VLC 1.1.0 preview adds GPU acceleration

The VideoLAN Project developers have announced the availability of a preview release for version 1.1, the first test release of the 1.1.x branch, of their popular VLC Media Player. VLC is a free open source cross-platform multimedia player for various audio and video formats.

The preview release of VLC 1.1.0 features support for GPU decoding on Vista, Windows 7 and Linux systems, as well as overall CPU decoding improvements on Windows. The changes should reduce CPU load when playing back HD videos, such as those encoded using the H.264 codec. However, the Mac OS X version, still currently only uses CPU decoding.

According to VLC developer Jean-Philippe André, version 1.1 will also allow users users to write their own plug-ins for VLC. Like Mozilla's Firefox web browser, the extensions will let users add even more functionality to VLC, such as an IMDb add-on to get plot or cast information about a movie. Other changes expected in the next major version of the media player include, for example, DVB HD subtitles, improved Flac support, CDDB support on Windows and support for more audio and video codecs.

As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to report any bugs that they encounter.

VLC 1.1 pre is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. VLC is released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv2). The next major release of VLC following 1.1.0 will be version 1.2.0. The latest stable release is VLC 1.0.5 from the end of January 2010.

See also:

• VLC 1.0.5 arrives, extensions planned for 1.1, a report from The H.

(crve)