The developers of VLC Media Player have just announced on their Twitter account that they will release the first release candidate of VLC 2.0 at the end of the week. The latest release version right now is VLC 1.1.11 which is available for Windows, Mac OS X, popular Linux distributions and even other operating systems such as Android or OS/2 (anyone still using that?).

Windows 64-bit version of VLC Media Player running the Spin Demo

Once a suitable release candidate has been found, VLC Media Player 2.0 will be released for all operating systems. Existing VLC users likely want to know what they can look forward to in version 2 of the player. Here is a list of important changes taken directly from the latest nightly build of VLC 2.0.

• Major Video Core and Outputs rework and rewrite: Subtitles, subpictures and OSD can now be sized and blent inside video outputs x11 (Unix), OpenGL (Unix) and Direct3D (Windows) are such video outputs.
• Almost every video filter can now be transcoded
• Port to Android, iOS, OS/2 and Win64
• Multiple files are now supported inside RAR files
• Experimental Blu-Ray Discs support using libbluray
• You can now use ffmpeg-mt in conjunction with vlc, to split decoding load on multiple cores. H.264, VP3, VP8, JPEG-2000, Mpeg-4 ASP/DivX and RV3/RV4
  are notably concerned.
• C64 SID file playback support of using sidplay2
• Support for WMV Images, aka WMVP and WVP2, as used by Photo Story
• New video output based on Direct2D for Windows 7 and Vista (with Platform Update), New video output for iOS platform

Probably the biggest improvements are the 64-bit version for Windows, the port to mobile operating systems and Blu-Ray playback support.

You can get a taste of things to come by downloading the latest nightly build from the VLC build server. Remember that nighly versions are not necessarily stable, as they are development builds. (Thanks Mike)

While we are at it: Which media player are you currently using?

Update: First release candidate builds for Mac and Linux have been posted on the VLC ftp server. You can access the change log here.

Some users may like this feature that much that they may decide to switch to VLC as their main media player. If you do not have it installed already, you can download it from the official website. VLC is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, and the conversion options should be available in all versions.

Start VLC and click on Media > Convert / Save. You can alternative press Ctrl-R to open the dialog window. The File screen is used to add media files that you want to convert. Just click the add button and use the file browser to add a media file.

You can add a subtitle file if you want or activate the Show more options setting to display advanced options that usually do not need modification.

A click on the Convert / Save opens the final step of the configuration. The destination folder and conversion profile are selected on this screen.

VLC ships with a good dozen profiles from that convert the selected video into another format. Supported formats among others are mp4, webm, ts and ogg. Options are also available to convert only the audio source or to create custom transcoding profiles.

A click on the New Profile button opens a configuration screen where a new video conversion profile can be created.

This includes selected a video and audio codec, encapsulation and subtitles. Additional video and audio codecs as well as encapsulations are available for selection here.

VLC will process the selected media in the main application window. This is indicated by a Streaming status and the fast forwarding of the selected video file.

And that’s all there is to it. It is convenient to use VLC to convert videos if the program is installed on the system. The advanced profile options should be suitable for most conversion jobs.

It seems that it is not possible to convert multiple videos at once and save them as separate files, at least not in the GUI. If you know a way how to do that let me know in the comments.

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.

Play Link is handy Firefox add-on that proves to be useful in both cases. Firefox users can use it to add web browsers, media players and other external programs to the context menu of the browser to launch links and pages directly in them without switching first.

The programs need to be configured first before they become available. The menu can be opened under Tools > Play Link directly.

Browsers and Media Players are grouped into two tabs. Browsers first need to be added to the Locations sub-tab of the application. Available are paths for Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome and another browser (could be another version of Firefox for instance).

The browsers are then selected from a pulldown menu. It is furthermore possible to configure context menu texts for the link and page menu. The link menu is displayed on a right-click on a link, the page menu on a right-click on the page. None, one or both entries can be hidden as well.

The media player link menu requires the location of each media player and the menu text as well. It is possible to hide those entries by checking the hide button.

All configured applications become available once the initial configuration has been completed. It is then possible to launch videos in a video player such as VLC or SMPlayer, music in AIMP3 or Winamp or links in other web browsers.

Play Link is compatible with Firefox 1.5 to 4. Users who are running the latest development releases of Firefox may need to force compatibility though.

The first question that comes to mind is this: Why is there a font cache at all? It’s video, not some textual content that is displayed in the program window. The font cache apparently is used for subtitles and On Screen Displays (OSD). Both VLC Media Player and MPlayer (and variants like SMPlayer) make use of a font cache to display subtitles and OSD.

Both media players seem to create the font cache regardless of the fact if it is needed or not to view the video.

building font cache

In theory, the font cache is build once, and stored in a directory on the hard drive for faster access to the required data.

Font Cache Location

VLC stores the font cache in the AppData folder in Windows 7, more precisely under username > AppData > Roaming > vlc. The file uses a long cryptic file name and makes use of the extension cache-2. Windows XP users will find the font cache in Documents and Settings > username > Application Data > vlc.

font cache directory

The most common MPlayer font cache locations are username > fontconfig > cache for Windows 7 (and Vista probably as well), and Documents and Settings > XPMUser > fontconfig > cache for Windows XP.

The cache file is as cryptic as the VLC one, seems to use the same generator, but uses the cache-3 extension instead.

Troubleshooting Building Font Cache Issues

The most common problem related to the font cache is the repeated generation of the font cache, followed by crashes and hangs during the building of the cache.

VLC offers no option to disable font caching, at least not directly in the Windows client. Users who are experiencing issues with it should check the VLC directory under user to see if the font cache file is generated. If it is not it could be a rights issue or permission problem.

Deleting the contents of the cache directory to force the player to build the font cache again could resolve the issues as well. Several users have reported problems building the font cache if the AppData folder is stored on a network drive.

It is a bit different if MPlayer is concerned. SMPlayer for instance can pass parameters to MPlayer, and one of those parameters can be used to prevent the building of the font cache.

To test that press CTRL-P in SMPlayer to open the options. Switch to Advanced > Options for MPlayer and enter -nofontconfig in the Options field.

no font config

Some users may also need to change the subtitle display format. This is done by clicking on Subtitles > Font and colors. A click on Enable normal subtitles should resolve the issue.

A last resort is the use of a process monitor to see if a specific font cannot be loaded by the video player. Process Monitor is a free Microsoft tool that displays those information. The easiest way to use the program is to create a new filter for vlc.exe (or the name of the video player that is used on the PC) to see only the activity of that player.

Using portable media players

Another possibility is to make use of portable media players. This can be especially helpful in cases where the font cache file is not generated, or generated whenever a video is played.

The portable version of VLC is available here, a portable version of SMPlayer can be downloaded from the official project website.

Portable VLC will still generate a font cache, but it will be stored in the portable directory, not in AppData or another Windows system directory. This alone could resolve several of the issues users have with the building of the font cache.

The portable version of SMPlayer makes use of the -nofontconfig parameter so that the font cache is not build during usage.

Share your tips: Have you noticed the building font cache message in your video player? Let us know in the comments.

You can read up on that in the following article that we published to explain the removal: About The Shoutcast Removal In VLC 1.1.

The Shoutcast Playlist Downloader is a portable software for Windows that might provide a solution to Windows users. It basically can be used to download Internet Radio playlist files. These playlist files can be executed in a compatible media player, like VLC, Winamp or AIMP2, to listen to the radio station.

shoutcast playlist downloader

It begins with a click on the Refresh button in the program interface to pull the genre listing from Shoutcast. Each genre can be checked individually to include it in the download.

Parameters like the minimum and maximum bitrate, max number of playlists per genre and compression format (AAC+ or MP3) can be specified next to the download directory.

The downloaded playlists can be saved in .pls or .plx format. The playlist files are automatically saved in genre directories to make identification easier.

The individual playlist files can be executed with a simple double-click. The playlists are ideal for transferal to XBMC, other gaming systems, mobile devices or media players on the computer. It is theoretically possible to download the playlist files manually from Shoutcast as well, which is probably the better solution for users who want more control on the selection process.

Shoutcast Playlist Downloader is available for download at the developer’s website over at Gazstone.

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.

Chance is the video player does not support webm out of the box, at least not in its current installation.

There are actually only a handful of solutions currently available to play webm videos on the local computer system.

We would like to review two different options to play webm videos and would encourage anyone to comment if they know of another way of playing webm files on the computer systme.

VLC Media Player: The VLC Media Player 1.1.0 Pre-Release candidate for Windows supports the webm video format. All it takes is to install the video player to play webm videos on the PC. The version is currently only offered for Windows. It is likely that webm support will be added to all supported operating systems in the final version of VLC 1.1.0.

K-Lite Codec Pack Beta: Not everyone likes to install codec packs but the K-Lite Codec Pack is one of the first to include a webm video decoder. Installing this decoder will add global support for webm video to the Windows operating system.

Do you know of another option to play .webm videos? 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.

It is also possible to play DVDs and Internet streams with the video player that is available for Windows and Linux. Several ways of displaying subtitles and various subtitle formats are supported including srt, sub and DVD subtitles. I personally think that SMPlayer is a great alternative to the VLC player.

This could be useful for everyone who is having troubles with VLC for example. The only real difference that I was able to spot was that the SMPlayer is Open Source and that it remembers where the playback of the video stopped. Make sure you download the full SMPlayer plus the update.

It is nice that Microsoft added the functionality to Windows Vista Ultimate but all other versions miss the program because it is only available to Windows Vista Ultimate. I really don’t like the way Microsoft added and removed features in various Windows Vista versions, this is just confusing for the customers. Let me show you a free way to add video wallpapers to all versions of Windows Vista. All you need is the free VLC media player.

Just open a video file in VLC, right-click it and choose wallpaper from the menu. That’s it basically, we could finetune it further by doing the following. Go to Settings > Preferences > Interface > Main Interfaces > wxWidgets; disable taskbar and enable systray to remove the VLC windows from the taskbar. Go to Playlist and select Repeat current item to loop it. If the wallpaper option is not available in first place go to Settings > Preferences > Video > Output Modules > Direct X, select Advanced and check Enable Wallpaper Mode.

found: Vista Wired

The player supports most used multimedia formats like avi, mp(e)g, divx, xvid, asf, wmv and many audio formats like mp3 and wav. It supports subtitles, drag and drop, resolution changing, multipled audio streams and is able to capture frames. If you are still using media player you should try and make the switch, it´s faster and better than 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.