Op het forum van VLC hebben de ontwikkelaars de eerste bètaversie van de in ontwikkeling zijnde 0.85-tak van VLC Media Player uitgebracht. De nieuwe versie is vanaf deze locatie te downloaden voor Mac OS X en Windows. VLC Media Player is een opensourcemediaspeler die gebruikt kan worden op verschillende plaftormen. De speler is in staat om zonder extra codecs een groot aantal mediaformaten af te spelen, waaronder MPEG1, MPEG2, VCD en diverse streaming protocols. De volgende veranderingen zijn in versie 0.8.5-test1 beta doorgevoerd:
Core support:Input:
- Statistics collection (bitrates, packets, connections, ...)
- Support for downloading updates
Decoders:
- Initial support for RTSP-over-HTTP (to allow NAT traversal)
- Linux DV (Digital Video - Firewire) input
- Improvements to the Audio CD input
- Separate playlist entries for the tracks
- Support for CDDB
- Support for more DVB (satellite) encryption modules
- Improved subtitles encoding support
- Improved support for playing MP4 files from the Web
Playlist / Services discovery:
- Cook (Real audio) support
Audio output:
- XSPF playlist support [ not included in 0.8.5-test1 ]
- Podcast support
Video output:
- New JACK audio output
Stream output:
- New video filters:
- magnify: allows you to zoom on part of the image
- gradient and edge detection: "cartoon-like" effect
- bluescreen: overlay parts of a video transparently on another one
- Logo video filter: can now loop through multiple images
- RSS video filter: display feed images. Support for Atom feeds.
- Improvements to the subtitles rendering
Interfaces:
- Initial support for throttling users on VOD streams
Windows Port:
- System to inform the user and request information
- HTTP authentication
- Fatal errors
- ...
- wxWidgets
- VLM (VideoLAN Media Manager) control panel
- Improved media information panel (shows statistics, metadata, ...)
- Drag & Drop support in the playlist
- Skins2
- Support for Winamp 2 skins
- Improved playlist handling
- Support for popup menus, animated bitmaps, equalizer, ...
- OS X
- Embedded Video output
- new Go-To-Specific-Time feature
- Improved media information panel (shows statistics, metadata, ...)
- support for processing multiple items with the wizard in a single run
- option to save selections in the wizard for a session (default enabled)
- HTTP
- New default interface pages for VLC and VLM
- A bunch of new RPN functions
OS X Port:
- MSN messenger "Now playing" support
*Nix port:
- Mac-Intel compatibility
- Enhanced support of various audio output devices
- Growl "Now playing" support
Developers:
- Ability to log to syslog
- Root wrapper to avoid running VLC as root
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- New libvlc API (not finished yet)
- Java bindings
- A bit more automatic testing