14 DAY TRIAL // VLC Player, the once-thought-extinct media player for Mac users, has been promoted to version 1.1.0, a stable release not just for Mac OS X, but also for Windows and Linux PC users. The new version brings improved support for MKV HD, including seeking fixes, and 7.1 channels codecs, support for new codecs (Blu-Ray subtitles, MPEG-4 lossless and VP8), better streaming capabilities, and is able to read DVD-Audio files (.aob), to name just a few enhancements.
VLC Media Player is one of the most popular solutions of its kind. It works as a multimedia framework as well, and it can play almost any audio and video formats available today, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac, and more. In addition to these capabilities, the player can also read DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs and a series of streaming protocols.
The new 1.1.0 release now brings GPU decoding on GNU/Linux, using VAAPI for H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2, DSP decoding using OpenMax IL (for compatible embedded devices), improved support for MKV HD (including seeking fixes, and 7.1 channels codecs), support for new codecs (such as Blu-Ray subtitles, MPEG-4 lossless and VP8), support for WebM decoding and encoding, as well as improved web plugins, and better streaming capabilities.
The VideoLAN folks have integrated the playlist in the Qt4 interface, according to the 1.1.0 release notes, alongside adding multiple views (like album art) in the playlist. Support for AMR-NB, Mpeg-4 ALS, Vorbis 6.1/7.1, FLAC 6.1/7.1 and WMAS has been enabled, while CDDB and CD-Text now work on the Windows version of the player when reading audio CDs. Other changes include:
- Support for DVD-Audio files (.aob); - Improved meta-data and album-art support; - Faster decoding, with up to 40% speed-ups, in HD resolutions; - First part of the Video Output core rewrite; - Removal or rewrite of dozens of modules, code simplification and tens of thousands of lines of code removed; - Some functionalities that are less used are now moved to extensions; - More assembly optimizations, especially SSSE3/SSE4 and ARM Neon; - Fewer threads used.