VLC 1.0 Released – Is It Really A Game Changer?

A few days ago, I downloaded a couple of video clips, neither of which would play correctly. I knew the time code was messed up, but I had no way of getting a non-botched copy, and really wanted to see the clips in their entirety.

I usually use GOM Payer, which works well, and doesn’t seem to have nearly the problems that Windows Media Player does. For the same reason, ease of use, I don’t try to use Win Amp for viewing anything video, but for audio, I think it’s great.

The broken clips would not play past an indicated 50% using GOM. WMP would not do anything but sit, as though telling me that I should simply give up on these. I tried Win Amp and got approximately the same results as I did with GOM.

I went away from the problem for a while, and happened to go to Betanews. Looking at the files that have been recently released, I saw VLC 1.0 was released.

I have never used it before, but I know it has been in under 1.0 release for what seems like forever ( I later found out it has been ten years.) I decided to try it.

Well, I am not overly impressed with the interface, but the results are astounding. I try to start the broken files. It tells me immediately that the files are broken. This might not seem like much, but to some, it might seem like the file was fine, yet they would be doing something incorrect, or perhaps a problem with the system was the problem. Big points for this.

Then, better still, the player asks me if I want the file repaired. Of course I do. The player apparently repairs the problem, and begins playing the files. I can now see that they are broken, but they are also playing to their end, not simply showing half of what was in the code.

The only thing about this is that apparently there is no way to make the fix permanent – each time one wants to play the file, the greeting and question is presented, along with the warning that repair might take some time. Fortunately, the repair takes only about 3 seconds on these, but it will get really annoying if repair takes a long time, and can not be made permanent.

Still, this is a really great program.

I then read a column by a ZDNet author, Dana Blankenhorn, who delivers a bit more about what the player will do, which is very nice, as newbies like me have not had ten years to know the feature set, and the help and instructions are a bit sparse.

There’s a new hit on the Web.

VLC 1.0 has about 6 million downloads since its launch a few days ago, and the number was climbing at over 11 per second at last count.

I have had VLC for a few years, and you may be wondering what the big deal is.

Start with the fact it breaks all the assumptions we’ve had about the proprietary video world. It reads anything, and ignores everything producers try to put in front of your video experience. On a Netflix DVD it will skip the previews, for instance.

As Matt Asay notes, VLC records as well as plays video so you can hoard everything Anne Hathaway has ever done on your hard drive. It can be used as a server to stream video to others.

Even while VLC may be a better player than what you have under Windows, its heritage is Linux, and open source. It’s licensed under the GPL V.2 and is compatible with the open source Ogg Theora codec. It supports many other codecs as well.

The VLC team is aware they have something special. They have ditched their old logo, a roadside traffic cone, for a snappy new bulldozer (above).

In summary, the new VLC media player is everything the copyright industries have fought against for over a decade — open source, wide-open access, free, streaming, Linux. VLC ignores all the agendas that have hampered Apple QuickTime, the Real Player, and Windows Media Server over the years.

Now, will it change the media world, or will the media industry work to shut it down?

Perhaps that is why everyone is so quick to snap this up. I don’t know if I’ll make this my favorite player, but I’ll certainly keep it on the machine to take care of difficult things!

Grab it quick, with praise like this, and the implications listed above, it might be like DVD XCopy; here today, and gone tomorrow.

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