Features Coming For The VLC 2.1 Media Player

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Features Coming For The VLC 2.1 Media Player

The VLC 2.1 media player update is due out in the coming weeks and with it will come several new features for the open-source program...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQxMjQ

[xgt001]

awesome

Support for VDPAU hardware video decoding on Linux.

WOW... great news

SMplayer is also fantastic though... using it with Kernel 3.11 and Mesa 9.2 for movies on my Radeon 6370M works wayy quieter than XVBA in FGLRX ever ever did

[mark45]

Don't hold your breath, from what I read a while ago and even today on the forum - vdpau support in vlc is gonna require a lot more CPU for some (most?) people for unknown (to me) reasons, which screws the whole point of using vdpau.
That's why I stay with Gnome Mplayer, its vdpau support is better than in SMplayer and consumes almost no CPU when video is paused, unlike SMplayer.

[Ericg]

Don't hold your breath, from what I read a while ago and even today on the forum - vdpau support in vlc is gonna require a lot more CPU for some (most?) people for unknown (to me) reasons, which screws the whole point of using vdpau.
That's why I stay with Gnome Mplayer, its vdpau support is better than in SMplayer and consumes almost no CPU when video is paused, unlike SMplayer.

For the curious, mark is referring to... this: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...908#post342908

And I wouldn't say it completely devoids the point of using VDPAU, it just devoids the power efficiency point. The decoding and displaying of the video will still be smoother (less choppy) than with CPU decoding. I'm not sure WHY VLC uses more CPU usage, but apparently it does. Interesting.

[Shnatsel]

Hmm, color conversions with GLSL. Am I the only one who want to show it to that Xvideo-on-GLAMOR guy? He had writing exactly that on the agenda.

[GreatEmerald]

Blu-ray module improvements

The what? Those must be pretty small improvements...

[Chewi]

The what? Those must be pretty small improvements...

You're saying Blu-ray is already perfect or you've tried a pre-release and didn't notice much difference? I hope it's better than mplayer at least. Although the framerate holds up with low CPU usage, I get some tearing, which I thought VDPAU was supposed to eliminate. The audio sync isn't terrible but it could be better. Finding the right episode can be a challenge and it often starts playing with the wrong language. Not much fun when you're trying to chill out in front of the TV.

[Awesomeness]

I'm not sure WHY VLC uses more CPU usage, but apparently it does. Interesting.

That is what we IT experts refer to as a bug. VDPAU decoding is (IIRC according to a videolan.org forum post) still declared experimental in 2.1.0 and will be off by default.

[mark45]

That is what we IT experts refer to as a bug.

You can quickly fix the bug by declaring it a feature, like corporations do.

[Ericg]

That is what we IT experts refer to as a bug. VDPAU decoding is (IIRC according to a videolan.org forum post) still declared experimental in 2.1.0 and will be off by default.

I'm aware Awesomeness, I was more directing my comment to the linked post where the user stated the VLC has ALWAYS used more CPU than other movie player-- regardless of hardware acceleration or not. That its idling was just higher than others. Maybe its a generic bug, maybe its a bug due to architectural design of VLC, who knows.