15 years of VLC and VideoLAN • Hacker News Board

Re: 15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

#41

Post by harshreality » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 2:12 AM UTC

vlc 2.2.1, latest desktop release, has a possible code execution bug relating to 3gp (which doesn't have to be the file extension). Most distros have patched it, but the videolan releases don't appear to be patched since they're 2.2.1 and since the file modification for one mirror of win32 2.2.1 is last April (of course it would be pathologically stupid to release patched binaries without a new release, but it's possible, and they don't appear to have done either).

https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2015-59...

Re: 15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

#42

Post by stordoff » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 2:12 AM UTC

projct wrote: post #20

stordoff wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It plays literally everything In the ten or so years I've used it, I've only come across one file that VLC wouldn't play (excluded DRMed files) - a (possibly malformed) 24hr long MP4 I recorded a few years ago. Pretty much everything chokes on it (VLC crashes straight away), though oddly enough Windows Media Player handles it fine until you try to seek to a different time. I've dabbled with other media players/code…

you might be able to reindex or remux this file (save to a new file in the process) to fix it, by the way.

I tried that at the time, but all of the tools I tried either crashed or only recognised the audio track (tried ffmpeg, QuickTime in OS X and Windows, Handbrake, VirtualDub, MKVToolnix, and mpegstreamclip plus a few others; mostly ffmpeg-based stuff crashed AFAICT - most of the others either errored out or just listed the audio track).

I ended up recovering most of the footage by re-recording the screen whilst it was playing in Windows Media Player. Not ideal, but it was a low-ish quality capture of a webstream anyway, so any quality loss wasn't particularly important.

Re: 15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

#43

Post by noonespecial » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 2:28 AM UTC

beachstartup wrote: post #38

noonespecial wrote: post #35

A client once gave me a lecture about how FOSS couldn't possibly produce software with the quality of commercial and was really just a parasitic element on software development. He pulled up a video talk by some "expert" on the topic. Oh yes, he used VLC. Thanks for the classic "umm.. you know..." moment VLC project.

the entire linux operating system wasn't enough for him, huh?

For this guy, no. He knew nearly nothing at all about linux. His was a windows shop through and through. It was much more powerful to call out a program he knew and used than the nebulous "linux" that he had never seen in action and believed to just be an inferior rip-off of windows 2003 server.

Re: 15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

#44

Post by dopamean » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 2:43 AM UTC

gregschlom wrote: post #9

A little know fact about the VideoLAN project is that it was started so that the student organization could justify the need to replace the old networking infrastructure of the campus with a brand new high-bandwidth fiber optics network. They really wanted to deploy a fiber optic network but the school would have never approved it so they thought "OK, we need something that uses a ton of bandwidth, let's make a video…

Over the years when I've opened VLC I've occasionally wondered what the LAN part meant in VideoLAN. I thought it must be something other than Local Area Network. Thanks for sharing.

Re: 15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

#45

Post by wlesieutre » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 2:45 AM UTC

gregschlom wrote: post #9

A little know fact about the VideoLAN project is that it was started so that the student organization could justify the need to replace the old networking infrastructure of the campus with a brand new high-bandwidth fiber optics network. They really wanted to deploy a fiber optic network but the school would have never approved it so they thought "OK, we need something that uses a ton of bandwidth, let's make a video…

On a related note, VLC's traffic cone icon comes from a club member drunkenly stealing one, which then ballooned into the organization collecting them and eventually inspired the icon.

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?t=9792

Re: 15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

#46

Post by mlvljr » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 2:45 AM UTC

thekevan wrote: post #13

My first reaction was, "Fifteen, shmifteen! When's that Chromecast support you promised coming?" In all seriousness, as they say, VLC just opens everything. Thanks for it!

Would've added this comment, but Ctrl-F-ed first :)

Re: 15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

#47

Post by Thaxll » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 3:08 AM UTC

Laforet wrote: post #36

coverband wrote: post #34

I used to promote VLC at every corner, until they dropped the ball on 4K support big time. Even with a good mid-price graphics card, they're unable to utilize the GPU hardware effectively, and if you don't have a good amount of CPU power, the app chokes when it's asked to play 4K video. Ridiculous, since even the integrated Intel graphics on CPUs are now capable of playing 4K without any trouble.

Out of interest, which media player do you use now? Are they cross-platform like VLC?

mpc-hc is the best for Windows.

Re: 15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

#48

Post by booruguru » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 3:18 AM UTC

Kluny wrote: post #12

dopeboy wrote: post #3

In the earlier days of mainstream desktop linux (~2005), video codecs were a complete shitshow. VLC was a godsend during those times - it just worked. Still the first thing I apt-get after a fresh install. If you're reading this team VLC, thank you for your work. Ways to contribute to VLC: http://www.videolan.org/contribute.html

Quicktime on Mac OS remains a shitshow to this day. I still have not figured out how to use third party srt files for subtitles.

I think the srt file needs to have the same name as the main video file and they both need to be in the same folder.

Re: 15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

#49

Post by gesman » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 3:22 AM UTC

The most difficult challenge was to survive constant pressures from crapware for bundling deals.

Filezilla and alikes succumbed to that long time ago while VLC stand above the crowd.

Kudos, hats off and happy birthday!

Re: 15 years of VLC and VideoLAN

#50

Post by pkroll » Tue, Feb 02, 2016, 3:23 AM UTC

Since several people have said "it opens everything!" I thought I'd list a couple it doesn't handle: HYMT codec (multithreaded version of Huffyuv, useful for lossless capture of HD) UT Video codec various versions (also a multithreaded lossless codec set, I believe some versions VLC can play... but not the last several), oh and some FFV1 variants (clearly ffmpeg's fault, but still). All the above work fine with MPC-HC on Windows, if you have the codecs installed. VLC is still my player of choice, but as I've used HYMT and UT Video a lot, I've missed having them supported.