VLC Media Player 2.1.0 Available for Download

VideoLAN has released VLC Media Player (VLC) 2.1.0 (Rincewind). This new version comes with a new audio core, hardware decoding and encoding, port to mobile platforms, preparation for Ultra-HD video and a special care to support more formats.

Overview
VLC Media Player (VLC) is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework, that plays most multimedia files formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols without external codec or program. It is simple to use, yet very powerful and extendable, and can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. This release include fixes for FTP relative paths and directories and fixes for Podcast and DVD modules.

VLC 2.1 "Rincewind" is a major upgrade of popular media player. It has a new rendering pipeline for audio, with better effiency, volume and device management, to improve VLC audio support. It supports many new devices inputs, formats, metadata and improves most of the current ones, preparing for the next-gen.

Main Features
VLC can play:
  • MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 / DivX files from a hard disk, a CD-ROM drive, and so on.
  • DVDs, VCDs, and Audio CDs.
  • From satellite cards (DVB-S).
  • Several types of network streams: UDP/RTP Unicast, UDP/RTP Multicast, HTTP, RTSP, MMS, etc.
  • From acquisition or encoding cards (on GNU/Linux and Windows only).

Download VLC 2.1.0
VLC is available at the following website. Download the files appropriate for you.


What's new in VLC 2.1.0?
This version contains following updates:

Important changes:
  • The licenses of numerous modules have changed from GPLv2+ to LGPLv2.1+
  • Discontinued support for PowerPC-based Macs; VLC now requires Mac OS X 10.6+  Moreover, the official builds will be 64bit only
  • The --with-tuning and --without-tuning options are removed; to tune compilation for a specific processor type, set CFLAGS manually

Core:
  • Audio core rewrite, supporting higher samplerates, better volume management, better device selection, new channel layouts and new output capabilities
  • Fix support for .001, .00x split files on Windows
  • Full support for UNICODE Windows mode
  • Disable and mark obsolete --language selection
  • Port to Android
  • Port to iOS
  • Partial support for Windows Store App / WinRT
  • Add an audio fingerprinter, using AcoustID!
  • Remove SQL support

Decoders:
  • Support for CDXL, Ut Video, VBLE, Dxtory codecs via libavcodec
  • Numerous improvements on the OpenMAX IL codec module
  • Support for Ulead DV audio
  • Support for TechSmith Screen Codec 2, Microsoft Expression Encoder Screen, Microsoft Application Screen Decoder 1 (MSS1) and 2 (MSS2)
  • Support for Indeo Audio Coder, RealAudio Lossless
  • Add Hardware Acceleration support on OS X for H.264 based upon VDADecoder
  • Add Hardware Acceleration support on Android Jelly Bean using MediaCodec
  • Add Hardware Acceleration support on Linux using VDPAU
  • Support for SCTE-27 subtitles
  • Split G.711 decoder from Araw decoder
  • X Window system raster image dump pseudo-decoder
  • Support for Webinar GoToMeeting 4 (G2M4)

Encoders:
  • high10, high422 and high444 encoding support in h264
  • QuickSyncVideo Encoding (Intel Media SDK) support using Intel GPU on Windows
  • New AAC encoder using the fdk-aac library (non-free)

Access:
  • Screen: add support for OS X Lion and later, remove support for previous OS X releases
  • Major improvements in DASH support
  • Improvements in Blu-Ray module, notably for multiple video tracks support
  • Important improvements and rewrite of the v4l2 access module
  • HTTP: support for Internationalized Domain Names
  • Microsoft Smooth Streaming support (H264 and VC1) developed by Viotech.net
  • NTSC EIA-608 closed caption input support via V4L2 VBI devices
  • Add support for VNC/rfb in view only mode
  • Add support for Remote Desktop/RDP in view only mode
  • Timecode: generate a clock/timecode as a subtitle track vlc video.mkv --input-slave timecode:// --timecode-fps 30/1001
  • New video capture module for OS X based on AVFoundation, named AVcapture
  • New shared memory framebuffer access module, named shm

Demuxers:
  • MP4: partial support for fragmented MP4
  • Vorbis: better support for metadata and cover art
  • AVI: better support for tags and extended metadata
  • Support for FLAC, Atrac and some ADPCM in AVI
  • Support for DV data type 1 in AVI and 12 bits DV Audio
  • Support for total number of tracks in major container
  • Support for Cook and Atrac in MKV
  • AVI: support for files produced by Nikon cameras
  • Support for more MJPEG streams
  • Add support for liveleak streams
  • Add support for Wave/RF64 files
  • Prevent numerous uncaught exceptions in MKV
  • Add protection against several potential heap buffer overflow in libebml

Audio output:
  • Windows Audio Session API audio output support
  • OpenBSD sndio audio output support
  • Important improvements on the Android OpenSL ES audio output
  • Android AudioTrack audio output support
  • OS X Auhal output support for 6.1, 7.1, 8.0 and 8.1 playback and layouts
  • Rewrite of OSS module to support OSSv4
  • OS X Auhal output support for multi-buffer output devices This fix was facilitated through a hardware lending by TEAC Europe GmbH distributing such devices under the brand "TASCAM" (US-122, US-144, etc.).
  • Rewrite of the AudioQueue output for iOS (and OS X)
  • New, simplified AudioUnit output for iOS

Audio Filters:
  • New remapping channel filter
  • New filter to enhance stereo effect by mono suppression and delay effect
  • New VSXu visualization plugin
  • ARM NEON acceleration of volume filter
  • Rewrite of the simple downmixer filter
  • New gain audio filter

Video Outputs:
  • New output for Decklink Blackmagic cards
  • New output using OpenMAX IL hardware acceleration API
  • OpenGL: use glsl instead of ARB to do the YUV->RGB conversions
  • OpenGLES: add support for color conversation shaders on Android and iOS
  • Fix and enable the OpenGL ES1 and ES2 outputs
  • Support for subpictures in the OpenGL ES2 output
  • Fix the power management issue on Windows for standby management
  • New output module for iOS using OpenGL ES2
  • Fix performance issue on Macs with multiple graphics cards

For the large number of improvements for Windows and Linux, please have a look at the change log.

Reference:
VLC 2.1.0 Changelog

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