VLC 2.1.0 PPC - G5 Computer x64

[modelalexa]

Congrats - on the new release of VLC 2.1.0. I quickly downloaded the new version for my Apple MacBook Pro 17'', but then I went to go download it for my Power Macintosh G5 Quad. Then I noticed a problem. The new 2.1.0 package is only for 10.6 Intel and Higher and it's x64. Please feel free to shut me down right away, but with the source code can I compile this version for PPC x64 and run it on my Power Macintosh G5 Quad (still a very useable machine)?

Are certain aspects of the application only going to work on 10.6 or Intel Macs now. Was it not compiled for 10.5 PPC x64 since many of the older systems out there don't have enough "juice" to use the new features in the VLC 2.1.0? I believe all G5 based Macs are PPC x64 capable. My old PPC Quad ran 1080p content perfectly with VLC and didn't use much of the processing power maybe a 1/4 if that and maybe several hundred mb of the 16gb RAM in the system).

I would be more then happy to donate my machine to the cause to keep some level of PPC - VLC support available on PPC macs (via remote access for beta testing, whatever). Let me know if you think this is possible - thanks for your insight.

[fkuehne]

Hello, in fact, I got plenty (3..) PPC machines at home. Regrettably, we had to deprecate them despite still being quite fast compared to modern machines (I got a Dual-CPU G5 myself) to use new APIs to advance the interface even further.

Backporting VLC 2.1 to PPC is clearly feasible but it's not as simple as just compiling it. You need to tweak the ObjC 2.0 modern runtime optimizations we added for VLC's 2.1 release. I'd estimate a few days half time work to achieve this. Due to the small number of developers on Apple platforms (2 on iOS, 2 on Mac, while one of them doing both platforms), it isn't manageable for us anymore to support PowerPC Macs (as well as 32bit Intel).

[saha985]

Hi, thanks for making the best media player ever in the whole universe, at least in the Milk-Way. I have a PPC G5 Quad, it plays all kind of hi-res videos with VLC, if you in the future could update it ever for 64bit, it will be SOOOO GREAT, thanks for the work, and please, keep PPC alive.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

ppc64 will not happen with VLC, sorry.