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VLC hits 1.0 milestone with new features and file support

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July 7, 2009, 10:12 AM EST

Our favorite media player, VLC, has finally reached the 1.0 milestone today. This major release introduces numerous bug fixes along with new formats, new codecs and a handful of new features. For those of you not following the release candidates, these include instantaneous pausing, frame-by-frame playback, better live recording and finer speed control during playback.

Overall it is the same solid application capable of playing just about anything you throw at it, but people working with less-common formats may find VLC’s newfound support for AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, True HD/MLP and Blue-ray Linear PCM decoders appealing. More details about the release can be found in the change log and on the VLC features page. The open-source media player is of course still cross platform, which means it’s available for all supported operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

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User Comments (12)

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hamsteyr
on July 7, 2009
10:54 AM
As long as VLC can't display my subtitles for mkv and mp4's nicely i don't think i'll get it... Of course referring to the flashy subs used by fansub groups in anime... anyone know if VLC can finally display it like MPC (and any other relying on codecs in the system for that matter)

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TJGeezer
on July 7, 2009
11:10 AM
As hamsteyr says, VLC messes up subtitles on my Vista system - displays them either twice or not at all, and I haven't figured out how to fix that. I like VLC but am sticking with MPC for that reason. (But I'll give VLC 1.0 a try just to see if the subtitle problem has been fixed in Vista.)

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Nirkon
on July 7, 2009
2:55 PM
I love VNC, whenever a new version comes up I update. Although I must say subtitle support has been crap the whole way, at first when you added a subtitle file the movie would start from the begining, very annoying, they fixed that now. Still on the issue, subtitles look like crap (not only the font, in general in every movie), and you cant change their font size, its just "small, large, larger..".

But I love it anyway, it can play unfinished movies, even once, I have no idea how the hell that happened, but it managed to play a movie inside a RAR file without extraction

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tengeta
on July 7, 2009
6:39 PM
I use VLC on my MacBook (Quicktime is terrible), but I still have yet to even install it on Windows. I just use CCCP and WMP and that gets everything done just as well. I find myself using VLC on my MacBook more often now to watch things though because WMP 12 seems to just be a Quicktime Copy that went equally horribly wrong.

How does VLC play a RAR file you ask? The same way an emulator plays a game thats in a RAR/ZIP. It extracts it into cache, RAM, or temporary folders as you access it and then goes away when you are done.

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jtc2112
on July 7, 2009
6:39 PM
It' a great app, period.

Sucks about the subtitles. That's one of the few features I never use

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arkantos
on July 7, 2009
8:29 PM
I'll try this new release. I've been using this since 2004 and been fascinated with its capabilities. although I cannot play .rmvb files its still great.

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SNGX1275
on July 7, 2009
8:36 PM
Any ideas how it compares (to prior releases) on processor usage on something relatively easy like divx or xvid?

Edit: Well now my question shifts to how does it do with h264 mkvs comparied to prior versions.

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Guest
on July 14, 2009
5:08 AM
Im using windows7 and so far all soft-subs for animes work perfectly.

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Guest
on July 14, 2009
5:12 AM
Ahhhh, It now plays RMVB files. It was a surprise for me too. Goodbye Real Alternative!

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arkantos
on July 17, 2009
12:54 AM
yes it can play .rmbv and can add subs while playing.

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Guest
on July 19, 2009
1:19 AM
Bad ***. Just today I tried watching Mushishi and the subs were all messed up and the flavor subs were overlapping the regular subs on the bottom.
After surfing the web for 2 minutes I find the new version of VLC, download, now it's all working perfectly.

I also came across some 4 year old forums saying VLC was a P.o.S. that would never make it, I strongly disagree.

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Tedster
on July 19, 2009
2:04 AM
I have a variety of media players. I have not yet found one that does it all well.

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