VLC 2.0 will be released soon. A release candidate RC1 can already be downloaded. Jean-Baptiste is quickly commenting on it.
The future version of VLC, aka TwoFlower or 2.0, brings numerous improvement and modifications specific to Mac OS X. Thanks to the effort of Felix and numerous coder and designer, the team was able to continue the development of VLC on Mac OS X. If several bugs will remain to be fixed, the future new version will bring a lot of new features:
New Interface
The most obvious difference with TwoFlower will be the new interface. This is a single window design to stick with current Mac OS X standard. Two colors will be available, black one for the Mac OS X style and gray for the Lion style. With Mac OS X 10.7, it will be possible to select between the classic full screen mode of VLC and the Lion full screen mode.
The audio and video filters are now available from the HUD.Extensions
Supports for new windows and features such as integration of IMDB, Wikipedia, OpenSubtitles and others.Peripherals
So far on Mac OS X, it was only possible to use the integrated webcam as a video source. With VLC 2.0, generic support for QKit peripherals has been added for audio (QTSound) and for video (QTCapture). It will allou to view and stream USB or FireWire external webcams, as well as microphones DVB and SDI cards.
Regarding Blu-ray support, VLC 2.0 allows to access files on non-encoded media for Linux and Windows. It could be ported to Mac OS X. For encrypted media, the libaacs library is NOT ported to Mac OS X yet, if anyone want to contribute, you are welcome!Codecs
The MacOS X version of VLC 2.0 will benefit from the same support and availability than the other platforms. The main new feature will be the support for multithreading deciding, bringing access to the power sitting in multicore hardware models running Mac OS X. New codecs are supported: ProRes, AVC/Intra, codecs 10bits and some version of WMV. Support for MKV and MOV have been dramatically improved. GPU-based decoding on Mac OS X, is not ready to be release immediately, it will come later on.Video output
The video output in Open GL has been modified, simplified and improved. Subtitles are now rendered according to the size of the displayed window, independently of the source and fully implemented in Open GL. This process improves quality and sharpness of subtitles.Support for OS X and PowerPC
This version 2.0 is compatible with Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion.
The 64-bits version is the priority version for Snow Leopard and Lion, as it is the only one providing native full screen support on Lion. The 32-bits version also works on Leopard.
There is still a PPC version for Leopard, only tested on G5 hardware. It also allows multhreading decoding in HD format, however, it is possible that the next major evolution of VLC will not be supporting PPC-based hardware.The future
Several options are currently discussed: complete the work on the interface, get prepared to fix the bug to be identified with the first version, work on the Blu-ray support as it remains too weak/basic, add GPU-based decoding, migrate the license from VLCKit to LGPL in order to give freedom to develop non-GPL applications on the top of the VLC engine.
You can download one of the Mac OS X version from the following url:
http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/vlc-2.0.0-rc1/macosx/
The future version of VLC, aka TwoFlower or 2.0, brings numerous improvement and modifications specific to Mac OS X. Thanks to the effort of Felix and numerous coder and designer, the team was able to continue the development of VLC on Mac OS X. If several bugs will remain to be fixed, the future new version will bring a lot of new features:
- New Interface
The most obvious difference with TwoFlower will be the new interface. This is a single window design to stick with current Mac OS X standard. Two colors will be available, black one for the Mac OS X style and gray for the Lion style. With Mac OS X 10.7, it will be possible to select between the classic full screen mode of VLC and the Lion full screen mode.
The audio and video filters are now available from the HUD. - Extensions
Supports for new windows and features such as integration of IMDB, Wikipedia, OpenSubtitles and others. - Peripherals
So far on Mac OS X, it was only possible to use the integrated webcam as a video source. With VLC 2.0, generic support for QKit peripherals has been added for audio (QTSound) and for video (QTCapture). It will allou to view and stream USB or FireWire external webcams, as well as microphones DVB and SDI cards.
Regarding Blu-ray support, VLC 2.0 allows to access files on non-encoded media for Linux and Windows. It could be ported to Mac OS X. For encrypted media, the libaacs library is NOT ported to Mac OS X yet, if anyone want to contribute, you are welcome! - Codecs
The MacOS X version of VLC 2.0 will benefit from the same support and availability than the other platforms. The main new feature will be the support for multithreading deciding, bringing access to the power sitting in multicore hardware models running Mac OS X. New codecs are supported: ProRes, AVC/Intra, codecs 10bits and some version of WMV. Support for MKV and MOV have been dramatically improved. GPU-based decoding on Mac OS X, is not ready to be release immediately, it will come later on. - Video output
The video output in Open GL has been modified, simplified and improved. Subtitles are now rendered according to the size of the displayed window, independently of the source and fully implemented in Open GL. This process improves quality and sharpness of subtitles. - Support for OS X and PowerPC
This version 2.0 is compatible with Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion.
The 64-bits version is the priority version for Snow Leopard and Lion, as it is the only one providing native full screen support on Lion. The 32-bits version also works on Leopard.
There is still a PPC version for Leopard, only tested on G5 hardware. It also allows multhreading decoding in HD format, however, it is possible that the next major evolution of VLC will not be supporting PPC-based hardware. - The future
Several options are currently discussed: complete the work on the interface, get prepared to fix the bug to be identified with the first version, work on the Blu-ray support as it remains too weak/basic, add GPU-based decoding, migrate the license from VLCKit to LGPL in order to give freedom to develop non-GPL applications on the top of the VLC engine.
You can download one of the Mac OS X version from the following url:
