The VideoLAN Forums

Those who have acquired Apple TV 4K are able to run VLC and play FLAC files, APE files, ALAC files, and you name it. But, I see that VLC here is not yet able to read embedded album art, understand replay gain tags or -- the worst of all -- play gapless audio. You get a very rudimentar folder navigation, very simplistic icon files. When you quit the main playback screen, the song stops, so this experience is not on par with Apple Music in ATV4K. There, you can play (at least) ALAC files, gapless, have album art and m3u8 files correctly identified. The tags are also all well read. But one would need iTunes turned on all the time for the share to appear and this is bound to the formats Apple Music supports.

I have been reading this board for a while and I've seen a request for gapless audio and request for album art. Some said that perhaps these two things make the 4.0 version.

Is it realistic to put faith on VLC to beat Apple Music experience at some point? Gapless playback, album art, decent tag reading, replay gain and m3u8 playlists? Is it realistic to believe that by the end of this year we might see something like that or is it better to not ever hold a breath that anything will beat Apple's Music experience.

Thanks. Sorry for the impertinent post. I really like VLC and would love to see this beat the Apple app.

The tvOS port is not as maintained as it deserves to be, but indeed we are working on some of the features you mentioned. The album art and the m3u8 playback will be improved in the next v3 update of VLC within the next few weeks (along with the iOS counter-part release). Replay gain in theory is already supported but there is no user interface for it - in fact you are the first ever asking for this feature on tvOS. Gapless playback will come in v4 but just exactly that - gapless, no cross-fade. Can you explain further what you'd expect from "decent tag reading"? Thanks for your feedback!

Firstly, thanks for your reply, really.

Take for example, a FLAC file. Start playing the FLAC and VLC will display:

01
Name of the song.flac

Then, you go back and stop it and put it to playback again, only then it will read the FLAC tag:

Artist Name
Song Title
Album Title

Whereas the Apple Music app will read all the tags on the first time. Maybe what I just pointed out is a bug?

Gapless to me, is essential. Cross-fade is not. The main reason is for albums like "Jean Michel Jarre" albums which are generally all a continuous mix. Few of his albums have totally separated tracks by a silence. His latest works, all tracks are segued into each other. Cross-fade would be something for -- I don't know -- random tracks from different artists? But gapless is definitely desired.

I purchased an app for this box called File Explorer (FE Pro), there is a free version for it. It reads art, but it doesn't do gapless and doesn't do replaygain. It does m3u8 though it has a annoying limitation to work only the files all being in the same folder. It's looks it's better than VLC, but the folder icons are nicer and perhaps taking a look at it, it can emerge some ideas for the VLC UI.

I hope this clarifies what I wrote.

Again, looking forward to see VLC on par with those apps.

Thanks!