VLC 2.0 Has Been Released, Download Links Inside

Martin Brinkmann
Feb 19, 2012
Updated • Jan 16, 2013
Software
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We have followed the latest VLC development ever since Videolan pushed the first build of the media player's new version to the public ftp server. It did not take long after that initial release before the first release candidate build was made available.

The developers today have released the final version of the media player. Interested users can download it directly from the official website where it is available for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and Linux operating systems. The 64-bit version of Windows has not been posted yet on the VLC 2.0 download page. Only a 64-bit Mac OS X version has been posted yet. It is not clear if the developers have postponed the released of the 64-bit Windows version, or if they plan to release the first official 64-bit release for the operating system in one of the next releases instead.

The release notes lists all the important changes of VLC 2.0 Twoflower sorted into groups such as video, audio, formats or professional users.

The developers have added experimental Blu-Ray disc support to VLC 2.0. It is experimental because of its limitations. This first version does not support menus yet, and does not ship with AACS and BD+ DRM libraries that are needed to play back copy protected Blu-Ray discs.

vlc 2.0 media player

Other changes include a rewritten video output core and modules, new video outputs for Windows 7, Android and iOS, and multi-threaded decoding for H.264, MPEG-4 and WebM. The developers have added support for several professional codecs and formats, including HD and 10bits codecs as well as SDI and HD-SDI card support for input on Linux.

Mac users benefit from extensions support and OS X Lion integration, continued support for OS X 10.5 and Power PC users, and support for all QTKit devices.

VLC 2.0 improves the decoding performance on multi-core processor systems, systems that support gpu hardware decoding and mobile hardware the player runs on. A click on Tools > Preferences > Input & Codecs > Use GPU accelerated decoding reveals whether gpu hardware acceleration is enabled in the media player. It is turned off by default.

Users who do not want VLC to remember which videos they played in the media player can disable the history feature in the Interface Settings under Save recently played items.

Have you worked with VLC 2.0 already? If so, what is your opinion of the new release? Oh, and if you prefer direct links to the downloads, use this link.

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Comments

  1. JCTMI said on March 26, 2012 at 5:56 pm
    Reply

    Would You Prove That VLC Is A Bloatware @MPC-HC?

  2. qwerty said on February 20, 2012 at 6:56 pm
    Reply

    Why no 64 bit version for Window$ ?,Even Mac gets 64 bits Version…..

  3. Bruce Tech Guy said on February 20, 2012 at 8:10 am
    Reply

    Re. earlier comment re upgrading – yes, normally it is recommended to remove the previous version prior to installing the new. In fact, most of the recent VLC versions offer to do this if they detect an older version already on the system.

    Now, re. the effectiveness of VLC 2.0
    Wow — Much improved!
    I tested several video (avi and mkv) files in both 1.1.11 and 2.0 and find that new version 2.0 is much smoother. Especially when dragging the scrub ‘thumb’ through a mkv video file, version 2 is very smooth.
    (my previous v1.1.11 would get all blocky and artifacty when I dragged through mkv files, and would take several moments to clean up and re-sync video after I had stopped the scrub.)

    Also, though not a big deal, subtitles are exceptionally smoothly rendered in 2.0, vs. older v1.1.11 subtitles sometimes had the ‘jaggies’ of pixelated edges.

    Thus VLC 2 has noticeable improvement, even on my old Sony minitower (circa 2004) with XP Pro and its video Radeon 9200 with paltry 128MB.

    So, good going VLC team.

  4. Justin said on February 20, 2012 at 12:52 am
    Reply

    I just tried it out and it’s working alot better than the RC. I’m glad that they were able to figure out the issue with dropping frames. That was the main reason for holding me back from using VLC. I’m definitely looking forward to improvements in the future such as better Blu-ray support.

  5. Jack said on February 19, 2012 at 8:10 pm
    Reply

    Roy
    Apparently the website you furnished http://www.crintsoft.com/mlfaq-vlc.htm
    is out of date, because there is no such listening for MiniLyrics in VLC

  6. firefoxlover said on February 19, 2012 at 5:41 pm
    Reply

    Would it be best to uninstall an older version of VLC prior to installing the latest version? Thanks.

  7. Jack said on February 19, 2012 at 1:54 pm
    Reply

    I installed the portable version of VLC. I also have MiniLyrics installed, so can anyone tell me how to get VLC to display lyrics when I am listening to a melody.

    Thanks
    Jack

    1. Roy said on February 19, 2012 at 4:44 pm
      Reply

      MiniLyrics has a FAQ that shows you how to set up VLC to work with it http://www.crintsoft.com/mlfaq-vlc.htm

  8. MPCHC said on February 19, 2012 at 8:34 am
    Reply

    MPC-HC is better than bloatware VLC. It’s a native Windows program and demolishes VLC in all aspects. Even Anandtech prefers MPC-HC as their HTPC player of choice.

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc/

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/4380/discrete-htpc-gpus-shootout/12

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