Release changes

To see the current changes under development, read Next changes.

Changes between 0.8.6 and 0.9.0

Important notes

• This version of VLC contains a new interface for Windows and Linux. This interface lacks a few features that used to be present in vlc 0.8.6:
  • "Streaming wizard" and "VLM control". These features will be replaced by a better alternative in the next version. If you absolutely need these features, we advise you to keep vlc 0.8.6
  • Similarly, "Bookmarks" will be reintroduced in an improved version at a later point
• The default Interface is now Qt Interface on linux and windows.
• The default for --sout-keep has changed. It's now activated by default.
• The marq, mosaic and logo commands in the rc interface changed. They now require a target name as their first argument. Example:

vlc --sub-filter "marq@test{marquee=Hello}" -I rc <somevideo> 

You can then use commands like:

@test marq-marquee Goodbye

These new commands are also available in the telnet interface.

• The HTTP Interface is now only available on the local machine by default.

If you want to make it available from other machines, you will have to edit the ".hosts" file.

• On UNIX/Linux, the file is in /usr/share/vlc/http/.hosts

If you're using the old http interface, it's located in /usr/share/vlc/http/old/.hosts

• On Windows they are in C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\http\.hosts and C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\http\old\.hosts
• On Mac OS X, you can find it in VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/http/.hosts and respectively in VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/http/old/.hosts

• The "rtp" access output module has been removed:

Please use the RTP stream output instead, e.g.:

Old: '#std{access=rtp,dst=239.255.1.2,sap}'

New: '#rtp{dst=239.255.1.2,sap}'

Important Changes

Playlist

• Vastly improved playlist support:
  • Media library support
  • "Live search"
  • Shoutcast TV listings
  • Audioscrobbler/last.fm support
• Album art support
• User definable Lua playlist scripts. See share/luaplaylist/README.txt

(Default scripts open YouTube, DailyMotion, metacafe and Google Video URLs)

• User definable Lua metadata and album art fetcher scripts. See share/luameta/README.txt

Input/Demuxers

• UDP-Lite transport for RTP/AVP
• DCCP transport for RTP/AVP
• Proxy support for MMSH stream
• JACK audio input support
• MP4 gpac and Apple chapter support
• Input run time option (improved live stream recording)
• Fixed aiff stereo file
• Fixed audio glitch on seek
• Improved FLAC demuxer (duration / current time / meta data)
• AAC tags support
• APEv1/2 tags support
• Improved ID3v2 tags support
• Improved Ogg/Vorbis tags support
• Raw video support
• Standard MIDI File (types 0 & 1) support
• Tivo Series 2 support
• v4l2 access module support
• CD+G karaoke Files support
• MXF files support

Decoders

• VP60/VP61/VP6F/VP62 support
• MKV USF subtitles support
• HTML based subtitles support
• Flash Screen Video support
• CamStudio Screen Video support
• DOSBox Capture support
• Karl Morton's Video support
• limited atrac3 support
• Fluidsynth MIDI software synthesis (with external sound fonts)
• New codec FOURCCs to support more specific files: Avid, FCP, Sony, Samsung, ...
• Closed Caption Decoder (DVD, ReplayTV, Tivo, DVB/ATSC)
• H.264 PAFF support
• DNxHD / VC-3 support
• NellyMoser ASAO support
• APE (Monkey audio) support
• VBI & EBU (Teletext) support

Encoders

• Flash Screen Video support

Video output and filters

• Adjust, Invert and Distort (now split into Wave, Ripple, Gradient and Psychedelic) video filters can now be streamed
• New puzzle video output filter
• Rewrite motion detection video filter
• New extract video filter (extract Red, Green and Blue components from a video)
• New sharpen video filter (increase the contrast of adjacent pixels)
• New erase video filter (remove a logo from a video)
• Enhancements to subtitles' renderer to support bold, italics and some HTML tags
• Support for RGBA and I420 blending. This improves Mosaic CPU usage *a lot*.
• New transparency mask video filter (for use with the mosaic_bridge module).
• New bluescreen video filter (for use with the mosaic_bridge module). This was previously part of the mosaic module.
• Fix random characters problem in RSS filter.
• Add rotate-deciangle for more precision on rotate filter
• Support for Intel SSE2 intruction set in chroma converters
• Improved use of Intel MMX intruction set in chroma converters

Audio output and filters

• Replay gain support.
• Play audio when going slower/faster ( no pitch filter yet ).
• New spatializer audio filter.

Stream output

• RTSP for TS-multiplexed broadcast streams
• New RTP payload formats:
  • Speex voice audio codec
  • ITU T.140 (for text, subtitles) output
  • G.711 (both A-law and µ-law) output
• UDP-Lite transport for RTP
• DCCP transport for RTP
• Lots of fixes for RTSP broadcasting

Interfaces

• Windows/Linux
  • Brand new interface for Linux and Windows, based on the Qt toolkit
• All
  • Improved user interaction
  • Improved mouse gestures
  • Experimental Lua interface modules. See vlc -I lua for more info
• Unix
  • Option to allow only one running instance, using D-Bus interface.
  • D-Bus Interface implementing the MPRIS (Media Player Remote Interfacing specification - see DBus-spec), a common dbus control interface for media players that intends to become an xdg standard when finished: [1].
• Motion module use disk accelerometers to keep video horizontal
• Ncurses interface now uses ncursesw to correctly display wide characters when using an UTF-8 locale.
• Plugin to set Telepathy presence message using MissionControl

Linux Port

• VLC now complies with the XDG Base Directory Specification version 0.6 (which means that VLC doesn't use the $HOME/.vlc directory anymore)

Mac OS X Port

• Mac OS X Framework that can be used to embed VLC in third party applications. (Google Summer Of Code Student project).

LibVLC

• Event management and various improvement in libvlc. (Part of a Google Summer Of Code Student project).

Capture

• new BDA device driver plugin for DVB-C/S/T capture cards on Microsoft Windows

Localisations

• Finnish
• Persian
• Polish

Changes in between

Links to changelogs between:

0.8.6h and 0.8.6i

0.8.6g and 0.8.6h

0.8.6f and 0.8.6g

0.8.6e and 0.8.6f

0.8.6d and 0.8.6e

0.8.6c and 0.8.6d

0.8.6b and 0.8.6c

0.8.6a and 0.8.6b

0.8.6 and 0.8.6a

Changes between 0.8.5 and 0.8.6

Playlist

• Shoutcast TV listings support

Input

• Support for RTSP authentication
• Support for adding subtitles on the fly
• Fixed MPEG-PS duration calculation
• ATSC support for DVB input
• Partial reading support for DVR-ms recordings
• Partial reading support for MXF and GXF fileformat
• Improved support for Flash Video files

Decoders

• Native WMV9/VC-1 support
• WMA Speech support (through binary codecs)
• VP5/VP6 - Flash Video support (not VP61)
• The True Audio Lossless codec support
• Matroska WavPack support
• Improved H.264 support (interlaced, speed improvements etc but no PAFF)
• Fixed a problem with MPEG2 field pictures
• Fixed swapped colors on DVB subtitles

Video output

• Additional OpenGL effects (cylinder, torus, sphere, ...)
• Experimental Direct3D 9 video output (win32). Best served on Vista :)
• Improved libcaca support

Interfaces

• All
  • New hotkeys for crop and zoom
  • Support for snapshots from the HTTP interface
• Windows
  • Systray support in skins
• OS X
  • Support for Apple Remote control
  • Fullscreen controller panel (artwork by Simon Damkjær Andersen)
  • New playmode buttons (artwork by Simon Damkjær Andersen)
  • right/ctrl-click menu in video outputs
  • Main Menu uses autohide when playing videos in fullscreen mode
• Linux
  • Notifications using notification-daemon

Windows port

• Support for Unicode filenames (Windows NT and above)

  Windows 9x/ME users:

  • Please note that these versions of Windows are not officially supported
  • Unicode support for Windows 9x/ME applications is available through the

    Microsoft Layer for Unicode available from the following location: http://www.microsoft.com.nsatc.net/globaldev/handson/dev/mslu_announce.mspx

    Download the MSLU package (unicows) and extract the content into the folder C:\Windows\System

• Fixed IPv6 support on the client side
• Fixed disable screensaver (Direct3D and DirectX video output)

Localization

• Add Czech
• Add Slovak
• Add Malay
• Add Slovenian

Developers

• Updates to the libvlc API
• Fixes for the mozilla and activeX plugins