Last week, we mentioned that the extremely popular open source video player VLC is getting a brand-new interface in its upcoming 4.0 release, expected to debut later this year. VLC 4.0 isn’t ready for prime time use yet—but because the program is open source, adventurous users can grab nightly builds of it to take a peek at what’s coming. The screenshots we’re about to show come from the nightly build released last Friday—20210212-0431.
VLC is an incredibly popular application, so any major user interface overhaul like this is sure to lead to a lot of bikeshedding.
This is a very concise way of putting it. My first thoughts when I first read about this last week ranged from “Oh, no!” to “What awful rearrangment led by trendy squeaky voiced “UX” hipsters is this going to turn out to be” and my heart sank. In my opinion “UX” is jargon for people who have thrown out any idea of HCI (Human Computer Interface) and good design aesthetics and sense of skill and experience. In other words they are doing the complete opposite of what UX is supposed to be in theory and completely blind to it. Firefox has already been botched. Thunderbird was meddled with recently too. Like the shift from Windows 2000 to Windows XP icons have lost their sharpness.
VLC is also trying to turn VLC into a monitized platform which I’m leery about as it seems they are trying to implement a Frankenstein arrangement borrowed from the games industry and Microsoft. I’m really fed up with people switching agendas on you when they are established or reach a certain level of popularity.
There is something to be said for the classics. When you have reached a certain standard change and shuffling about is meddling for the sake of meddling when instread the task is really about refinement and correcting the simple things which a lot of people get wrong.
Ugh. A multi-window design where you start in a variation on the Android-VLC library view and it’s hard to access a file browser? Pass.
Just because Apple managed to go app-centric with the iPhone after document-centric failed with the Lisa doesn’t mean we don’t want a hybrid.
I guess it’s time to start directing Windows users to SMPlayer if they aren’t the type of person who prefers Media Player Classic and the CCCP.
VLC is a mess anyway, use KLite Codec Pack instead, featuring MPC-HC : https://codecguide.com/download_kl.htm
Three questions:
1.. That still exists? I remember when that name used to be a reference to Kazaa Lite.
2. CCCP was created as a response to how K-Lite just threw together a bunch of codecs with minimal QA given to making sure they didn’t step on each other’s toes. Do you have a citation for that having been fixed?
3. CCCP hasn’t seen an update since 2015, but the MPC-HC site says that it’s been dead since 2017, so using it for K-Lite isn’t ideal either. What does K=Lite bring as an advantage over the copies of MPlayer and MPV that the Windows installer for SMPlayer bundles as runtime-selectable backends?
All issues has been addressed, includes many tools to tweak your codec installation, MPC-HC version comes from https://github.com/clsid2/mpc-hc/releases (6 days old)
No, really, I tested many player/codec pack, KLite is by far the best, and of course MPC is a dream to use.
Trash.
Utter trash.
VLC used to be the leader in supporting most video codecs as well as providing stable hardware acceleration (on Linux). But something happened and development seemed to stagnate and personally I already uninstalled VLC long time ago to avoid using it even by accident.
“The old version opens videos directly in the main window—the new version spawns a separate playback window, not directly connected to the control interface itself.”
Damn. I used keyboard shortcuts to position the VLC window on my projector screen, while the other two monitors also attached to my computer were switched off. I don’t want a separate playback window. I want it integrated.
Conclusion: SMPlayer it is.
Thanks, I hate it. I hope the sensible OSes out there (Slackware and OpenBSD come to mind) will continue to maintain their 3.x ports.
Links to Arstechnia… I blocked them since they can’t handle anyone speaking the truth.
What are you referring to? I kinda prefer ArsTechnica to for instance the Verge. And the comment section is often better than other sites?
Really looking forward to this. I hope they finally implement some good media library functionality. Playing one file was fine but creating a playlist was crap. Let’s hope they concentrate on that.
There’s a big difference between media library software and playlists. What is it you want from VLC? I sure hope it isn’t bloating it with media library crap.
I want something similar as Winamp offers for audio files. Easy editting and arranging, Lot’s of configurable layouts, theming.
Define bloating? I only hate menu and memory bloating and I actually do think VLC could use some simplification. i.e. hide the technical stuff in advanced menus. I am certainly not afraid of disksize bloating, that’s cheap and cheerful. Also VLC is probably the most optimised media player available, I am not worried about that either.