If you are like me who loves watching TV, movie and other video clips on my computer, you will find VLC a constant companion.
VLC is a free/open source software for video playback. It supports multiple multimedia formats, is cross-platform and even provides a streaming server for free. I sometimes use VLC to transcode video from one format to another.
VLC just released version 0.8.6 with these changes:
1. The HTTP interface is now only available on the local machine by default. If you want to make it available from other machines, you will have to edit the ".hosts" file.
2. This version of VLC contains a new interface for Windows and Linux. This interface lacks a few features that used to be present in vlc 0.8.6:
– "Streaming wizard" and "VLM control". These features will be replaced by a better alternative in the next version. If you absolutely need these features, we advise you to keep vlc 0.8.6
– Similarly, "Bookmarks" will be reintroduced in an improved version at a later point3. Vastly improved playlist support:
– Media library support
– "Live search"
– Shoutcast TV listings
– Audioscrobbler/last.fm support4. Video output
– Adjust, Invert and Distort (now split into Wave, Ripple, Gradient and Psychedelic) video filters can now be streamed
– New puzzle video output filter
– Additional OpenGL effects (cylinder, torus, sphere, …)
– Improved libcaca support5. Interfaces:
– Windows/Linux
Brand new interface for Linux and Windows, based on the Qt toolkit
– All
Improved user interaction6. Shoutcast TV listings support
7. Input:
– Support for RTSP authentication
– Support for adding subtitles on the fly
– Fixed MPEG-PS duration calculation
– ATSC support for DVB input
– Partial reading support for DVR-ms recordings
– Partial reading support for MXF and GXF file format
– Improved support for Flash Video files8. Decoders:
- Native WMV9/VC-1 support
– WMA Speech support (through binary codecs)
– VP5/VP6 – Flash Video support
– The True Audio Lossless codec support
– WavPack support
– Improved H.264 support (interlaced, speed improvements etc)
– Fixed a problem with MPEG2 field pictures
– Fixed swapped colors on DVB subtitles
You may get the full list of changes from videolan.org.
MPlayer works better as a browser plug-in. As a stand-alone player, I prefer VLC.
Thanks for the comment.
Transmit has progressed greatly, and version 3 is, in my opinion, the best yet. This is especially true if you’re running 10.4, as there are many Tiger-specific new features, such as Automator support, a Dashboard widget, support for Sync Services, and Spotlight favorites
When using a camera phone to take a digital picture you are actually creating a high resolution JPEG image, usually at least 640×480 with 24 bits of color. However when sending the image to another phone this high resolution image might be transcoded to a lower resolution image with less amount of color in order to better fit the target device’s screen size and color limitation (i.e. 120×160 and 16 bits of color). This size and color reduction not only improves the user experience on the target device but is sometimes the only way for content to be sent between different mobile devices.
When using a camera phone to take a digital picture you are actually creating a high resolution JPEG image, usually at least 640×480 with 24 bits of color. However when sending the image to another phone this high resolution image might be transcoded to a lower resolution image with less amount of color in order to better fit the target device’s screen size and color limitation (i.e. 120×160 and 16 bits of color). This size and color reduction not only improves the user experience on the target device but is sometimes the only way for content to be sent between different mobile devices.