Description

 VLC MEDIA PLAYER 0.8.4a FOR WINDOWS + SKINS [NO CODECS NEEDED TO PLAY MOVIES] 

Release 

 version 0.8.4b - GPL 


Variation description: 
This is the latest stable release of VLC. 

Details about this version: 
NEWS file, clipped for BeOS-relevance: 

Changes between 0.8.4 and 0.8.4a: 
--------------------------------- 

Decoder: 
* Add support for new BMP and Cook (RealAudio G2) decoders in ffmpeg 
* Add support for some non-standard FOURCCs used for H.264/H.263 

Demux: 
* Fix bug with some HE-AAC audio tracks 

Services Discovery: 
* UPnP fixes 

Changes between 0.8.2 and 0.8.4: 
-------------------------------- 

Core support: 
* Internal strings handling is now UTF-8 based 
* New OSD system 

Video output: 
* Fixed problems with OpenGL output 
* New --monitor-par (pixel aspect ratio) option 
* Fixed display problems with HDTV-1080 format 

Input: 
* Support for RTP packet reordering 
* Fixed syntax for FTP URLs 

Decoders: 
* Support for libSDL_image to import different image types 
* Musepack decoder using libmpdec 
* QDM2 audio support (needs ffmpeg from 19th Oct 2005 or later) 

Video filters: 
* RSS feed overlay 

Audio filters: 
* Fixes, enhancements and new options related to the Headphone Channel 
Mixer and Dolby Surround 

Stream output: 
* New shout output module to forward streams to icecast servers 
* Fixed several SAP and SDP announcement bugs 
* Fixed MTU handling to avoid IP fragments 

Interfaces: 
- new cone icon by Richard ¯iestad (Eurodata, retron.info) 
* HTTP 
- New RPN functions to control VLC features (see play-howto) 
- Facilities to correctly handle non-ASCII characters and spaces in 
the names of files 
- Include macro to include other files 
- CGI 1.0 support 

Translations: 
The following languages were added: 
* Galician 
* Korean 
* Romanian 
* Simplified Chinese 
The following languages were re-added: 
* Swedish 

Changes between 0.8.1 and 0.8.2: 
-------------------------------- 

Core support: 
* Rewrite of the playlist 
- Tree structure 
- Input preparsing (for meta-data) 
- Grouping (by artist, ...) support 
* Preferences improvements: 
- New organization, designed to improve usability 
- New configuration types (list of modules, ...) 
* XML parsers 
* Core image manipulation support 
* Client-side SSL/TLS support 
* SSL Client certificates checking support (allows for secure VoD) 
* Renamed --spu-channel to --sub-track 
* Renamed --spumargin to --sub-margin 
* Renamed --audio-channel to --audio-track 
* Renamed --filter to --vout-filter 
* filters, extra interfaces, visualizations and service discovery modules are 
now separated by ':' instead of ',' 
* Access filter architecture 
* Track selection based on preferred language (--sub-language and --audio-language) 
* Zsh autocompletion for VLC's arguments 
* Many bugfixes... 

Input/Demuxers: 
* Support for SOCKS proxy 
* Support for Shoutcast Meta-data 
* Support for (HE-)AAC raw-audio streams 
* Support for images on a HTTP server that get refreshed on the server 
* Better support for Kasenna streams 
* RTSP UDP->TCP rollover support 
* Massive Matroska improvements 
* Support for XA and VOC audio files 
* TiVo demuxer 
* Improved CDDAX module (uses several playlist items) 
* Fix the "negative subtitles delay" bug 

Decoders / Encoders: 
* Dirac decoder and encoder 
* PNG decoder/encoder 
* Support for Apple Lossless Audio Codec 

Access filters: 
* New Record and Timeshift filters 

Services discovery: 
* New type of modules, that add items to the playlist 
* Brand new SAP module 
* To enable SAP, you now need to use "-S sap" or add SAP in 
the "Manage->Services Discovery" menu 
( IPv6 SAP is now enabled by default ) 
* Non-standard support for HTTP streams SAP announces removed 
* HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) discovery 
* Shoutcast 

Audio output: 
* Support for 20/24 bits LPCM 

Video output: 
* Video snapshot support (png or jpg) 
* Image file video output (png) 
* Motion detection filter (can trigger playlist actions) 
* Improvements to wall video filter 
* Support for font color and opacity 

Stream output: 
* Muxers 
- ASF improvements 
* VLM / VoD 
- Ability to load a configuration file on startup 
- Seeking support in VoD streams 
* Mosaic (picture-in-picture system) 

Interfaces: 
* HTTP 
- Support for the new playlist system 

BeOS port: 
* Support for single-buffered overlay 

Translations: 
The following languages were added: 
* Catalan 
* Danish 
* Turkish 


Changes between 0.8.0 and 0.8.1: 
----------------------------------------------------- 

Video Output: 
* Proper subpictures scaling using the aspect-ratio info when available 

Demuxers: 
* Fixed crash with ODML avi files 
* Fixed autodetection of VCD/SVCD bin files 
* Supports Kasenna VoD (MPEG2 only) and simulcast streaming 

Stream Output: 
* Encoders: 
* Fixed aspect ratio and interlaced support in ffmpeg encoder module 
* Stream output: 
* Support of playlist group announcement 

Changes between 0.7.2 and 0.8.0: 
----------------------------------------------------- 

Core support: 
* Major work on libvlc. Changed/renamed/added functions 
* Complete switch to the new input core (better seeking, multi-input, ...) 
* New plugins cache to speed up launch time 
* New --play-and-stop feature which stops the playlist after each played item 
* Daemon mode (to run vlc in the background) 
* Major improvements to the subtitle/OSD subsystem 

Input: 
* New screen capture input plugin for X11, Win32, BeOS and Mac OS X 
(Stream your desktop) 
* Improved DVD support: 
- uses libdvdnav for playing DVDs with menus support 
- uses libdvdread for simple playback with menus (eg. for streaming) 
* Experimental multi-input support ( use --input-slave to play with it ) 
* Automatic MTU discovery for UDP streams 
* More powerful MRL syntax for DVD/VCD/CDDA access 
(selection of titles/chapters). 

Demuxers: 
* Support for iTunes Music Store previews 
* Support for MJPEG webcams (i.e. AXIS cams) 
* Added initial mp4 and mpeg-ts text track support 
* Windows Media Server RTSP support 
* Support for MPEG TS streams with error correction (204/192 bytes TS packets) 
* Support for DTS audio in MPEG TS (ETSI TS 102 154 Annex G) 
* Skins2 .vlt file loader (only when skins2 is the current interface) 
* Improved Ogg demuxer 
* Support for MPEG PS streams with MPEG 4 video. 
* Support for so called AACPlus webstreams 

Codecs: 
* G.726 audio support 
* 14496-17 MPEG TS text support 
* MPEG-4 text support 
* Vastly improved DVB subtitles decoder (ETS 300 743) 
* Enabled color in DVB subtitles rendering 
* VobSub supported both externally and in Matroska 

Stream Output: 
Encoders: 
* Re-use audio/video/spu decoders in transcoder module. From now on, 
everything that is playable by VLC should be transcodable as well 
* Subtitles overlaying in transcoder 
* Subpictures overlaying in transcoder (see video output) 
* Frame rate selection in the transcoder 
* MPEG 1 layer 2 audio encoder using libtoolame 
* Improved vorbis/theora encoding 
Muxers: 
* Text track muxing for mp4 
* Multipart mjpeg muxing. Your video is directly viewable in a Mozilla Browser 
* 14496-17 text track muxing for MPEG TS 
* Support for DTS audio in MPEG TS (ETSI TS 102 154 Annex G) 
* New WAV muxer (supports multi-channel audio) 
* Improved ASF muxer 
Misc: 
* H.263 RTP streaming support 
* SDP generation outputs more compliant SDPs and can create SDP files now 
* Improved RTSP and VoD server (experimental) 

Audio Output: 
* New audio equalizer filter 
* Very trivial volume normalizer 
* True channel downmixing when playing 5:1 material on Stereo 
* More gradual resampling which should improve the pitch changing effect 
* New audio output plugin using portaudio v19 

Video Output: 
* Improved filter and subpictures support : 
- New filters can be streamed. 
- "Subpicture filters" to overlay subpictures on video 
- Centralized scaling and blending 
* New filters : 
- "time", to display current time 
- "marq", to display a marquee 

Interfaces: 
* OSD sliders for volume and postition information 
* OSD icons for Play and Pause 

Misc: 
* Server/client network synchronization module 
* VBrick streams fully supported 
* Cisco IP/TV streams supported 
* VLM enhancements