Start by opening VLC Media Player on your system. You can download the media player from the official website if you do not have it installed yet on your system.

Go to Media > Convert/Save. This opens the dialog box in which the file to be converted can be easily selected. Notice that the media can be converted from a hard drive file, network, removable media, or a Capture Device.

Select the desired file that needs to be converted to MP3 format with a click on the Add button. Click Convert/Save as the next step. This opens a new dialog box for Stream Output. The option “File” needs to then be checked and click “Browse” and this will save the file locally. It may be necessary to create and name a new file, in fact, it is recommended so that it can be easily found later or if multiple files need to be converted. This just makes things more convenient. The file will be saved with the filename. Notice that a “.ps” extension is automatically appended to the file name:

The “.ps” appendix will have to be changed in order to save the file as an MP3. Just substitute the “.ps” extension with a “.mp3?” extension.

Please note that you can enter the name plus the .mp3 file extension so that .ps is not appended automatically. It is recommended to to that. Go to the Settings section of the Convert dialog box to open the Profile drop down menu. Here, the format can be selected. In this case, the desired format is MP3. Select MP3 encoding.

At last, the final step, click Start and allow the data to stream then save. The MP3 file can now be opened and used as seen fit. There should be a clear audio extraction from the chosen video file.

Since this method can be easily used with any video file type and converted to any audio file format, this is a very versatile tool for creating media extensions that can be added to presentations or used for creating videos with any custom style. The files created can be easily used interchangeably with any media software or media player utilities and devices and can be saved to any media source. Naturally, if it is important, be sure to back the files up to external removable memory. This will ensure that the files can be recalled at any time in the event that a System Restore is necessary at an inconvenient time during media creation. These files will be lost during any kind of rollback or restoration if they are not backed up on external removable media. The best media backup source would be an external hard drive, such as is recommended for backups. Backing up files and applications to CDs and DVDs is unreliable in general and usually results in an incomplete backup where certain files are missed and cannot be recalled.

The update is classified as important which is the second highest severity rating available.

Flash users can verify the installed version of the application by visiting Adobe’s Flash Player page. The system is vulnerable to the attacks if the Flash version is 10.3.181.16 or earlier.

Download links are provided on the security bulletin’s page. The latest version can be downloaded from the official Get Flash Player page as well. Direct Downloads are available as well.

Adobe is currently not aware of attacks that use the authplay.dll component that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat. While the company is not aware of attacks at this point in time, it has not completed the investigation if authplay.dll is vulnerable to the recently discovered Flash vulnerability.

In other news: The developers of the popular video player VLC have also released a new version of their application to protect users from recently discovered security issues.

The release notes list an integer overflow vulnerability in xspf demuxer as well as several updates and rewrites of features in the latest version of the media player.

VLC users are encouraged to download and install the latest version of the player right away to protect their system from possible exploits.

Downloads are as usually offered at the official Videolan website.

The developers of VLC have released a new version of the program yesterday that patches another security vulnerability in the program.

It took the VLC team less than five days to fix the vulnerability which was first disclosed on April 7. The security advisory on the Videolan web page describes the issue as a heap-based buffer overflow in the mp4 demuxer.

Workarounds have been posted on the very same page, which are however no longer necessary as the issue is fixed by the VLC update to version 1.1.9.

The built-in update checker does not seem to recognize the new update yet, which means that VLC users need to download the update from the homepage of the project to install the program update manually. Downloads for all supported operating systems are available on this page.

You can verify the version of VLC by clicking on Help > About in the program interface, or with the keyboard shortcut Shift-F1.

If you see VLC Media Player 1.1.8 there you need to update the software. Manual update checks are available via Help > Check for Updates. It is likely that the developers will enable automatic updates soon.

VLC 1.1.9 includes an update for the libmodplug which is security related as well.

VLC Media Player did integrate that directory in the past offering users the ability to browse the stations directly from within the media player.

VLC Shoutcast Radio

The VLC team has received several injunctions over the past year from AOL asking them to either comply with the Shoutcast license or remove the Shoutcast module from VLC.

The Shoutcast license basically does not allow developers to subject Shoutcast Radio or Shoutcast Radio materials ” to all or part of the license obligations of any Publically Available Software”.

It also forces developers to promote the Shoutcast Radio Toolbar on the website and in the software itself.

The license incompatibility led to the removal of Shoutcast in VLC. It is still possible to play Shoutcast radio by loading playlist files from the official Shoutcast website though.

The developers have integrated the Open Source alternative IceCast in VLC 1.1.

vlc media player icecast

Videolan is currently in talks with AOL to find a solution that would allow them to integrate Shoutcast into VLC again.

The VLC developers hint at a possible solution. The extension framework of VLC is capable of providing Shoutcast-like support in the media player.

Additional changes have been made to the HD capabilities of the media player. MKV HD support has been improved by adding support for 7.1 channel codecs and seeking fixes, the playback experience should be a lot better for many users now.

New codecs have been added to this version of VLC. The player now supports Blu-Ray subtitles, VP8 which has been mentioned earlier and MPEG-4 losless on the video side and Vorbis 6.1/7.1, Flac 6.1/7.1, MPEG-4 ALS and a handful more on the audio side.

vlc media player 1.1

Audio CD playback in Windows was improved by including CCDB access and CD-Text support when listening to audio CDs.

Users who are interested in the full changelog can take a look at it here, but be warned, it contains more than one hundred entries.

VLC Media Player 1.1 is as always available for Windows, Mac OSX and various GNU/Linux distributions. Binaries and source code releases are offered for download at the official VCL website. A portable version of VLC 1.1 is also available for download in zip and 7z format.

Update: The latest release version at the time of writing is VLC Player 1.1.11 which is also available for download on the official VLC website. The developers are currently working on version 2.0 of the media player. You can read up on the latest development with a click on the following link: Get Ready For VLC Media Player 2.0. It is likely that the final version will be released in February 2012.

Some football watchers helped themselves by turning off the sound of the TV while others played around with their TV’s equalizer to reduce the impact of the vuvuzela on the overall sound.

The developers of VLC Media Player have now posted instructions on how to reduce the sound of the vuvuzelas while watching soccer.

This does however mean that only users who watch football in VLC will be able to enjoy the games without those sounds.

This basically means that users who use a TV card in their PC can benefit from the startup parameters, as do users who watch recorded games on their PCs.

VLC Media Player needs to be started from the command line with the following parameters to remove the vuvuzela when watching the world cup.

vlc –audio-filter=param_eq –param-eq-f1=233 –param-eq-f2=466 –param-eq-f3=932 –param-eq-gain1=-20 –param-eq-gain2=-20 –param-eq-gain3=-20 –param-eq-lowf=100 –param-eq-lowgain=15 –param-eq-q1=10 –param-eq-q2=10 –param-eq-q3=10

The parameters can be added to a batch file that needs to be placed in the VLC directory so that the commands are executed without having to issue them on every startup.

Just download this batch file and extract it into your VLC directory. Execute it whenever you want to watch football.

A similar option is available for Mplayer users, they need to issue the command

mplayer -af an=1:0.5:0.5,sinesuppress=233:0.01,sinesuppress=466:0.01,
sinesuppress=932:0.01,sinesuppress=1864:0.01,sinesuppress=232:0.01,sinesuppress=465:0.01,sinesuppress=931:0.01,sinesuppress=1863:0.01,sinesuppress=234:0.01,sinesuppress=467:0.01, sinesuppress=933:0.01,sinesuppress=1865:0.01 name-of-video

This command can be added to a batch file as well. It does however require the video file name as a parameter which means that it needs to be edited whenever the video changes.

stop vuvuzela mplayer

Have you found another way to stop the annoying sounds of the vuvuzela? Let us know in the comments.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player supporting most audio and video formats (H.264, Ogg, DivX, MKV, TS, MPEG-2, mp3, MPEG-4, aac, …) from files, physical media (DVDs, VCD, Audio-CD), TV capture cards and many network streaming protocols.

It can also convert media files, transcode and act as a streaming server over unicast or multicast and IPv4 or IPv6. It doesn’t need any external codec, program or codec pack to work.

Users who want to download the VLC media player find versions for Windows, Mac and Linux on the developer’s website where both binaries and source codes are available.

Windows users can download an installer or portable version of VLC directly from the download windows page of the player’s website.

Users who have VLC media player installed can check for a new version in the player. This is done by clicking on Help > Check for Updates.

New versions of VLC can be downloaded and installed directly from within the interface.

The developers of VLC are already working on the next iteration of the video player which could be beneficial in future comparisons as the developers plan to add gpu acceleration to the media player.

VLC currently is not the best player to play HD videos especially those encoded with H.264. The developer aim to change this with the release of VLC 1.1 which introduces GPU decoding on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Linux as well as faster CPU decoding on Windows.

These new implementations should reduce the cpu load during video playback and speed up the playback. This should work not only on desktop computer systems but also on netbooks or HTPC (home theater PCs).

A first preview version of VLC 1.1 has been available for two days now. The version is relatively buggy and only a early preview version. Interested users can download VLC 1.1 Pre1 from the Videloan ftp. Versions are available for all supported operating systems. Keep in mind that gpu acceleration is not available in the Mac release, only Windows and Linux benefit from this.

VLC 1.1 will introduce the following additional features besides gpu acceleration:

DVB HD subtitles
PGS Subtitles from Blu-Ray dumps
sftp protocol
Atrac1 audio codec
Indeo5 video codec
AMR (Narrow Band) audio codec
Windows Media Voice/Speech audio codec
Improved Flac support (7.1 and 88.2/176.4/192 kHz support)
7.1 Vorbis audio support
ADPCM in flv files
DVD-Audio files .aob, so you can play your DVD-Audio files on your computer
vqf, amv, wpl and zpl file support
Midi files on Windows port!
And more features…
CDDB support on Windows
Podcast images
Enhancements to our Ambilight support
Extensions in lua script
Services in lua script
Chorus and Flanger audio filter
Visualisation using scripted .milk files
Windows 7 taskbar integration

Let us know what you think of this new release (if you have downloaded VLC 1.1) or the features that are introduced in the video player.

The changelog lists all of the changes and additions that the developers have packed into the new release of the VLC Player including live recording, finer speed controls, new HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, Real video 3.0 and 4.0), formats, video scaling in full screen or zipped file playback. VLC Media Player can still play most video and audio formats out of the box without needing third party codec installations to do so.

VLC Player is still cross platform which means that the new release is available for all supported operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OSX and Linux. Users can download the new release directly from the developer’s website.

A viable alternative is SMPlayer which uses less resources than VLC Player while providing most of the benefits.

The solution given by the security company that discovered the vulnerability is to load only subtitles from trusted source or no subtitles at all until an official fix has been posted by the developers ov VLC.

Another option would be to switch to another player for the time being. SMPlayer, my favorite player, is another good choice which does not have this vulnerability.

VLC Media Player is one of the few players that is able to play most file types out of the box without the need for additional codecs or plugins. It does not use a lot of processing power or ram even when playing large video files. A 700 megabyte testfile used about 32 megabytes of ram and most of the time 0-2 processing power. Media Player Classic used less ram on the files (24.6) but between 18-28 processing power. So, if you are looking for a new media player to switch to give VLC a try, it is worth it.

Remarkable is the ability to play broken and incomplete video files which means that users of e.g. emule are able to preview a video without downloading the complete file. The website offers a great howto which helps you understand the players functions. Oh, and it is open source, source code is available on the website.