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LOL, because hitting space is next to impossible.

Edit: Before I forget: Congrats, great improvements. Great free software.

Edited 2012-02-19 12:27 UTC

I don't know about you but I don't have a few meters long arms to reach to my keyboard while sitting comfortably in my armchair…

And you do have a few metres long arms to reach for your mouse?

A remote control is only a few euros. Much better option.

lemme think: I already have wireless mouse, I only need to start/pause playback. Why should I waste money when I already can do that in almost every other video player? To answer your subsequent question - so why I'm /trolling/ about vlc? because it is great software and i would love that it's even better.

Why do you have a wireless mouse but no wireless keyboard?
Seriously, labeling it completely useless due to this is a bit arrogant.

because I don't need such, and also if I had such, it would be highly inconvenient to use it, as opposed to mouse (handy during presentations, easier to manipulate when you don't have cord - those do not apply to wireless keyboard...)

Obviously you do, so you can press the space bar when pausing in VLC...

I have a few wireless mice but no wireless keyboards.

1) I often use a wireless mouse with my laptop but am happy with the built-in keyboard.

2) I find the mouse cord catches on things easily (which is annoying) since it is so mobile. My desktop/server keyboards are relatively stationary and do not have the same issue.

3) Like the original poster, I find there are a few apps the you can interact nicely with using only the 'click' functionality of my nice, small, portable mouse. Carting a keyboard around the room is less fun.

That said "totally useless" is typical Internet high-drama hyperbole.

The better question would be "Why does he NEED to buy a remote for such basic functionality?" because lets be honest folks, he's not asking for some incredibly complex uberrare function here, just a simple 'click the movie and the movie stops" which frankly ever other MP I've seen does.

I know that when I'm working on multiple PCs (which is quite often) its a heck of a lot easier to just click the mouse instead of reaching over for the keyboard. this is a problem I've noticed with a lot of freeware, some developer decides he don't like feature X or would rather be working for new thing Y and simply ignores basic usability.

Hey, why don't you do what I did and buy a $8 IR remote control?? It identifies itself as a keyboard & mouse to Linux/Windows/Haiku and works just fine.

You setup a few key bindings in VLC and then you have full control with a nice remote control (pause, play, fast forward, rewind, volume, etc...).

--The loon

PS: I *HATE* the idea of the video playing/stopping with the LMB.

I already have a wireless trackball. Why would I buy a useless gadget (remote) when I can do everything I want with a mouse?

Just a note (also notice that Youtube and all the well-behaved Flash players allow play/pause through left click).

This behavior annoys me.

I tend to left-click prior to right-click. But the worst part is when trying to bring the window back to the forefront. I tend to click on the content area of a window to bring it to the front (particularly true of my multi-monitor setup) - I become quite annoyed when the video pauses (or plays) due to this simple action.

However, I do believe it should be a configurable option. Triggering an even on LMB_DOWN isn't exactly complex or resource intensive...

--The loon

You can just right click to get to the context menu. then left click on pause/play.
I don't believe that extra click makes the whole program useless.

Excelent! No do that several meters from the screen

If you can't manage that then clearly the fault here is that you're inappropriately using a mouse.

It's also worth mentioning that you really should be using a media centre rather than a media player. Perhaps something like XBMC would be better suited for your needs.

it's easy to bitch about how "useless" technology is when you deliberately use it in the most retarded way imaginable.

Media centre apps (like XBMC, Boxee, WMC, etc) are nice if you have the hardware to run them. Most (all?) of the media centre apps out there require skookum 3D graphics cards with working OpenGL/DirectX, meaning you can't grab old (5+ years) PCs and convert them into media centres. But, those same PCs run VLC, Dragon, and other video players without issues, and can be used as HTPCs without issues.

For example, my 2.8 GHz P4 Celeron laptop with an onboard Ati RADEON 7000 graphics chipset cannot run XBMC, Boxee, and similar as it doesn't support OpenGL 1.4+. But, it can decode and play XviD without issues using Dragon Player in KDE4. And all it needs is a wireless mouse.

First of all, media centres can run on older hardware fine. If XBMC can run on a 256MB 700MHz AMD board then it can bloody well run on a 2.8GHz x86 too. In fact for months I ran Boxee on a desktop with half your spec and it ran perfectly fine (thus further proving how meaningless anecdotal evidence is). This was also using a crappy onboard GFX chip too. Plus of my other current XBMC boxes, one is an soft-modded Xbox Original, one is a 4 year old laptop running from an SD card (it was a freebe as the previous owner shattered the LCD and HDD), and the last is powered from an old ATI board I paid ~$20 for a few years ago and which I don't have any hardware acceleration on (I'm running it using open source Linux drivers). Yet all of them (bar the Xbox original - for obvious reasons) plays full 1080p without a single stutter.

However if you're really struggling to get XBMC -or derivatives- playing ball, then just run Elisa, GeeXboX or one of any number of other lightweight media centres. You don't need a fully programmable Python environment to play movies. So Elisa would be more than capable and a lot more usable on a TV than VLC (in fact for a while, I even preferred Elisa to XBMC).

Finally, slapping VLC on a Windows box doesn't make it a HTPC. A HTPC is supposed to be a complete "set top" style solution (like a Sky or Cable DVR). So please don't use the 'HTPC' term to describe any old laptop you hook up to a TV.

Edited 2012-02-21 15:06 UTC

I call bullshit. The XBMC docs call bullshit. And the XBMC forums are full of threads that call bullshit.

If you do not have OpenGL 1.4+ support in your graphics hardware (meaning an Ati Radeon 9600 or newer or an nVidia GeForce 6000 or newer), you will not be able to run XBMC 10+. Period. Doesn't matter what CPU you have in the box, nor which OS you are running.

Maybe older versions of XBMC worked in the past. But 10 onward require working 3D acceleration. Even just for accessing the menus/GUI.

It's actually 1.3, not 1.4 and that's likely only something introduced in the last ~18/24 months. (IIRC XBMC underwent a massive overhaul recently). But that's neither here nor there as pretty much every graphics chipset of the last 10 years supports OpenGL 1.3. It's hardly a high level of entry.

Going back to my ~$20 card, maybe those Linux drivers do have some OpenGL libraries then. All I know is any 3D rendering done on that system falls back to software mode so I just assumed i couldn't do any acceleration what so ever. I guess that just goes to show how shoddy graphics drivers are on Linux yet how well XBMC is that it plays ball even when everything else fails.

All of the hardware specs were 100% accurate though - I have no reason to lie nor bullshit you (plus the proof about the ARM board is well publicised). And my point still stands about other media centres available. so even taking the OpenGL 1.3 argument into account, you're still making unbalanced comparisons about the footprint of media centres. so perhaps you should try something other than the latest XBMC-derived code before casting judgement on the entire genre.

Edited 2012-02-21 21:15 UTC

hmm, upon further reading, I see the confusion.

You're listing of Windows requirements and I'm listing Linux requirements. It seems they differ.

I've tried both Linux and Windows versions of XBMC 10, the requirements are the same.

And you cannot run XBMC 10 on a RADEON 7000, as it does not support enough OpenGL for XBMC to run. You get corrupted cursors, corrupted graphics, videos won't play or just show a black screen.

Yet KDE 4.6 with Dragon Player can play the same videos just fine on that hardware.

Media centre apps have much higher requirements than plain video players. Not everyone needs a fancy media centre. Sometimes a standard desktop with a wireless mouse is enough. And that will work on much older hardware.

vlc has support for mouse gestures.

I know, but I had hard time getting it to work but it finally worked, thanks! :o

FYI, some of us actually prefer it not to do that.

I was thinking the license is less an issue to the codecs maybe.

Good work here. I have never used vlc to convert a disk, so this should be faster.

Edited 2012-02-19 17:40 UTC

Either way, that's still some impressive optimisation, for a CPU clocked not even 2x higher than the MOS 6510 in my Commodore 64

The playlist can be hidden. Try again...

I tried all possible ways (resizing window, playlist button, looking in menus and preferences), but on the mac there is no way to have the 2.0 player behave like the 1.x. In windows 7 the playlist can be easily hidden, but on the mac you have to have it shown.

bye

Yeah, someone on Slashdot pointed that out. I'm honestly surprised that they would do that. I'm glad they didn't do that on Windows or Linux, thankfully.

One of my systems would like a word with you about calling your system ancient. :-)

circa 1998 Powerbook G3, 233mhz, 128mb RAM, 10Gb hard drive. According to Apple, it only officially supports Mac OS X 10.2, though 10.4 (and maybe 10.5) is possible with XPostFacto, and PowerPC Linux is increasingly attractive.

Nothing with a Core2Duo, an ATI or NVIDIA video card with a four digit model number (e.g. 9600), or 1 or more Gigabytes of RAM is ancient in my book, merely deliberately obsoleted by companies with upgrade treadmills!

I am getting much more responsiveness from this than I have from the previous version. In the previous version it would take almost 30 seconds to load a movie. Now it is instant.

On the other hand *I* get a huge delay between the volume UI and volume change !

Other than that, I quite like this version.

Edited 2012-02-20 18:23 UTC

Mac version?