VLC Viability, just doesn't exist.

[datool]

Hello all.

I need to start off and stress, i'm not here to troll you. I'm here to inform you that you're simply wasting your time. I've been inundated with VLC's bugs for roughly 5 years as an editor & encoder.
It simply doesn't do anything right, failing to do even some of the most basic tasks required of a media player like reading AVI streams correctly without crashing.

Unless it's totally re-written and a serious attitude is taken towards making it stable, VLC simply is wasting your time.
Most of you should understand this already and thus the slow development / low user base.

That is however still not enough.

How long are you going to continue with this farce of a project before you realise you're just doing the internet & end users in general a greatly harmful, misguided deed?

Honestly, we would all be better off without VLC and anyone who's used it or dealt with media and it's user base for any reasonable time knows that VLC is the buggiest player available.

Public groups/ companies are so fed up with VLC they are public printing on their support & home pages that if you have a problem with VLC, we don't care.
To upgrade to a REAL player that WORKS.

So that's it. I know i'm being insulting and i know i'll come accross as trolling, but there just honestly is no nice way to put this i spent some reasonable time thinking about how i could put this nicely and still get the frustration accross of someone who has to deal with VLC's problems.

VLC's negative impact on the general internet & media communities is seriously that strong.
Quit with this project, please.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

And you are not a troll?

Public groups/ companies are so fed up with VLC they are public printing on their support & home pages that if you have a problem with VLC, we don't care.

This one is the best!


Maybe you should ask yourself why you can't make it work when millions of people can?

[datool]

63 million downloads, not people buddy.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

63 million downloads, not people buddy.

And downloads are automatic?

[thannoy]

Such a troll.. make me smile! huhuhu
Well. You have your ideas I will not try to change.

Quit with this project, please.

Please, let everyone decide by himself/herself :)
And have a nice day

[The DJ]

For a part he is right, we could do far better, especially in the area of Mac OS X and Windows. The question however is, does it matter ? As developers we have always stated that VLC media player is our project. Our area to learn and have fun with. However, we have far outgrown our initial playground and you could say now have to show more responsibility. In that we are limited by our own capabilities, our past design choices, the amount of people working on VLC (esp. limited when it comes to windows and macosx).

It is quite simple. We are not a company. We are also not a software project where many professionals work every single day (as ffmpeg or mozilla), nor are we so small that a single dedicated author can take full responsibility. We are what we are and if other people cannot recognize that, than we need to explain this to them. All in all, the quality of VLC largely depends on what parts of it you are using.

[Alexsource]

VLC works for me, the 0.9.x experience was not entirely a happy one i'd admit, with both the codec base and the gui change at the same time plus the lack of developpers for mac osx and windows, but to say that vlc simply does not do anything right and the developpers should quit... to say it's being extremist would be an understatement

The recent 1.0rc versions seem like a definite improvement. I think they work better than 0.8.6 did for me on some parts. E.G. I've tryed several files and NONE of then gave dropped frames when oppened (a problem that came and go since 0.8.2).

[The DJ]

Our viability is exactly the fact that we do things that other players don't do, or won't allow you to do. It is our biggest strength and also our biggest weakness of course. Every tool has it's purpose. If you don't like the tool, don't use it.

[datool]

For a part he is right, we could do far better, especially in the area of Mac OS X and Windows. The question however is, does it matter ? As developers we have always stated that VLC media player is our project. Our area to learn and have fun with. However, we have far outgrown our initial playground and you could say now have to show more responsibility. In that we are limited by our own capabilities, our past design choices, the amount of people working on VLC (esp. limited when it comes to windows and macosx).

It is quite simple. We are not a company. We are also not a software project where many professionals work every single day (as ffmpeg or mozilla), nor are we so small that a single dedicated author can take full responsibility. We are what we are and if other people cannot recognize that, than we need to explain this to them. All in all, the quality of VLC largely depends on what parts of it you are using.

VLC works for me, the 0.9.x experience was not entirely a happy one i'd admit, with both the codec base and the gui change at the same time plus the lack of developpers for mac osx and windows, but to say that vlc simply does not do anything right and the developpers should quit... to say it's being extremist would be an understatement

The recent 1.0rc versions seem like a definite improvement. I think they work better than 0.8.6 did for me on some parts. E.G. I've tryed several files and NONE of then gave dropped frames when oppened (a problem that came and go since 0.8.2).

Fair enough, i do agree with those points.
I should have mentioned earlier that the frustrations i and many other experience with VLC is the windows releases.
There are simply so many features and etc that new users grab VLC to support their media habits and they are constantly entering forums, IRC or commenting blogs requiring technical support.
Blame it on the long list of features in VLC that attracts windows' users

Perhaps that's a good middle-ground that would better suite;
1) Cut features out of VLC Windows release until they're proven stable in the beta
2) Discontinue windows releases for VLC period.

The *nix and mac OS builds i actually hear are quite reliable; the best media player for those respective OS's period.
However windows .... is a bit of a different story.
And unfortunately that's where the majority of the users pool into VLC.

[patch]

The *nix and mac OS builds i actually hear are quite reliable; the best media player for those respective OS's period.
However windows .... is a bit of a different story.
And unfortunately that's where the majority of the users pool into VLC.

VLC works reasonably well to specification for me on XP. I have used it as my preferred movie player for several yrs.
True recently I have started to use Media player classic more but that is not because of bugs, rather lack of support for graphics cards hardware acceleration (yet another planned feature).

If you include the fact most other windows players need a player and separate codecs, it is actually easier to get running and overall more reliable than alternative solutions. So VLC developers & testers keep up the good work

[datool]

No. Just no. It's easier and more reliable in theory.
The fact of the matter is not enuogh time is spent on the windows release to make it stable.

If all you watch is standard XviD AVI's with mp3 compression and no subs, you're not going to encounter issues.
VLC doesn't even read AVI's with multiple audio streams, period.
VLC has massive problems splitting MKV header information and seperating the audio + video streams properly, often resulting in artefacts and corruption.
That tends to get alot more obvious and likely when you have multiple audio streams and subtitle tracks, as all my content does.

And don't even get me started on mp4's.

[The DJ]

That is simply not true. VLC does read avi's with multiple audio streams. I welcome any samples in which case it does not do that.
We do have massive problems with mkv files, mostly caused by:
# libmatroska and libebml, which really SUCK (I tried switching to ffmpeg/avformat, but it is not mature either)
# we can only do software decoding of h264, which is just slow compared to some hardware accelerated decoders. (VLC then drops frames when it needs to, abiding by it's time critical delivery often resulting in artefacts)
# The h264 decoding of ffmpeg is still highly developmental. Numerous times over the past months MMX bugs have crept in.

Samples, samples, samples.
Regardless, everyone has the freedom to use what they want, and if our users want a Windows version, even in at this time and we can deliver that, we should. If it is not good enough, users will walk away and choose another product. Our responsibility is to prevent this and create a better product. It is not our responsibility to make choices for the user. We have Microsoft's Bing for that.

[patch]

Thread reference

I think the distribution of developpers per OS is much more relevant (for June 2009):

• Linux: a dozen (80%)
• MacOS X: 3 (20%)
• Windows: 0 (0%)
• other: 0 (0%)

This is rather disturbing information. Makes me wonder if there is an element of truth in datool coments

No. Just no. It's easier and more reliable in theory.
The fact of the matter is not enuogh time is spent on the windows release to make it stable.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The lack of time committed to the project is not exactly a big scoop. Then what?

I think the relevant question that datool comments would raise is: Do users (overall) prefer VLC in its current shape, or no VLC at all? The simple established fact that VLC has millions of official downloads per year is a statistical proof that the first answer is the right one.

[Lotesdelere]

Do users (overall) prefer VLC in its current shape, or no VLC at all? The simple established fact that VLC has millions of official downloads per year is a statistical proof that the first answer is the right one.

I'm going to sum it up with the opinion of my personal base of friends, work mates, family and customers to whom I have advise to use VLC for years, knowing that 99.5% of them are running Windows and use VLC mainly as a player only:
The vast majority of them still prefer v0.8 because it's stable as a rock and very fast, even on low end machines.
The most of them have been quite disappointed by v0.9 because of some regressions and stabily issues BUT they forgive you because they think you are improving things to make us a kick ass v1.0 release.
Those who are using v1.0 think you are on the right way BUT they really hope that everything will be fixed for the release, otherwise I know some of them who will go back to v0.8... or to something else.

As you may have understood, you (the VLC team, not you personally, of course) must NOT miss the important rendez-vous of the symbolic v1.0 release. Especially with the coming Windows 7 which is blocking third party splitters and filters that are natively supported by the OS.
The Windows users have made VLC to be that popular, thanks to the v0.8. VLC will have a red carpet on Windows 7 IF it is as stable as v0.8 is and if they are no more playback issues that other open source players don't have at the moment.
Yes, we like/love VLC. That's why we are reporting bugs, doing tests and posting samples. Because we want it to be perfect (well, almost) because we still believe it's the best all in one video solution available. It's taking ages to get a good reputation but it can be lost very quickly; so take care. That's the law of the 'market'.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Well, so far 1.0.0 plays way more files than any 0.8.6x and 0.9.x release and the interface is way less buggy.

There are still issues on Windows 7, but they will be fixed during minor release of 1.0.x (probably .2 or .3).

1.0.0 uses less memory than 0.9.x, and is often faster, but not always.

[FORCE]

1: VLC 1.0 is way faster than any previous release and now it replaced my MPlayer (SMPlayer)

2: VLC 1.0 gave me finally fast player for my HF s100 .mts files, no other player can play them (only commercial)

3: so what there is some bug but VLC, MPlayer, ffmpeg are kings of multimedia, try to play so many formats with some directsow player with codecs then you encounter lot lot lot of more bugs and problems.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

The vast majority of them still prefer v0.8 because it's stable as a rock and very fast, even on low end machines.

VLC 0.7 and 0.8 are buggy as hell. I alone must have fixed several hundreds of leaks, race conditions and other bugs, and I am not the only developper.
Strictly speaking, VLC 0.9 is more stable than VLC 0.8 and VLC 1.0 will be more stable than VLC 0.9, on any platform.

There is a clear pattern that the most common bugs that Windows users complain about are found in underlying libraries. Those are not maintained by the VideoLAN project. Hoping for improvements in that area amounts to wishful thinking. It can only degrade over time. On Linux, those libraries are provided and taken care of by the Linux distributions, so they mostly work. On Windows, none of the libraries are maintained, hence the number of bugs grows with time; not even the toolchain is maintained by the vendor. This is a vicious circle that drives the open-source developpers away from Windows, thus ensuring that nobody fixes the problems...

There is hardly anything the VideoLAN project can do about this. If you are not happy with this situation, put your money where your mouth is and pay someone to maintain the VLC contribs and builds on Windows. Or switch to a more open-source-friendly operating system. It's as simple as that.

The most of them have been quite disappointed by v0.9 because of some regressions and stabily issues BUT they forgive you because they think you are improving things to make us a kick --please stay polite-- v1.0 release.
Those who are using v1.0 think you are on the right way BUT they really hope that everything will be fixed for the release, otherwise I know some of them who will go back to v0.8... or to something else.

There is no way in hell we are going to further delay 1.0. Keep in mind that there are no volunteers to address the remaining annoying (mostly Windows-specific) bugs, and that developpers focus has already mostly shifted to developping 1.1. We can wait forever because of so-called blocker bugs, and leave users with the crappier 0.9, but I fail to see the point.

As you may have understood, you (the VLC team, not you personally, of course) must NOT miss the important rendez-vous of the symbolic v1.0 release. Especially with the coming Windows 7 which is blocking third party splitters and filters that are natively supported by the OS.
The Windows users have made VLC to be that popular, thanks to the v0.8. VLC will have a red carpet on Windows 7 IF it is as stable as v0.8 is and if they are no more playback issues that other open source players don't have at the moment.
Yes, we like/love VLC. That's why we are reporting bugs, doing tests and posting samples. Because we want it to be perfect (well, almost) because we still believe it's the best all in one video solution available. It's taking ages to get a good reputation but it can be lost very quickly; so take care. That's the law of the 'market'.

There is no point in reporting bugs if there are no staff to fix them.

[Lotesdelere]

Strictly speaking, VLC 0.9 is more stable than VLC 0.8 and VLC 1.0 will be more stable than VLC 0.9, on any platform.

The majority of people I'm talking about don't know, and in fact they don't care, about how it works. They don't have a technical point of view but only a user point of view. You just have to browse some famous forums to see how many people have been disppointed by v0.9, as a matter of fact.

On Linux, those libraries are provided and taken care of by the Linux distributions, so they mostly work. On Windows, none of the libraries are maintained, hence the number of bugs grows with time; not even the toolchain is maintained by the vendor. This is a vicious circle that drives the open-source developpers away from Windows, thus ensuring that nobody fixes the problems...

Lack of developers for VLC on Windows maybe. Lack of developers for audio and video open source tools on Windows this is definitely not true. You just have to check some dedicated forums like Doom9 and AVS to see how many custom tools are developed on and for Windows only, which have no equivalent on other OS'es, and, for instance, how many Linux users are struggling to find such tools that natively runs on Linux and not through Wine.

There is no point in reporting bugs if there are no staff to fix them

There is no point to provide Windows versions then. Remove them all, the binaries, the source files and delete the VLC Windows forum as well. Problem solved.
But as long as you will still provide versions for Windows you have to expect people to post about them. Obviously. Live with it.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Strictly speaking, VLC 0.9 is more stable than VLC 0.8 and VLC 1.0 will be more stable than VLC 0.9, on any platform.

The majority of people I'm talking about don't know, and in fact they don't care, about how it works. They don't have a technical point of view but only a user point of view. You just have to browse some famous forums to see how many people have been disppointed by v0.9, as a matter of fact.

The point is, the VLC developpers cannot hardly improve the quality of underlying components, no matter how many people whine.
It is totally irrelevant whether that non-quality is attributed to VLC or not.

On Linux, those libraries are provided and taken care of by the Linux distributions, so they mostly work. On Windows, none of the libraries are maintained, hence the number of bugs grows with time; not even the toolchain is maintained by the vendor. This is a vicious circle that drives the open-source developpers away from Windows, thus ensuring that nobody fixes the problems...

Lack of developers for VLC on Windows maybe. Lack of developers for audio and video open source tools on Windows this is definitely not true.

The day when someone manages to build a better VLC for Windows while not using the VLC contrib, I will take my comment back. In the mean time, I stick by my point that the VLC underlying libraries and toolchain are poorly if at all maintained on Windows.

There is no point in reporting bugs if there are no staff to fix them

There is no point to provide Windows versions then. Remove them all, the binaries, the source files and delete the VLC Windows forum as well. Problem solved.
But as long as you will still provide versions for Windows you have to expect people to post about them. Obviously. Live with it.

Sure - I am all for removing the Windows binaries and stopping wasting our time with the hopeless operating system.