Talk:VLC media player

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Contents 1 BBC Shrodinger 2 Purchase by Microsoft 3 VLC and Ubuntu 4 Origins of the Pylon logo? 5 Softy Award 6 VLC and the FIrefox plugin 7 VLC and ISO files 8 Filled with inaccuracies 9 My edits 10 self contradiction

[edit] BBC Shrodinger

Unless I recall incorrectly, VLC supports the Dirac format used by the BBC for their *entire* archives. That's certainly worth including. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.122.209.106 (talk)

I think you recall incorrectly. I see no claim on the VLC features page that it supports Dirac, nor do I find any evidence that the BBC archives are available in Dirac format. —Mcoder 14:34, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Purchase by Microsoft

(please forgive my untraditional post position, but I think this deserves attention)
I remember going to the videolan page at one point, only to find that it had been purchased by Microsoft for an undisclosed amount (although the web site still offered it for download; they simply stated that development would discontinue and features would be integrated into the next windows media player). That message has since disappeared, and I can't find any mention of it anywhere. Can someone research what happened and document it in this wikipedia article? Maybe that message on the homepage can be found on archive.org. I'll try to find it their in the mean time.

QUINTIX 02:58, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Nope this is wrong and has never been discussed anywhere in the project. I am on the project team. 86.194.189.77 22:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

They did post that as an April Fools joke. The message was later removed and replaced with another that claimed they were collaborating with Apple. --Mcoder 12:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] VLC and Ubuntu

> sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

look for a line near the top like

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main

and change it to

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted universe multiverse

(and the next one as well - you get the idea) this adds the universe, restricted and multiverse file repositories

vlc is in universe

save and then

>sudo apt-get update

>sudo apt-get install vlc

of course the site you use for update can vary, but the point is that the universe is usually missing from the parameters.

Erm, what the hell? Not relevant, at all, to this page... --Kiand 17:34, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Regarding: vlc is in universe. Well, I should certainly hope so- where else would it be? parallel universe? That would be nothing less than madness.

[edit] Origins of the Pylon logo?

Erm, why does VLC have a traffic cone for a logo? Does anybody know? Erm?

It has nothing to do with the product, I know. I think they just thought it looked cool. Why does Linux have a penguin? Why does Apple name Mac OS X releases after big cats? Who knows... Marketing, I guess.

I was about to ask the same question. I like the VLC media player, but I find the logo extremely out of place - even moreso than other nontechnicaly logos and nomenclature (Tux the Linux penguin, Apple's Tiger/Panther/etc. OS upgrades). Do traffic cones really encourage people to download something? It's downright baffling - then again, the program IS made by the French. 69.118.235.3 20:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

See [1] Apparently drunk college kids collected traffic cones & so VLC decided to adopt it. Someone should write this up in a trivia section if we can get additional confirmation - Karnesky 07:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Just to clarify what the forum post linked to states, the kids in question were members of VIA[2] which is an association which includes the club VideoLAN which of course makes VLC. Hobophobe 23:27, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that libdvdcss has the same icon. [3]

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.162.64.240 (talk • contribs).

That page is part of the VideoLAN Developers' Website, so has the VideoLAN cone. libdvdcss is one of many programs maintained by the VideoLAN team (it's used as part of VLC), so that's why it's there. developers.videolan.org is the place for the source code, plus information if you want to help with development. Also check out the Wiki. --h2g2bob 17:32, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Softy Award

Should it be noted that it won a Softy Award from Maximum PC in 2006? Just wondering what happens when something wins an award... --209.12.51.206 19:18, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

If we start adding awards, the article will get ten times longer ;-) --h2g2bob 15:03, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] VLC and the FIrefox plugin

Could somebody please provide a source or link for this comment (part of the article): On Windows, Linux, and some other platforms, VLC provides a Mozilla/Firefox plugin, which lets people view some QuickTime and Windows Media files embedded in websites without using Microsoft or Apple products. Thanks. --Ozzyprv 03:48, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Um, one just needs to look at the Windows & Linux versions. I can vouch for the Win version, as I have installed it on several computers. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 05:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

VideoLAN documentation has it: http://www.videolan.org/doc/play-howto/en/ch04.html#id293936 --H2g2bob 10:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you.--Ozzyprv 13:24, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] VLC and ISO files

VLC can play or access iso files? I think you can't say it can access iso files because it is not a iso editor. VLC handles a .iso file as a single media file.

VLC does do ISO files, using libcdio. I don't have an .iso to hand for me to check this on, but I'm pretty sure it's a case of just opening the .iso file, eg vlc dvd://the_iso.iso --h2g2bob 15:02, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Filled with inaccuracies

A lot of "features" that are "only in VLC" as stated on this article are also in Mplayer/xine/gstreamer or any project based on those. This article NEEDS some serious cleaning up. Liquidtenmillion 14:50, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

You are welcome to ;)

I changed a lot the article lately, there is no "only in VLC".

[edit] My edits

I've had a go at editing bits of this article to fix it for the {{tone}} tag, which I've now removed. However, there's still a few bits where I'm not sure what to do:

• Interfaces - I moved that into Design Principles, but does it need it's own section, or to be moved? If so, where!?
• Readable formats - I have no idea what to do with this - is it OK as it is, should it be removed? Should it be made into a table or something? I don't know.

Any comments welcome. Also, feel free to fix these yourself :-) --h2g2bob 14:55, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] self contradiction

"VLC supports all codecs and all file formats supported by ffmpeg. Notably, the codec pack built into VLC is so comprehensive that in some specific cases, such as Vorbis, DVD Video and DivX playback as well as parsers for Ogg and Matroska file formats, it is the only application that can play the video and audio files "out of the box". However, this feature is not unique to VLC, as any player, including MPlayer and Xine, using the ffmpeg libraries can play those formats without need for external codecs."

How can it be the *only* app to do this if the feature is not unique to this app? --Danny Rathjens 21:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that obviously doesn't make sense. I removed it from the article, but feel free to reword it. —J. M. 02:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)