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VLC Media Player 1.0.1: A Must-have Open-source App

Samuel Dean — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:00:51 +0000

Many of us are consuming video and audio content as part of our working lives; some of us are broadcasting it and encoding it, too. For both types of tasks, one of the best applications that you can get is the free, open-source VLC Media Player. It recently came out in a significantly updated version 1.0, and is now out in a stable version 1.0.1. I’ve been using the new version, and highly recommend it, whether you’re running Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.

Open source blogger Matt Asay captures a big part of why VLC Media Player may be the best player on the planet:

“One of the amazing things about VLC is that it can play anything that you’ve ever even thought about playing. That random media format that one site in Ecuador requires–VLC likely plays it, while Windows Media, Apple QuickTime, etc. likely will not. This is, in part, a natural result of VLC’s open source heritage.”

Because a global community of users iteratively improves VLC Media Player, it can handle many obscure video file formats. I almost never trip VLC up by throwing a new type of file at it.

It’s also true that because of the widespread open-source community that contributes to VLC Media Player, and all the plug-ins that extend it, it’s easy to miss many of the under-the-hood features it has. You can use it to broadcast your own video and audio content; you can use it as a video transcoder for converting video file formats,;you can listen to and manage podcasts with it, rip DVDs, watch DVDs and much more.

I addressed how to get up to speed on many of the non-obvious nice features that VLC has in this post on OStatic. There, you’ll find tips and tricks on doing logos and effects for videos, instructions on how to broadcast your own media, and a free online guide that takes you from installation to advanced tasks in a visual tour. These can be particularly helpful for an open-source application, because good documentation is often a weak point in the open source arena.

I also previously covered the new portable version of VLC Media Player here. This is a lightweight version of the application that you can use to view and work with video and audio anywhere, perhaps toting it on a USB flash drive or a netbook.

If you haven’t used VLC Media Player, and especially if you’ve stayed tied to default media tools such as Windows Media Player, give it a trial run. The price is right, and you may agree with me that VLC is outstanding.

Share your VLC Media Player tips in the comments.

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4 Free Open-Source Tools for Working With Video and Audio

Samuel Dean — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:19 +0000

Increasingly, many of us are working with video and audio online, not just text and still graphics. From video-based marketing materials, to online tutorials, to videocasts and podcasts, multimedia offerings are a great way to engage your audience. Here are four good, free open-source audio and video software tools, including some available in brand-new versions.

Audacity is very widely used for recording and editing podcasts and other audio recording tasks. We covered the new beta version on the OStatic blog. Improvements in the new version include better noise removal tools, faster equalization, support for recording more than 16 channels, and a new “Mixer Board” that provides graphical mixing tools. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

Simple Theora Encoder is a very easy video encoding tool for Mac OS 10.4 or higher. It can convert multiple files at once from several different formats, including .avi, .mov, and mp4. Using it is as easy as clicking “Encode,” and that’s it. The application provides a status bar that keeps you posted on the encoding progress and lets you know when your files are ready.

VLC Media Player is one of the best-loved open-source applications. It supports almost every video format under the sun, even the more obscure ones. I recently covered the new portable version of it here, which you can carry on a USB thumb drive. The full application is also out in a new version 1.0. I’ve been using it; it’s outstanding. You can also use it for broadcasting media, rather than just consumption. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

Blender is not only one of the best graphics and animation programs from the open source world, it’s one of the best open-source applications of any kind. Widely used in the professional video and animation communities, it’s great for 3D modeling, animation, rendering and playback. You can also use it on Windows, Mac or Linux systems. You can find a free, online book on it here, and I covered some of the newest features here.

What open-source video and audio tools do you use?

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Firefox 3.5 and New VLC Media Player Are Out As Portable Apps

Samuel Dean — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:00:18 +0000

If you happen to carry a USB thumb drive or a netbook for mobile work, you’re probably already familiar with PortableApps. It’s a collections of great open-source applications in one free download. Many of the applications are lightweight, portable versions of larger applications that come complete with launchers that make it easy to run the applications anywhere — even if you’re not on your own computer.

The team at PortableApps regularly updates the already good-collection of titles in the suite, and this week added two new applications: Firefox 3.5, Portable Edition, and VLC Media Player 1.0, Portable Edition.

Even if you don’t use the whole PortableApps suite, these are outstanding applications for a portable drive or a device such as a netbook. Firefox 3.5, Portable Edition comes bundled with a PortableApps launcher, so you can launch it directly from a USB thumb drive and have Firefox available with all of your customizations, no matter where you are. It syncs with your bookmarks, extensions and saved passwords so it provides a lightweight portable facsimile of your normal Firefox setup. You can find installation instructions and usage tips for Firefox 3.5, Portable Edition at the bottom of this page.

VLC Media Player has long been one of the best open-source applications available for multimedia content, especially video. It’s compatible with nearly every video format found online, even the more obscure ones from remote parts of the world. It’s also out in a new version 1.0, which we covered on the OStatic blog. The new version now does live recording and has instant pausing and frame-by-frame playback. There are also new HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0, and more). VLC Media Player is also good as a way to broadcast streaming video content on the web, which is a trend on the rise in businesses and entertainment arenas alike.

You can now download the Portable Edition, Version 1.0 of VLC Media Player here. Its tagline is “play your media anywhere,” because it will fit snugly on even a small USB thumb drive, iPod, portable hard drive or netbook. It also won’t leave a history of your usage on any computer you choose to use it on. The updates in version 1.0 are substantial, and even if you normally use another media player, version 1.0 of this open-source offering is good to have in both the full release and the Portable Edition.

Which applications would you like to see made into Portable Editions?

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4 Essential Utilities for Windows Netbooks

Samuel Dean — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:00:33 +0000

I’ve been using netbooks for over a year now; they’re great for the times when I just want to tote a lightweight machine for performing basic tasks, or even cruise around the house, working in various places. They’re also a very hot product category. If you’re new to netbooks, or thinking of getting one, in this post I’ll round up four utilities for Windows netbooks that will make working with them much easier and more efficient.

RocketDock is an animated application launcher that works very much like the Dock in Mac OS X. It’s specifically designed to run on computers that aren’t speed demons, and sticks to simple animations such as icons that bounce as you hover over them. It’s a very handy way to launch applications, particularly on a netbook’s small screen.

TinyResMeter provides a pop-up summary of the system resources that you have in use. Since many netbooks have limited resources, this can be handy in warning you to shut down processes or applications that are hogging resources. It’s not the prettiest resource monitoring application, but it’s not meant to be. It’s lightweight, and stays focused on essential system processes.

VLC Media Player is an open-source media player application that is much more lightweight than its competitors. I use it all the time, and love it. It supports most popular audio and video formats, and has a very active open-source community that constantly improves it.

USB Thumb Drive. While a USB thumb drive isn’t exactly a software utility, it’s one of the most essential sidekicks you can get for your netbook. They have risen in capacity and fallen in price: you can get a 64GB thumb drive that fits in your pocket for under $100. I highly recommend downloading PortableApps, which delivers a huge collection of useful open-source applications and utilities that you can keep on your thumb drive. Netbooks generally have limited storage space, so you can’t hoard large collections of apps. It’s reassuring to know that whenever you need to carry out a task, it’s highly likely that there will be something in the Portable Apps collection on your thumb drive that will be able to do it.

Share your netbook tips in the comments.

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