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VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

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Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#51
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only "nerd circle" I know that is fixated on MPC are otakus, for no meaningful reasons except to make themselves feel superior. (Especially subbing groups) I use FooBar2K for audio and VLC for video.

Kinda surprised that the grandparent (asked an honest question) is getting downvoted while this post (made a baseless claim) isn't. >The only "nerd circle" I know that is fixated on MPC are otakus, for no meaningful reasons except to make themselves feel superior. VLC is built largely around the cross-platform ffmpeg libraries and does not seem to have the ability to use native Windows DirectShow filters, in the inte…

There was a time(early 2000's) when lots of fansub groups were experimenting with brand new codecs and package techniques(like mkv).

MPC's easily extensible plugin system was a great thing then, because fansub groups could create their own package and easily distribute it with the codecs they were using.

VLC wasn't nearly as optimized as today, so it tended to run like crap on a lot of systems. I remember MPC loading up almost instantly on my college machine, while VLC would take a while to load and run.

Today, this is less of an issue. Pretty much everyone's settled a few standard codecs, and VLC's performance is quite good.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#52
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plex is almost this, if you're looking for something that has this feature now.

Plex is great. I'm on vacation with access to my full movie collection. Streams perfectly.

Yep. I paid for the membership, so Plex will also re-encode my stuff and sync it to the iPhone (or any other device). This prevents having to mess around with Handbrake for hours trying to get the iPhone to eat the video.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#53
post #49
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we could do that, but it is really annoying to do, since it almost needs a special desktop app to do so. And the iDevice must be in the listening mode... Drag'n drop in the browser is the best we have so far. Maybe a later version with Bonjour will come... Patches welcome :)

Bonjour is easy to implement. But why a special desktop app? Isn't there VLC for desktop already? I haven't used the original VLC for iOS. Do you run an HTTP server on the device for file uploading? You could go one step further and add WebDAV on top of HTTP. That would allow mounting the app as an external disk. It can also be integrated with desktop VLC for automatic discovery and file sharing. Can't wait to start…

> Bonjour is easy to implement.

Indeed, but the first thing I did was crashing, and was not the biggest priority. I hope that we can bring it later on.

> But why a special desktop app? Isn't there VLC for desktop already?

We could do that, although I'm not a fan of such coupling, but maybe it's easier than I expected.

> I haven't used the original VLC for iOS. Do you run an HTTP server on the device for file uploading?

We do for this version :)

> Can't wait to start contributing!

Seriously? Can't wait for patches :)

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#54
post #25

Have they made the Android app excellent yet? Last I checked it was still nowhere as good as MX Player performance wise. I'm just saying they might want to fix that before venturing into other platforms, especially platforms that have been very hostile towards them in the past.

Those things are orthogonal. This is a false dichotomy. Some people focusing on one platform does not block other to focus on another one...

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#55
post #16

I much prefer OPlayer. Great features, plays nearly any file I throw at it, and supports WiFi transfers.

This new version support file transfer over wifi/3G. You can both download from an external HTTP server and use the build in it HTTP Server to upload file to your iOS device. There is a nice drag and drop browser support to send files.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#56
post #28

Instead of downloading media to your iPhone you can use Tonido iOS ( https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tonido-file-access-music-vid... ) app to play/stream pretty much all the video formats directly from your PC, Mac or Linux (or) you can use the app to download the media and play with VLC.

Pretty different use case, IMO. Streaming is far less useful on the go than playing locally stored files. (and I can only assume you are involved with Tonido, given that half your HN posts are promoting using it)

Not only that, but one of their submissions is for a "Top Apps" post, that includes Tonido in it.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#57
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda surprised that the grandparent (asked an honest question) is getting downvoted while this post (made a baseless claim) isn't. >The only "nerd circle" I know that is fixated on MPC are otakus, for no meaningful reasons except to make themselves feel superior. VLC is built largely around the cross-platform ffmpeg libraries and does not seem to have the ability to use native Windows DirectShow filters, in the inte…

There was a time(early 2000's) when lots of fansub groups were experimenting with brand new codecs and package techniques(like mkv). MPC's easily extensible plugin system was a great thing then, because fansub groups could create their own package and easily distribute it with the codecs they were using. VLC wasn't nearly as optimized as today, so it tended to run like crap on a lot of systems. I remember MPC loading…

Codec support isn't that much of a problem nowadays, true. The plugin system is still useful for the reasons I mentioned: Adjustments and custom plugins that for the most part only dedicated AV-nerds care about.

However, consider that an H264 successor will arrive at some point, the anime scene will probably adopt it well in advance of everyone else (like it did with Hi10p), and flexible codec support doesn't seem so pointless after all.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#58
post #2

I'm a big fan of VLC, it's been my default video app since I can remember. Can't wait to see it again on iOS. The "big" feature I would like to see is some kind of "super-easy" drag and drop feature where I could easily send video files to my iPad/iPhone without doing the whole Browser->IP:Port->Choose file, etc. A "video file right click -> VLC -> Send file to iPad (upload in background)" would put a smile on my fac…

I love VLC. A mobile version sounds awesome, if streaming from a host is easy. That's really all I want to do.

And to that effect I use Airplayit for streaming+copying from pc/mac to ios. It's fairly simple and reliable.

Re: VLC for iOS returns on July 19, rewritten and fully open-sourced

#59
post #38
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's been my default video app since I can remember. Curious as to what you think about MPlayer, MPC-HC, or mpv, which have mostly taken the crown in nerd circles as being the de facto video players.

I don't want to go off-topic, but since VLC developers are reading this thread, here's where MPlayer (I use MPlayerX) is still better than VLC: - MPlayer starts much faster. - MPlayer loads videos much faster. - MPlayer has very convenient shortcuts for skipping forward or backward by 10 seconds (just press the right or left arrow), which are a godsend when you're watching something in a foreign language and you need…

I used to be an avid mplayer user too, starting since circa 2003 on Linux. However nowadays, on my Mac, I found more and more video files that mplayer crashes on. That made me switch to VLC. I still miss mplayer's super-fast seeking and loading times though. And once in a while VLC freezes during startup for no good reason.
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