The developing team used several design cues from Zune to design the Metro port of VLC

Mar 18, 2014 12:34 GMT  ·  By

VLC for Windows 8 is available for all adopters of Microsoft’s modern operating system, so the developing team behind the project now has a little bit more time to discuss about their efforts to bring the application to the market.

VideoLAN President and VLC developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf said in an interview with Microsoft News that the design of the Modern port of their multimedia player is inspired by Microsoft’s well-known Zune, simply because “we like the old Zune a lot.”

At the same time, Kempf has also confirmed that the Metro port of VLC would never come with the same feature lineup as the desktop build because many of the users who actually like the Modern interface do not need options available on the desktop.

“I do not have a crystal ball, but I really doubt that Metro version will have features parity with the Desktop app. But then again, maybe people do not need all those features,” Kempf said.

The VideoLAN president has also confirmed that in order to create the Windows 8 version of the application, the company also hired some new developers who were working on the project for a limited time. Others contributed to the development process free of charge.

“For this project, I hired some VLC developers and some other developers to work on it. Some developers did it on their free time, but that was very rare, except me,” he said.

“VideoLAN is a non-profit organization with no employees. Most people work on their free time. I have now a small consulting company to help the VLC community. I spend a lot of time coding but also doing project management and all the boring non-coding things around VLC.”

VLC for Windows 8 currently provides support for x64 and x86 versions of Microsoft’s modern operating system, but a Windows RT build is also in the works right now, VideoLAN announced last week. At the same time, the company is also working to bring VLC on Windows Phone, but such a version would only arrive at a later time, just after the developing team finalizes work on the Windows RT port.

At this moment, developers are also trying to deal with some of the bugs found in the initial build of VLC for Windows 8 and the first update has already been released. New versions of the app are expected to be launched on a regular basis, with a new build to arrive sometime next week.