We support DLNA/UPnP, Windows Shares, FTP(S), SFTP, NFS protocols to discover and browse your local servers or NAS. Windows 10 We support some Windows 10 specific features, like Cortana (supported in English and French), Live Tiles, Artists and Album pining to the start menu, Drag & Drop, and Continuum, if you have a Lumia 950 or Lumia 950XL Under the hood, we use some technologies exclusive to Windows 10, like some DirectX 11.1 features for video and low-latency audio. This should give you enhanced battery life and allow smooth 4K playback. Platforms supported This release works now on: Windows 10 desktop and tablets, Windows 10 mobile, but also, when a few remaining issues are fixed: Xbox one, Surface Hub, Hololens. And, in a few weeks, we will update the application to also support: Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1. Important remarks NotaBene 0: This application is NOT replacing the desktop application. NotaBene 1: This application is a new entry on the store compared to the 2 WinRT applications, because Microsoft could not offer a simple upgrade path. NotaBene 2: Please report bugs! NotaBene 3: the Xbox one version should be out this summer, when the store is open to 3rd party UWP applications; the Windows 8.1/Windows Phone 8.1 version should come during the next month, if all goes as expected. Here is a photo of the application running on the Xbox 1: And a gif on the Hololens: You should try it now! [Less]

Today, I was debugging an strange issue in LAVA while trying to boot a board. I was under the impression that the board was not receiving all the u-boot commands that LAVA was sending. The serial connection is accessible on the network by ser2net. I ... [More] discovered that ser2net can log inputs, outputs or both to a file: TRACEFILE:trace1:/var/log/ser2net.2000.log 2000:telnet:0:/dev/ttyUSB0:9600 tr=trace1 ser2net will print both inputs and outputs characters to /var/log/ser2net.2000.log. Going back to my issue, the logfile was: sseetteennvv aauuttoollooaadd nnoo sseettenv initrd_high '0xffffffff' When the characters are doubled, it means that ser2net has sent and received that character. That's what I was expected as the board is supposed to echo all characters. However, the characters are suddenly no longer doubled: the board is not echoing. This does explain why the board was not booting. The question remains: why is the serial line breaking after a random number of characters. [Less]

VLC for Android 2.0 After a long development period, VideoLAN is finally releasing VLC for Android 2.0. Our last major release was 1.7.0, more than 6 months ago! VLC for Android 2.0 is a major update to VLC for Android, that adds numerous ... [More] features, notably: support for new releases of Android, network shares browsing and playback, video playlists, subtitles downloader, pop-up video view and support for multiwindows, an optional history panel, favorite network shares and URLs, and a merge between the Android TV and Android packages. We also offer faster decoding, using our new asynchronous hardware decoder and we've updated most of our codecs and formats support. Download it now! Features So here is an overview of the new features. Permissions and Android N The first good news is that we have decreased the number of dangerous permissions that VLC was using. The only permission that is now considered as dangerous is the access to media files, which is expected for a media player. On top of that, we support the Android N runtime permissions: And we still support Android 2.2! Network Browsing One of the most requested features, since the creation of the application, was the playback of network shares and local servers in VLC. It's mostly done We support DLNA/UPnP, Windows Shares, FTP(S), SFTP, NFS protocols to discover and browse your local servers or your NAS. And we also detect associated subtitles over the network! Subtitles Download If you want to download subtitles directly from OpenSubtitles, without going to the website, it's now directly integrated in the application: Video Playlists As we've done for audio, we support basic video playlists. Pop-up Another often requested feature, was the popup-video view, mostly for tablets. It's now implemented and we do support Samsung MultiWindow and LG Dual Window extensions to allow 2 applications on the same screen. History The history feature that was present in the 0.9.x days is also back, but can be disabled. You can see now all the features in our menu! Advanced Options We've improved the options of the video player and we simplified the landscape/portrait modes TV The Android TV interface has been improved and ​was merged to​ the same package as the normal Android one." Therefore, if your device form-factor is more suited to the TV look or you just prefer it, you can select it in the preferences. Here is the audio player on the TV: RTL and CTL Finally, we've done a lot of work to support Right-To-Left and Complex Text Layout subtitles. As you can see here with Malayalam: We also improved the interface to support RTL layouts. Thanks Thanks a lot for the support, hoping that you will love this release. Download it now! [Less]

48th VideoLAN report Another week passes by and here is a new weekly report about the VLC and VideoLAN communities! Features VLC Like our previous week, most of the work was focused on stabilizing features and bug fixing. Therefore, the ... [More] changelog will be quite short too. :D A new type of module was introduced, named demux filter; they are used to filter or intercept demuxer controls commands and demuxing. The first use case of this type of module is the ChromeCast demux filter, to show the correct playback time when using the ChromeCast, that we merged this week too. Some work was done to support the next version of macOS: Sierra. This notably concerns the input capture plugin. Also, on MacOS X, the interface for renderers was merged. The 2 SPDIF modules, ac3 and dts have been merged into a single one. In the core, we've seen fixes for UTF-8 support, media discoverers API, libVLC parsing calls memleaks, tests, buildsystem and Windows threads. Android On Android, we've done the same kind of bugfixing as last week, and we have released 2.0.0 RC4 and pushed it on the store. Not many issues are remaining for the release, now. WinRT/UWP On WinRT, we are also in the bugfixing phase, with a lot of commits to make sure the application does not crash too much. Indeed, we're closing to an open beta release, but the number of crashes was still too high, especially when using the application for a long time. We also fixed the background audio support on Windows 10 Mobile phones; and reworked the thumbnailer. The application should be opened in beta to everyone soon. iOS The iOS application got a few fixes, notably for remote playlists and XDCAM support and we're pushing an update named 2.7.8 this week. That's it for this week, stay tuned! [Less]

47th VideoLAN report A new week, a new weekly report about the VLC and VideoLAN communities! Features VLC After an intense previous week, most of the work was focused on stabilizing features and bug fixing. Therefore, the changelog will be ... [More] quite short. :D In the core, we pushed multiple fixes for preparsing and input slaves and we added tests for those features. We also fixed issues in the media discoverer code. On the modules side, we notably had fixes in the bluray, the oss, the adaptive streaming, the OS X video output and the UPnP modules. Finally, we added an OpenGL provider for Windows, in order to add back the support for OpenGL visualisations, like projectM. Android Same story on Android, we focused on fixing issues, to prepare the release 2.0. We pushed RC2 and RC3 on the store to fix crashes reported by the first set of devices where the application was pushed. We redesigned a bit the speed setting, as requested in our Google+ group. WinRT On WinRT, the focus was also on bug fixing and preparing a release. The more important bugs were on Cortana integration and metadata management. However, we also activated the downloading of subtitles from Internet, notably the OpenSubtitles website. We also improved the browsing of local network servers, similar to what we did to the Android port. That's it for this week, stay tuned! [Less]

46th VideoLAN report A new week, a new weekly report about the VLC and VideoLAN communities! Vienna Meeting This week-end was the Q2 meeting of the VideoLAN asso, hosted in Vienna, by PSPDFKit. We gathered to fix pending issues for VLC ... [More] 3.0, and we worked on the mobile apps and the VideoLAN server infrastructure. It was a great week-end! Features VLC During the week-end, we released VLC 2.2.4, to fix 2 security issues, one in VLC, one in a 3rd party library! It is already released and pushed to our users. Core and libVLC The input core was modified to support network slaves, aka external subtitles or audio tracks, over the network. In the past, it was only working for local subtitles. The libVLC API added for this is called libvlc_media_player_add_slave. The core threading code was improved for recent versions of Windows: it can use futeces and generic semaphore, starting from Windows 8. We also added the libvlc_media_player_(get|set)_role calls for libVLC, to set the media role (notification, video, audio) that are reflected to the audio output mixer. This is notably used for the PulseAudio output. Finally, the preparser was reworked to allow interruption and have a default timeout. Applications can also now cancel their preparsing requests with libvlc_MetadataCancel. Modules The Qt interface received the first renderers selection dialog. You should be able to detect your ChromeCast from this interface, and stream to it. The UPnP module was improved to support more type of servers, more metadata per item and the code was heavily cleaned. (The library we use is still very bad though). The OS X interface got new HUD panels and widgets for the dark mode. Finally, we added the first AppStream Metadata for Linux distributions, a few Qt minor changes, support for GoPro highlights chapters in MP4 and some OS X interface fixes. Android Nothing very exciting on Android, just the beta 1.9.13, 2.0.0-rc1 and 2.0.0-rc2 releases, pushed to the store. For 1.9.13, we mostly focused on activating subtitles over the network, and improving the support for subtitles. 2.0.0-rc1 was mostly focused on fixing the UPnP support and 2.0.0-rc2 was minor fixes for bugs reported by several beta testers. WinRT On WinRT, we reimplemented the playlists management, and the support for playlists in the PlaybackService. The Search page, that was hidden, is now visible again, and we support favorites for streams and servers, like the Android version. The notifications and toasts were reworked to be less intrusive, and Cortana support was improved. Finally, the new equalizer got a facelift. And of course, numerous bugs were fixed, so we can have a proper release soon! That's already quite a bit for last week, see you next! [Less]

Reimplementing condition variable with futex on Linux and Windows.

VLC developers will be tending a booth in cooperation with the VideoLAN foundation at the upcoming Hong Kong Open Source Conference on 24-25 June 2016. Follow the link to sign up. See you there.