VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

VLC can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Here are some key features of "VLC Media Player":

· Free, Open Source and cross-platform media player.
· Independant of systems codecs to support most video types.
· Can also be used as a streaming server, with extended features (video on demand, on the fly transcoding, ...).
· Live recording.
· Instant pausing and Frame-by-Frame support.
· Finer speed controls.
· New HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0, ...).
· New formats (Raw Dirac, M2TS, ...) and major improvements in many formats...
· New Dirac encoder and MP3 fixed-point encoder.
· Video scaling in fullscreen.
· RTSP Trickplay support.
· Zipped file playback.
· Customizable toolbars.
· Easier encoding GUI in Qt interface.
· Better integration in Gtk environments.
· MTP devices on linux.
· AirTunes streaming.
· New skin for the skins2 interface.

Requirements:

· QuickTime 6.5.2 or later.
· G4 processor/Intel for smooth MPEG-2 decoding.

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

Access:
· Port of the screen module from Xlib to XCB
· Support for the sftp protocol
· Support for CDDB servers for Audio-CD on Windows version

Decoders:
· Support for Atrac1
· HD dvb subtitles - Display Definition Segment support
· PGS subtitles for Blu-Ray
· Invmem modules improvements

Demuxers:
· Support for ADPCM in .flv streams
· EXPERIMENTAL support for .aob files from DVD-Audio (MLP and LPCM) (Full disc support is NOT present yet)
· Support for TwinVQ (.vqf) files
· Various EGP improvements

Playlist:
· WPL playlist support
· ZPL playlist support
· Lua scripts for Mpora, Vimeo playback and Rockbox FM radios
· New Play-And-Pause function to stop playback on latest video image
· Podcast images are now displayed

Audio filters:
· Chorus/Flanger audio filter
· 3F1R to stereo downmix filter
· Dolby mixer, parameterized equalizer, trivial mixer, scaletempo, bandlimited resampler, linear resampler, ugly resampler, converter_float, converter_fixed, DTS to SPDIF and A/52 to SPDIF filters have been upgraded to the "audio filter2" API
· NEON assembly audio converter module

Encoders:
· x264, add psy-rd parameter and change default settings
· x264, add profile-limitter sameway as x264.eve has, for example #transcode{vcodec=h264,venc=x264{profile=baseline,level=1.2},vb=384,width=320,height=176}
· x264, defaults to crf=23 as x264.exe-does, if bitrate is given, uses ABR and if qp-value is set uses CQP
· libx264-version 0.76 or higher is required

Video Output:
· Rewrite of the video output core and most video outputs
· Added desktop mode to the Direct3D output module. It differs from DirectX desktop mode, because it hides the desktop icons, but reacts to mouse clicks.
· New x11 and xv modules based on XCB
· New deinterlacing modes based on yadif and yadif(x2)

Visualisation:
· Support of .milk visualisation files using projectM libraries

Service discovery:
· Service discovery for Picture/Music/Video user directories
· Service discovery based on libudev

Stream output:
· New smem module, streaming to memory

Mac OS X Interface:
· Completely reworked user interface (based upon works from GSoC 2008)

Windows port:
· Integration in Windows 7 taskbar

Maemo port:
· Multiple improvements for N900 compliance and efficiency

Removed modules:
· csri
· galaktos
· showintf
· transrate
· Xlib x11, Xlib xvideo (use XCB instead)
· HAL (use libudev instead)
· gtk_main, gtk_main2, gnome_main, gnome_main2 and pda interfaces