14 DAY TRIAL // The first bugfix version for the major release 1.1.x of the well-known media player from VideoLAN, VLC has been released. Almost one month of development and 17 million downloads later the team comes up with build 1.1.1 of the player, which focuses on setting things right with plenty of bugs and issues.
Fixes and improvements of this edition affect the external programming interface of the application (libVLC) and the various decoders and demuxers. The developing team has also taken of various bugs that caused the program to crash or generate errors. If you have Catalyst 10.7 installed, DxVA2 decoding on ATI GPU is now possible in VLC 1.1.1. For a detailed list of all the fixes, changes and improvements occurring in this release you can view the full Windows changelog here.
Major release 1.1.0 of the player increases the capabilities of the player by making it ready for HD video through support for new codecs (MPEG-4 lossless and VP8), improved support for MKV HD or GPU decoding on Windows 7 and Vista using DXVA2 for H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2. On the web side, the developers added support for WebM decoding and encoding.
Audio experience in VLC has not been neglected either as the new cone is ready for AMR-NB, MPEG-4 ALS, Vorbis 6.1/7.1, FLAC and WMAS codecs. In addition to this, DVD-Audio data (AOB) can be played in the latest VLC.
Overall, VLC player has seen nothing but huge improvements in the last month. The effects are improved stability; adaptation to market’s demand for high definition content as well as making it friendlier for developers (libVLC has been simplified) are also good points for the application.
VLC is free and open source (so anybody can drop a line) and it is currently maintained and developed by a small team of volunteers. It plays most of the multimedia files on the market and can handle several streaming protocols with no problem.
