[Infowarrior] - VideoLAN releases VLC 1.0.0

[Richard Forno]

July 7, 2009 6:22 AM PDT
VideoLAN releases VLC 1.0.0: Your media will never be the same
by Matt Asay

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10280845-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

VideoLAN's VLC media player, arguably the world's best media player,  
hit version 0.9.9 in early April. Three months and more than 78  
million downloads later, VideoLAN has announced VLC 1.0.0, or  
"Goldeneye."

Your media will never be the same.

In fact, with VideoLAN's VLC media player, it doesn't have to be. One  
of the amazing things about VLC is that it can play anything that  
you've ever even thought about playing. That random media format that  
one site in Ecuador requires--VLC likely plays it, while Windows  
Media, Apple QuickTime, etc. likely will not.

This is, in part, a natural result of VLC's open-source heritage.  
Licensed under the GNU General Public License, VLC attracts a diverse  
array of developers with disparate media interests. Those interests  
translate into a media player that really can play every obscure media  
format I've ever thrown at it. (And in my hunger for Arsenal videos,  
I've found many different video formats that Windows Media, Apple  
QuickTime, etc. didn't know what to do with.)

Here are a few of the features now available in VLC 1.0.0:

	• Live recording
	• Instant pausing and frame-by-frame support
	• Finer speed controls
	• New HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-ray Linear  
PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0, ...)
	• New formats (Raw Dirac, M2TS, ...) and major improvements in many  
formats
	• New Dirac encoder and MP3 fixed-point encoder
	• Video scaling in full screen
	• RTSP Trickplay support
	• Zipped file playback
	• Customizable toolbars
	• Easier encoding GUI in Qt interface
	• Better integration in Gtk environments
	• MTP devices on Linux
	• AirTunes streaming
I regularly use VLC to transcode media files, including files I  
originally streamed from the Web:

If you don't have VLC, I encourage you to download it and give it a  
try. It really is an amazing media player, one that has far more  
tricks up its sleeve than the proprietary media player that came with  
your computer.