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Finally the countdown for the release of VLC 1.1.0 has started. Videolan tweeted today, announcing the release of VLC 1.1.0-pre1 for testing. Both the Linux and Windows versions are available. So, if you are interested in contributing or even just want to try out the new features in VLC 1.1, go ahead - download and install it.

We previously wrote a tutorial telling you how to install VLC 1.1.0 from source in Ubuntu. You may use it, with little tweaks(distro specific - installation, libraries etc.). If you are new to VLC 1.1 then I would strongly suggest you to check out the different features that VLC 1.1 plans to brings. Here are some of our previous articles, on VLC 1.1:

• Extensions in VLC media player, starting from version 1.1
• Visualizations in VLC 1.1.0
• Some VLC 1.1.0 Facts
• VLC 1.1.0 is going to be the Fastest of all

Finally the countdown for the release of VLC 1.1.0 has started. Videolan tweeted today, announcing the release of VLC 1.1.0-pre1 for testing. Both the Linux and Windows versions are available. So, if you are interested in contributing or even just want to try out the new features in VLC 1.1, go ahead - download and install it.

We previously wrote a tutorial telling you how to install VLC 1.1.0 from source in Ubuntu. You may use it, with little tweaks(distro specific - installation, libraries etc.). If you are new to VLC 1.1 then I would strongly suggest you to check out the different features that VLC 1.1 plans to brings. Here are some of our previous articles, on VLC 1.1:

• Extensions in VLC media player, starting from version 1.1
• Visualizations in VLC 1.1.0
• Some VLC 1.1.0 Facts
• VLC 1.1.0 is going to be the Fastest of all

In our previous articles, we have kept you in touch with the new upcoming features in VLC 1.1 - the new cool extensions, visualizations, its performance improvements and some cool facts. Basically, VLC 1.1 is going to be way better than ever. So, may be you would want to give it a try. In this howto, I will show you how to install the most recent version of VLC 1.1 from git on Ubuntu.

There are actually two ways to install VLC 1.1 in Ubuntu. One way is to use Webupd8's ppa archives in launchpad. You can directly use the ppa: nilarimogard/webupd8 (use this to install using ppa) to install vlc 1.1 in Ubuntu.

The other is by downloading the latest source code from VLC's git repositories and build and install vlc. Its a time-consuming procedure but this method might be useful for installing VLC 1.1 in other Linux distros.

Please note that, I have installed it successfully on Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. Similar steps can be taken for other Linux distributions to install VLC 1.1.

Follow the steps below:

1. Before proceeding with the installation you will need to install the dependencies required to install vlc. You can do this by executing the following command.

[shredder12]$ sudo apt-get build-dep vlc

Now, we need to install various other packages for buliding and compiling the latest tar we will download from videolan's git hub.

[shredder12]$ sudo apt-get install libtool build-essential automake-1.10 git-core libxcb-shm0-dev libxcb-xv0-dev libxcb-keysyms1-dev libx11-xcb-dev checkinstall

2. Now, lets download the latest source code from vlc's repository. Run the following command.

[shredder12]$ git clone git://git.videolan.org/vlc.git

If that doesn't work for you, due to blocked port issues etc. then you can directly install the tar snapshot of the latest source code from here. Now, you can untar the downloaded snapshot by running the following command.

[shredder12]$ tar -xvzf vlc-HEAD.tar.gz

3. So, lets start the installation process. First of all, go to the main directory.

[shredder12]$ cd vlc

and, run the following command.

[shredder12]$ ./bootstrap

This will bootstrap the source code and create the configuration files.

4. Now, run the ./configure to check for all the required tools and dependencies.

[shredder12]$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/vlc --exec-prefix=/usr

There are several options in ./configure to disable and enable various features of vlc while installing. You can see all of them by running

[shredder12]$ ./configure --help

and if you know what you are doing, you an use those options as per your need.

5. Once you are done with ./configure, its time for compilation. Run make

[shredder12]$ make  [see below]

Please note one thing, while running 'make', you might end up with this error.

LUA byte compiler missing.
make[2]: *** [lua/intf/luac.luac] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/sahni/Downloads/vlc/share'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/sahni/Downloads/vlc'
make: *** [all] Error 2

I am not sure if this is some kind of bug or not but I had it while installing and this is the fix.

[shredder12]$ cd share

[shredder12]$ for f in `find . | grep '\.lua$'`; do f2=`echo $f | sed 's/lua$/luac/g'`; ln -sf `basename $f` $f2; done $

Run "make" now.

6. This will take a lot of time. Once this is finished, you can either install vlc by running "make install".

[shredder12]$ sudo make install

or by using checkinstall (which is preferred). Checkinstall is used to keep a track of your local installation and produce a binary package to let it manage with your packet management software.

[shredder12]$ sudo checkinstall --fstrans=no --install=yes --pkgname=vlc --pkgversion "1:1.1.0-git`date +%Y%m%d`-0.0ubuntu2" --default

This will produce a .deb package of vlc in the same directory. Now, you can preserve it and delete the rest of the ~400Mb Installation source folder.

Now, you should have vlc 1.1 up and running. Enjoy!

VLC is one of the finest and most popular Media player and I have been using it for more than 2-3 years now, but didn't know, until a few months ago, that I could easily change the VLC interface(default skin) into whatever I like using various VLC skins. There are so many skins out there - cool, funny and some will change vlc completely into another player. Its really easy and fun, try it out.

Changing VLC skins hardly requires any effort. Just follow the steps below to change the interface skin.

1. First of all download the skin's .vlt file and save the file in ~/.local/share/vlc/skins2. "~" means your home directory i.e /home/username.

2. Now, open VLC, right click and go to interface -> preferences

3. In the preferences window, select the option of use custom skin under Interface category. And select the interface file, you want to use (don't worry this is just a one time thing).

4. Now, restart vlc and see the new interface. This is the Blissta skin, looks pretty cool.

5. Anyway, once you are already in the skin interface, it is really easy to change the interface. Place all your skin .vlt files in the same folder ~/.local/share/vlc/skins2 and restart vlc.

6. Open the VLC in the new interface and right click on the interface, same as step 2 and choose select skin. Now, you will see a list of all the skins(the ones you copied in the skins2 folder). Select the anyone and the interface will change automatically, no need to restart vlc.

This one is Blue Steel, it was tweeted by VLC earlier today. Its because of this that I thought of writing this small howto. That's all for this weeks TrendyTuesday, do try out different VLC skins and if possible, leave the links of screenshots of your favourites skins, as comments.

You would know by now that an awesome cross-platform Video Editor, VideoLan Movie Creator, based on VLC's framework is under development. VLMC project was announced by VideoLan in December last year. We are still waiting for its first public release, scheduled on 24th March, yup! just 1 day . But unfortunately it seems that 24th will witness the release of VLMC only for win32 platform, the Linux version has been delayed till the release of VLC 1.1. Well, before its release lets take a look at what all VLMC aims to offer.

Please note that this first public release of VLMC 0.0.1 is going to be a preview release, so there is still a whole lot to come. Here is the release schedule as planned by VLMC developers during FOSDEM 2010.

• February 17th: Feature Freezet
• March 3rd: String Freeze
• March 24th: Release (only for win32 as of now).

But according to the developer Hugo, the release of VLMC for Linux will be delayed until the release of VLC 1.1, where as VLMC for win32 can be expected in the next few days.

Currently VLMC 0.0.1 can import video, cut sections out, resize, trim clips, export a render, and playback in real time. Last week, a new demo video of VLMC was released, showing it in action with all the new features. You might want to take a look at it, to get a better idea of its cool features.

Although VLMC, just like VLC, aims to be a free, open-source, cross-platform video editor but this technical preview release is only available for Windows and Unix(later). VLMC is looking for contributors, especially for development on the MacOS platform. Interested people are encouraged to contact VLMC's developers. Check out the VLMC projects in GSoc 2010.

Everytime I read something about VLC 1.1.0, I always find something new about it, making it better and better. You would have read my previous posts about its amazing new features along with some cool facts. This time Jean-Baptiste Kempf, one of the developer, showed in his blog, how VLC 1.1.0, codenamed the luggage, is going to be faster than all of the previous versions. 

Lets take a look at the main improvements which will contribute to its Fast functionality.

Faster Decoding of HD videos

With the world moving towards high-definition, its a must for all the media players to have fast encodings for HD videos. And lets say VLC was a little behind in this aspect, which the developers plan to fix in the new release using the following methods:

• GPU decoding
• fast CPU decoding, especially windows.
• DSP decoding using OpenMax IL on embedded Linux, like Maemo.
• Better audio pipeline, making it a better audio player too.
• Less use of RAM and threads.

With its new capability to do the decoding part on a GPU, VLC takes loads of processing from the CPU. And its even better and faster when you are using a compatible GPU, like nVidia. VLC will then hardly consume 10% of the CPU.

In some more improvements, VLC will be using less RAM and threads than the previous releases. So, as you can see, the new VLC 1.1.0 is going to be way faster, lesser resource intensive and better than ever.

Everytime I read something about VLC 1.1.0, I always find something new about it, making it better and better. You would have read my previous posts about its amazing new features along with some cool facts. This time Jean-Baptiste Kempf, one of the developer, showed in his blog, how VLC 1.1.0, codenamed the luggage, is going to be faster than all of the previous versions. 

Lets take a look at the main improvements which will contribute to its Fast functionality.

Faster Decoding of HD videos

With the world moving towards high-definition, its a must for all the media players to have fast encodings for HD videos. And lets say VLC was a little behind in this aspect, which the developers plan to fix in the new release using the following methods:

• GPU decoding
• fast CPU decoding, especially windows.
• DSP decoding using OpenMax IL on embedded Linux, like Maemo.
• Better audio pipeline, making it a better audio player too.
• Less use of RAM and threads.

With its new capability to do the decoding part on a GPU, VLC takes loads of processing from the CPU. And its even better and faster when you are using a compatible GPU, like nVidia. VLC will then hardly consume 10% of the CPU.

In some more improvements, VLC will be using less RAM and threads than the previous releases. So, as you can see, the new VLC 1.1.0 is going to be way faster, lesser resource intensive and better than ever.

With VLC 1.1.0 on its way, one of its developers, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, decided to share some cool facts about this new release. And since we have always kept you updated with most of the news about VLC, I thought it would be good to share these facts with all you linuxers.

The great new features in VLC 1.1, visualizations, extensions etc are no doubt going to make VLC way better than ever. This is going to be a major VLC release since VLC 1.0.0, released in July, last year.

VLC codename

VLC 1.1. is going to be codenamed The Luggage, because of the novel series DiscWorld. The Luggage, is a large chest which follows RinceWind the wizzard, a fictional character of the series. May be the developers got inspired from the The Luggage's power and usefulness to its master, RinceWood .

This one is considered as a big change, since all of VLC's previous codenames were based on the characters in James Bond movie GoldenEye.

Some VLC Stats

• 6800 commits have been pushed since 1.0.0-rc1, the first release candidate of VLC 1.0.0
• 2327 files changed, 429662 insertions(+), 346267 deletions(-)
• 139 different commiters
• The biggest commiter has 1822 commits, 2 other commiters have around 770 commits, 1 has 650 and 1 has almost 500 commits. Those 5 developers represent 2 thirds of the total of commits.

Just stay in touch and we will keep you updated with the latest news about VLC 1.1, its new features and some cool facts like this .

Source: Jean-Baptise Kempf's Blog Post | VLC_codenames

I read a blog post of Jean-Paul Saman, a VLC developer, about the use of VLC in the most popular motorsport of the World, Formula One. According to the blog, a big VLC fan, Dan Dectis, posted a message on the vlc mailing list mentioning this picture from the Formula One Photography. This is indeed one of the examples showing the power and extent of VLC media player.

Check out the original pic.

The original post by Dan Dectis is:

Hello Developers,

I was recently looking at some interesting Formula One photography and came upon this picture.

That is a picture of the Mercedes GP telemetry screen in the pit lane. Very clearly, in the bottom left, is a VLC window! It is unmistakable. I assume they are using it for live streaming, but I am not sure.I merely wanted to bring to your attention the fact that your (most excellent) software is being used behind the scenes in the biggest motorsport in the world!

Source: http://www.jpsaman.org/jpsaman/node/20

Videolan declared a few hours ago the feature freeze of the upcoming release of VLC media player, VLC 1.1 in a tweet. Currently the developers have started working on fixing bugs and preparing its release. I have already kept you up to date with the new features, the addition of extensions and visualizations, in VLC 1.1.  So, I am pretty sure you are as excited as I am to start using the new and probably the most awaited release of VLC media player, VLC 1.1 .