ngl: I was expecting a crazy success story where you started learning to code to add your feature and then you went on becoming a streaming expert at a FAANG

But glad you had your feature!

Tbf you could donate money to someone who does have the expertise to do it.

Free software is not "free" (as in free beer). People have to build and maintain it.

“If you insert a slice of bologna into the disc tray, VLC will play it.”

VLC was a big deal in the 2000s if you wanted to watch torrented anime. Operating systems didn't come with players with broad codec support and it was a legitimate nightmare to figure out what fly by night codec worked with whatever the bootleggers cobbled together to encode the video of the week.

These days, operating systems already have rock solid video players with far less clunky UI.

On Linux, video is already sublime thanks to ffmpeg and the dozens of available frontends.

It feels like wrestling with 1998 in trying to use VLC these days. It's got a real WinAmp feel to it.

But the real elephant in the room is that the lionshare of video is now being delivered by major media platforms like YouTube.

I’ve been using it to listen to actual MP3s of the music I have. I can’t find any decent MP3 player on iOS (incredibly ironic given the iPod was one of the 3 devices the iPhone was supposed to be when Steve Jobs first introduced it) and VLC is pretty good.

Also available on tvOS and you can watch video files from your home NAS or just send them from your iPhone/iPad!

I find it handy for streaming videos from my Jellyfin server with good subtitling support, then casting to a TV!

I use mpv but VLC is definitely better for people who prefer traditional GUIs, which is most people.

I still use VLC to this day on Linux because it's still as great as it ever was. I'm gonna have to install something to play videos, why wouldn't it be VLC?

I used VLC until I looked for a backward frame step functionality. I then found this thread on the VLC forums where the maintainers explain (with bad attitude) why this functionality is technically impossible. Everyone points out that mpv supports it, but the maintainers double down and say they’re Doing It Wrong and it shouldn’t be possible.

So anyways, I switched to mpv.

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=120627

I don't know, I still have issues with the default media player in Ubuntu not working for either video or sound. I'm sure it's solvable, but it's easier to just install VLC, so that's what I do.

I use it on my Android phone. Is there a better FOSS media player (or better any media player?).

VLC also still (or at least recently?) provides APKs you can download to install on very old Android versions. I have it installed on a few old Android tablets (and by old I mean something like Android version 4).

MPV everywhere else though.

Yep.

VLC was not important on Linux. Because we have ffmpeg as foundation, used by mplayer and nowadays mpv. The later is my recommendation. Whether on the tty (awesome!) or on Wayland. If you prefer a native Gtk an interface is available, named Celluloid. In all these cases mpv is mighty, reliable, fits into the environment with a frugal interface.

We’ve also players based on gstreamer but ffmpeg is more reliable.

But the need for a reliable player on Windows, Android, macOS, iOS and tvOS is big. Because their default players suck. VLC comes with an awkward UI and the weird built-in stuff for SMB. But from a 2001 point-of-view it makes sense, LAN-parties are nice and back then they were everywhere. And Windows doesn’t support WebDAV well.

My favorite is mpv. But I’m still tankful that I’ve one usable player in my iPhone.

PS: VLC also uses ffmpeg?

As a Windows user, I never used VLC because I didn't like its UI and not having the "click to pause" was a big issue when you control a media center with a mouse.

So I used Media Player Classic without any issues for years.

When I moved to Linux Desktop, it came with VLC so I tried and forced me to use that damn "space to pause". But half my videos had issues playing. Being in KDE, I switched to Haruna. It's ugly, but I can play anything without issues... and I can "click to pause"!

I might be wrong but I think the guys at VLC are still very important contributors to ffmpeg, which is still a big deal. They also (kinda recently) developed some really low latency tech for streaming called Kyber So bottomline the player might not be used that much (although on mobile the app is very popular still) but the tech they develop for it, is

> I’m not sure what VLC brings to the table nowadays Lack of backdoors?

So, the same value-add as always!

Agreed except I have no idea what Jean-Baptiste actually does besides trying to run his little startup Khyber

Default player sucks and MPV is close to impossible to compile yourself. VLC is still a good solution on Linux.

Even within people involved in the local market it is not a widespread thing, but for a year now he's been the CTO of Scaleway, one of the French cloud providers.

He’s pretty obsessed with making money off his Khyber thing afaict

I had a quick chat with him at a conference in Munich and I thought he was pretty chill, but I think it was 15y ago.

Thats funny, I met him during GSoC too over a decade ago, and he's been on top of the open source game.

He is French. Cut him some slack ;-)

/s obviously

I vouched for this post because I have corresponded with him and he engaged in an in unnecessarily condescending way. What are you referring to by GSOC?

oook, but why?

K Lite Codec Pack + Media Player Classic was great

I think you mean libavcodec?

But that is incorrect. VLC has even more supported features, if you do not believe me, check the source code https://github.com/videolan/vlc/tree/a33f33ddb0a9e0d26d779eb...