VLC 2.0 "Twoflower" getting ready to bloom

VLC 2.0 on Mac OS X Version 2.0 of the open source VLC media player is one step closer to a final release as release candidate source code and binaries for Mac OS X and Windows are made available. The source code was released last week when the developers "tagged" the first release candidate for testing. VLC 2.0, code-named "twoflower" is what was VLC 1.2 until early January when it was decided to bump the version number to reflect the changes.

One of the major changes detailed in the NEWS file will be invisible to most users. The licences of the libVLC and libVLCcore, on which the application is built, have changed licence from GPLv2+ to LGPLv2+ allowing them to be used in non-GPL applications. The libVLCcore has also been ported to Android, iOS, OS/2 and Win64 and has been subject to a major rework and rewrite which sees subtitles and on-screen displays being sized and blended within video outputs. VLC's caching options have been simplified from forty options to four (file, network, live and disc) and the setting of HTTP server addresses, ports and other options has been centralised.

The Windows version of VLC 2.0 will now only work with Windows XP SP2 or later while the Mac OS X version will require machines capable of Quartz Extreme. While there have been no changes to the Windows interface, on Mac OS X, VLC 2.0 has a new main window interface that can be switched between black and grey and which combines the playlist and other services in a sidebar. Other changes include overlays for audio and subtitle synchronisation and video and audio effects. VLC 2.0 also supports Lion's fullscreen mode, allowing it to occupy a space of its own. Further details of all the enhancements which will require testing are available in the NEWS file. As a release candidate, VLC 2.0 RC1 is not suitable for production use.

The VLC 2.0 RC1 source code is available to download from the project's testing area. The binaries for the Mac OS X version can also be downloaded for testing for 32- and 64-bit Intel Macs and PowerPC Macs and the Windows version binaries are similarly available to download.

(djwm)