VLC 2.0 Announced: New UI and Blu-ray Support for OS X
by Kristian Vättö on February 13, 2012 4:00 PM ESTVideoLAN has announced VLC 2.0 and the first release candidate is available to the public today. The biggest changes are in the OS X version but there are a few interesting changes in the Windows version as well, such as a 64-bit version and support for multiple video files inside RAR archives. The OS X version has a totally new user interface (see pictures below) along with Blu-ray playback support.
Lets talk briefly about Blu-ray playback in OS X. Apple does not officially support Blu-ray as they provide no option for Blu-ray drives and the software support is poor to say the least. Blu-ray discs are encrypted so not just any player can play them. Since Apple doesn't support Blu-ray, there hasn't been a player that would enable one-click Blu-ray playback. However, it's still been possible to rip and encode the video with the OS X version of MakeMKV, in which case the video will become a regular MKV file that is supported by various players. There is also a direct playback method but it's rather complicated and doesn't work with all discs. VideoLAN is promising that VLC 2.0 will sport experimental Blu-ray playback support, but unfortunately we don't know yet how functional it is. Another big improvement in the OS X version is support for Lua-based extensions. There are at least a dozen different extensions but the most notable are probably subtitle finder and movie information.
Update: The Blu-Ray support is limited decrypted media, which means commercial Blu-Rays with DRM won't work. Also, the OS X version doesn't support Blu-Ray at all yet, although VideoLAN is planning on porting it to the OS X version as well.
The Windows version isn't getting any major new features; it's mainly under the hood changes but it already supports the features that are new in the OS X version. VideoLAN is apparently also working hard on porting VLC 2.0 for iOS, which is a bit of surprise given that the original VLC app was pulled from the App Store about a year ago.
The first release candidate can be downloaded here and the complete change log is available here.
Source: 9to5Mac
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Guspaz - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
VLC for iOS was useless (for video at least), since it didn't support hardware acceleration. It did everything in software, which meant that it choked on pretty much any media.My attempts to play a 720p video file (and this was a standard h.264/AAC file) on an iPhone 4S resulted in a handful of frames per second. The framerate would need to be ten times higher to be useful, and even then, doing it entirely in software would kill the battery.
If they added proper hardware acceleration support, it might be useful, but without it, it can't actually play anything worthwhile.
lurker22 - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
Strange, VLC on iOS worked fine playing all the XVID videos. I never used it for AAC type file, what's the point when the native player was better integrated and easier to sync files to etc.I recently bought GoodPlayer for xvid video playing on iOS as it's actually actively developed and supported and far less buggy than the original VLC release
MySchizoBuddy - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
I can play 1080p on my 2006 iMac using VLC. You must have a pretty old mac.Spoelie - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
He's talking about iOSBut you're forgiven because it's not like the OP was on-topic
blzd - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
VLC player on Mac has always seemed under featured, hopefuly with this version 2.0 I can full screen videos while in Mirroring mode to an external display.mevans336 - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
There is both an Intel32 and an Intel64 version for OSX available at the download link ...http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/vlc-2.0.0...
I installed and opened it and Activity Monitor shows it an an Intel (64 bit) application.
Kristian Vättö - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
Good point, thanks, updated the article. I even downloaded the 64-bit version but apparently my brain was sleeping and didn't see the connection.mevans336 - Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - link
No worries Kristian. Cheers.gramboh - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
I'm not sure it's a good idea to post an example of the new UI with a pirated (scene group) filename. Did this come from VLC?http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5534/VLCplay.jpg
rrohbeck - Monday, February 13, 2012 - link
Ah so you recognized the file name? :)