VLC 2.0.5 "Twoflower" Has Experimental Blu-Ray Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VLC 2.0.5 "Twoflower" Has Experimental Blu-Ray Support

VideoLAN's VLC was released this weekend with more than 50 fixes and several improved features for this multi-platform open-source media player...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI1NTQ

[mark45]

I switched from VLC to smplayer a few months ago because VLC doesn't support vdpau, and looks like 2.0.5 still doesn't.

With vdpau CPU usage went from like 50% to like 4%. Technically you can do a custom build of VLC with vdpau support but it doesn't work properly, otherwise it'd ship by default.

[Awesomeness]

I switched from VLC to smplayer a few months ago because VLC doesn't support vdpau, and looks like 2.0.5 still doesn't.

With vdpau CPU usage went from like 50% to like 4%. Technically you can do a custom build of VLC with vdpau support but it doesn't work properly, otherwise it'd ship by default.

In theory it's possible to wrap VA API (which VLC supports) around VDPAU, although the wrapper never worked for me.
There are some cases when SMPlayer can't play movies via VDPAU and then it always shows a popup that playback failed and that VPDAU won't be used. Personally I found that alone so annoying that SMPlayer can't be my main player.

[bwat47]

I switched from VLC to smplayer a few months ago because VLC doesn't support vdpau, and looks like 2.0.5 still doesn't.

With vdpau CPU usage went from like 50% to like 4%. Technically you can do a custom build of VLC with vdpau support but it doesn't work properly, otherwise it'd ship by default.

I switched to vlc player because for me it seems to have the best support fo vaapi though VLC + vaapi works flawlessly for me on intel HD4000

[mark45]

I switched to vlc player because for me it seems to have the best support fo vaapi though VLC + vaapi works flawlessly for me on intel HD4000

That's because you're using Intel and I have Nvidia.

@Awesomeness, that's true, but I'm using the driver 310.14 from a ppa which fixes stuttering of windows and other vdpau fixes (like blue skin in flash) and a ppa version of smplayer which plays fine like 95-99% of the movies, and in the rare case when it's glitchy I switch to VLC which I keep around.

I like playing 720p and 1080p movies, and boy does smplayer (that is, VDPAU) make a difference in cpu usage, the CPU fan stays quiet and I like it a lot.

BTW, I heard gstreamer is planning VDPAU support for next Spring, and even if it lands in Fall 2013 it's still a big win for Nvidia users imo.

[bwat47]

That's because you're using Intel and I have Nvidia.

I'm fully aware I'm on intel and you are on nvidia, I was just offering a contrasting experience.

[droidhacker]

I switched from VLC to smplayer a few months ago because VLC doesn't support vdpau, and looks like 2.0.5 still doesn't.

With vdpau CPU usage went from like 50% to like 4%. Technically you can do a custom build of VLC with vdpau support but it doesn't work properly, otherwise it'd ship by default.

Bah! VDPAU -- you might as well suck off steve balmer if you like closed source garbage that much.

Now the actual interesting parts... are crystalhd - dedicated video decoder hardware with open source drivers, and OpenMAX, which will finally make VLC viable for Android. Previously, Android was limited to the "android" video player for all hardware video decoding. Software video decoding is quite obviously not acceptable for battery powered equipment or virtually ANYTHING over VCD resolutions on an ARM chip.

[droidhacker]

I think a very important thing to point out is that the article is a bit misleading. Some of the features listed were ALREADY PRESENT in VLC >= 2.0.

The parts to look at are those under 2.0.5 ***SPECIFIC***....

2.0.5 specific changes
2.0.5

Rework and fixes of the Mac OS X interface
Fix Pulseaudio initial synchronization
Fix MKV, SWF, AIFF and subtitles demuxer crashes
Translations updates and new Welsh translation

2.0.5

DVB-S delivery system detection
Fix audio and video track selection through libVLC
Fix system sleep issue on Mac OS X 10.5

In other words... a few minor bug fixes.

[Awesomeness]

Bah! VDPAU -- you might as well suck off steve balmer if you like closed source garbage that much.

Quite a dirty mouth for someone without any clue.

VDPAU is not closed source. The VDPAU library is fully FOSS under a BSD license:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/VDPAU
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~aplattn...u/tree/COPYING

Not only that but VDPAU (and not VA API) has a Gallium state tracker which means that all GPUs with a Gallium3D-based driver provide VDPAU acceleration:
http://mesa3d.sourceforge.net/sourcetree.html

[smitty3268]

I switched from VLC to smplayer a few months ago because VLC doesn't support vdpau, and looks like 2.0.5 still doesn't.

With vdpau CPU usage went from like 50% to like 4%. Technically you can do a custom build of VLC with vdpau support but it doesn't work properly, otherwise it'd ship by default.

I believe the way VLC works requires them to read the decoded video back to the CPU so they can perform post-processing, streaming, etc. on it, and VDPAU doesn't allow this.

They could add in a mode to VLC which just dumps the video to the screen like most players do, if they wanted to support it, though, at the cost of certain features no longer being present when using VDPAU acceleration.