VideoLAN Considering Options for VLC as Mac Developers Disappear

[applesupergeek]

Well to be honest I'm pretty sure that apple is going to have a tough time ahead. Windows 7 has caught up to, and in some cases BEATS Snow Leopard. I'm currently finding myself using W7 much much more than Snow Leopard.

Maybe now that Apple has a foothold in the mobile phones sector and the music sector they might give up computers? Or maybe make a dual platform that works with Windows.

I don't mean to be offensive and I apologize if you take offense but what a load of rubbish. I 'll give you credit for being sly and ironic, but anyway you cut it saying that what with their mobile phone and music prowess apple will "give up computers" is nothing short of provocative.

But maybe M$ after years of monopoly and gazilionth of dollars poured in windows mobile platforms, horrible drm, and failed music business are most probably give up computing altogether.

You come here with this mocking tone, but you are really embarrassing yourself for disregarding a company that outwitted all the established mobile phone players AND the music business AND the computer operating systems business. That is nothing short of genius. If you said to anyone 6-7 years ago that apple would DOMINATE both cd (music) sales AND the hardware that will run them AND the mobile phone market most industry analyst and pundits (the morons at engadget say) would laugh in ridicule. Well, who's laughing now.

 

[AAPLaday]

But maybe M$ after years of monopoly and gazilionth of dollars poured in windows mobile platforms, horrible drm, and failed music business are most probably give up computing altogether.

You cant say horrible DRM when up until recently iTunes was riddled with it.

 

[applesupergeek]

Every video players plays every codec on Windows, it's one of the reasons why I mainly use Windows when I turn on my MacBook. I haven't tried QT in a while, but I remember needing to pay for the ability to watch a video in full screen. That's a big no to me.

You are misinformed there, windows plays "every file" only if you keep downloading all the codecs on the globe, and then windows media player would only perform very mediocrly with most codecs.

Hence most current an past windows users (the later being myself) have vlc to play everything for them instead. And vlc is open source and available for mac too.

Plus the new architecture of Quicktime X both outwards and inwards, runs circles and circles and circles around the stupidity that is window media player, a half baked effort at a media manager/jukebox-video player-music player-shop-shill for everything MS. I don't know why the idiots in MS never thought of the brilliant idea of a separate video and music player, but there you have it, I kind of answered my question, it's usual for them to miss the bloody obvious.

 

[inlovewithi]

You haven't used QuickTime in a long time, then. Full-screen is no longer exclusive to QuickTime Plus.

As for "every video player plays every codec in Windows", that's only true if you install all of the codecs required to play each type of video. That's no different than how the setup works in QuickTime: you have ot install additional codecs to get certain types of files to play back.

Let me make a correction. Every video plays with every video player when you install k-lite codec pack, there's no mac equivalent for that and that's a big negative cause your video player choices are very limited. In Windows I've tried out countless of video players, but the one that came out on top is Media Player Classic Home Cinema. Pure simplicity won out, even though I wish it was a little prettier. Number 2 is ZoomPlayer, because you can bookmark any part of the video, but after the trial you have to pay for it. I do not like Windows Media Player.

 

[blackmoses]

You are misinformed there, windows plays "every file" only if you keep downloading all the codecs on the globe, and then windows media player would only perform very mediocrly with most codecs.

Hence most current an past windows users (the later being myself) have vlc to play everything for them instead. And vlc is open source and available for mac too.

Plus the new architecture of Quicktime X both outwards and inwards, runs circles and circles and circles around the stupidity that is window media player, a half baked effort at a media manager/jukebox-video player-music player-shop-shill for everything MS. I don't know why the idiots in MS never thought of the brilliant idea of a separate video and music player, but there you have it, I kind of answered my question, it's usual for them to miss the bloody obvious.

Truth be told, neither Windows Media Player nor QuickTime Player are fully satisfactory. Hence the reason why VLC is always one of my first installs on any new system.

 

[KaneBaker]

Could VLC's use as a player of copyrighted material (that's been downloaded illegally) partially explain Apple's lack of cooperation?

I strictly use Quicktime for pirated movies.
How does one player differ from another on those terms, this makes no sense.

Both play the same pirated files.

 

[inlovewithi]

You are misinformed there, windows plays "every file" only if you keep downloading all the codecs on the globe, and then windows media player would only perform very mediocrly with most codecs.

Hence most current an past windows users (the later being myself) have vlc to play everything for them instead. And vlc is open source and available for mac too.

Plus the new architecture of Quicktime X both outwards and inwards, runs circles and circles and circles around the stupidity that is window media player, a half baked effort at a media manager/jukebox-video player-music player-shop-shill for everything MS. I don't know why the idiots in MS never thought of the brilliant idea of a separate video and music player, but there you have it, I kind of answered my question, it's usual for them to miss the bloody obvious.

You just have to install K lite codec pac once, and every video player plays every video. There are way too many video players for Windows to list, so I don't know why you're focusing on Windows Media Player. I haven't used Windows Media Player in probably over 5 years, but when I do it seems ok.

 

[50548]

Could VLC's use as a player of copyrighted material (that's been downloaded illegally) partially explain Apple's lack of cooperation?

This is irrelevant, as any player can play downloaded material...not to mention that, in MANY jurisdictions, downloading material strictly for personal use is NOT illegal.

 

[applesupergeek]

You cant say horrible DRM when up until recently iTunes was riddled with it.

It did because everyone had to make concessions to record execs initially.

But we have only apple to thank because if it hadn't been for their clout and Steve's toughness and vision, we'd still have drm. They were by far the prime force for making this idiocy stop, they pushed for it, and they pushed hard, not just with profit in mind, but with a broader sense of the future of music and the consumer. Every music fan (and a lot of people in Apple are huge music fans no doubt) who every had to deal with drm knows it was such a monstrosity, and I am sure apple themselves knew they would have to eventually push it out, which they did thanks to their power.

On the other hand, our favorite people at redmond where building ground up frameworks in their os, and including drm in core processes...It's still evident in that say some drm ladden sites wont let you play drm material such as video because os x hasn't an in built drm system like ms.

Now this might seem as not such a big a deal, or let me rephrase that, somehting that we would have got anyway -no drm-, but history and that includes tec history, is never like that, for some reason a wrong twist is taken and then consequent generations have to face a stupid decision by previous people, with the biggest case in point of course the suffering of billions of people around the world to a virtual monopoly of bad software in ms. So, let's not take it for granted, because if it hadn't been for apple these control freaks at Redmond, would never, ever have allowed non drm to be the norm...for crying out loud they once envisioned the web as the msn solely...

 

[50548]

If VLC sucks, I am not sure how to describe QuickTime. Maybe pathetic?

VLC has allowed us to view content QT does not support, that list is very long. Additionally VLC is /was free, Apple shamelessly charges $30.

Sorry, since SL came out QT is absolutely free.

Another thing: Almost NOBODY needs VLC when WMP and Perian are available for seamless playback via QT. In fact, I don't even remember using VLC in a long time. QT with those plug-ins and MPlayer do the job just fine.

 

[applesupergeek]

You just have to install K lite codec pac once, and every video player plays every video. There are way too many video players for Windows to list, so I don't know why you're focusing on Windows Media Player. I haven't used Windows Media Player in probably over 5 years, but when I do it seems ok.

I was just trying to give you the heads up that os x is an excellent option, and far superior to windows, if you give it a go. And vlc does not need any codecs in either windows or mac.

 

[VoR]

Plus the new architecture of Quicktime X both outwards and inwards, runs circles and circles and circles around the stupidity that is window media player, a half baked effort at a media manager/jukebox-video player-music player-shop-shill for everything MS.

I was under the impression that windows has a pretty damn good implementation of a media framework. Where is the equivalent to dxva etc on osx?
It's good having a huge choice in front ends on each platform. We can talk all day about lack of developers on osx, especially with regards to AV or vlc etc but I'd be more worried about the consequences - most apps (vlc, movist, handbrake etcetc) all feed off other oss projects, especially ones like ffmpeg.
'a half baked effort at a media manager/jukebox-video player-music player-shop-shill for everything MS' - media centre is pretty decent now I think, itunes however?

 

[50548]

I’ve been using VLC for years and it plays practically everything. In fact, I use it with WMV files simply because it doesn’t have to pre-cache them like QuickTime X and Flip4Mac. Not to mention, it plays practically every DivX file too without spamming your Mac with unnecessary trial software like actual DivX (DivX convertor, DivX player, etc).

It’ll be a shame if it goes away.

It's absolutely amazing how people start bashing Apple when the problem is the absence of developers to work on VLC (as per VLC's official story)...why don't you guys go support it with your skills, then?

 

[applesupergeek]

Btw, anyone using miro for mac? It has a very strong community and people who swear by it, but I have never really gotten used to it.

 

[Manic Mouse]

The problem, from reading the vlc page, seems to simply be that there are no active Mac developers. There's a post in May saying they don't have many, and this post says they now have none. It even mentions that the interface is stale etc, but without Mac developers to spruce it up why would it not be?

There are plenty, PLENTY of talented coders on the OSX side. Guys that produce programs like Tweetie, Things, Little Snapper etc that put Windows apps to shame.

I think some of the talented devs we know exist should throw a bit of weight behind VLC. VLC has a lot of potential, it's core is fantastic and can play literally any codec you throw at it. If it had Open CL support and the interface was overhauled it would be immense.

Come on guys.

 

[applesupergeek]

Sorry, since SL came out QT is absolutely free.

Another thing: Almost NOBODY needs VLC when WMP and Perian are available for seamless playback via QT. In fact, I don't even remember using VLC in a long time. QT with those plug-ins and MPlayer do the job just fine.

To be fair quicktime can't handle .flv to the best of my knowledge.

 

[elppa]

Yay! Another Apple is evil story.

The Transmission client is free and open source and they have a great UI.
Sequel Pro is free and open source and they have a great UI.
Handbrake is free and open source and, again, it has a good UI.

And we get the choruses of:
Mac developers are dwindling! — Actually they were growing year on year before the iPhone.
I'm switching to Linux (where you'll come across software far less complete and with far worst UIs than the Mac version of VLC).
Apple is eveil

kingtj has written the best assessment.

Software is hard, far harder than many people appreciate.

This is a good article on why and what gets underestimated.

Very often the Free Open Source group like to lobby very hard they have the one true and right way to develop software. Which is easy to argue if you ignore all the problems. And yes, finding volunteers is one such problem.

And giving away XCode free of charge just isn't enough. Apple could learn a lot from Microsoft here - Microsoft understands software developers and caters to them. They don't see them as an unwanted competition as Apple seemingly does.

All the key apps on Windows are made by Microsoft and given away for free by Microsoft.

I'm sure Adobe love Expression studio
I'm sure Lotus were delighted with Excel
I'm sure WordPerfect were delighted with Word
I'm sure Netscape were delighted when Explorer arrived etc.

Traditionally if a good piece of software has arrived on Windows, a Microsoft branded copy has followed shortly behind.

Traditionally when Apple has made new software like Quicktime or the iLife suite then it hasn't been a clone of another product. Those sorts of products just didn't exist on the Mac. There wasn't an iMovie like product on any platform before iMovie.

There are plenty, PLENTY of talented coders on the OSX side. Guys that produce programs like Tweetie, Things, Little Snapper etc that put Windows apps to shame.

What do these all have in common?

Firstly they all allow for their developers to eat.
Secondly they all use Apple's (arguably NeXT's) technologies and tool chains.

XCode, Cocoa, Objective-C etc.

VLC does neither of these things.

 

[Jimmy James]

I was just trying to give you the heads up that os x is an excellent option, and far superior to windows, if you give it a go. And vlc does not need any codecs in either windows or mac.

I gave it a go. OS X was not an excellent option. I have a large media library that I've converted to avi and playback was blocky and pixelated on osx. I couldn't find a solution.

 

[GSMiller]

Doesn't bother me. I've been using MPlayer OSX Extended for sometime and haven't looked back.

But from the looks of it, MPlayer OSX hasn't been updated in over 4 years

 

[50548]

I gave it a go. OS X was not an excellent option. I have a large media library that I've converted to avi and playback was blocky and pixelated on osx. I couldn't find a solution.

Funny that even the Handbrake coders deactivated AVI support, saying that it's just an obsolete technology...

"AVI: AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete. It does not support modern container features like chapters, muxed-in subtitles, variable framerate video, or out of order frame display. Furthermore, HandBrake's AVI muxer is vanilla AVI 1.0 that doesn't even support large files. The code has not been actively maintained since 2005. Keeping it in the library while implementing new features means a very convoluted data pipeline, full of conditionals that make the code more difficult to read and maintain, and make output harder to predict. As such, it is now gone. It is not coming back, and good riddance."

 

[blindzero]

Not only does VLC play most anything you throw at it, it also has the playlist, where it seamlessly goes from one movie to the next no matter resolution etc...it scales it correctly and you can put it full screen (or on external/monitor projector).

Quicktime Pro does not do that as far as I know. Does any other program do this with ease? I'm going to have to replace VLC if not.

 

[Manic Mouse]

What do these all have in common?

Firstly they all allow for their developers to eat.
Secondly they all use Apple's (arguably NeXT's) technologies and tool chains.

XCode, Cocoa, Objective-C etc.

VLC does neither of these things.

What about Transmission? What about Handbrake? What about Adium?

BTW Handbrake runs on both Windows and OSX, and "doesn't allow their developers to eat".

Like I said, no reason why some OSX devs can't support VLC and make it awesome.

 

[applesupergeek]

I gave it a go. OS X was not an excellent option. I have a large media library that I've converted to avi and playback was blocky and pixelated on osx. I couldn't find a solution.

I am sorry jimmy I don't believe you. Blocky and pixelated? Give me a break. I have lot os avis too and only 1/100 ever really stumbles, and that is usually some crap porn vid.

 

[8CoreWhore]

Apple is a capitalist corporation with obligations to it's share holders.

 

[8CoreWhore]

I gave it a go. OS X was not an excellent option. I have a large media library that I've converted to avi and playback was blocky and pixelated on osx. I couldn't find a solution.

Converted to AVI? AVI is old and on its way out.
The more you convert these files the worse they will look.