“VLC is an open-source media playback application, notable for supporting both audio and video, and formats missing from official playback tools made by Apple and Microsoft,” MacNN reports. “The VideoLAN software is developed on volunteer basis, however, and the number of Mac developers is reported to have dwindled to zero.”
MacNN reports, “VideoLAN warns that unless it can secure more developers, Mac support may be ended with the release of VLC 1.1.0.”
More info, including the skills needed, in the full article here.
More info about how to help the VideoLAN Project here.
My experience with VLC has been . . . ‘mixed’.
But instead of hand-wringing here, why doesn’t everyone who uses it just email them, tell them to slap a ‘donate now’ button on the site, then give them a fiver? That’s not much for an ‘essential’ piece of kit, is it? It says ’92 million downloads’ in the counter. Surely if just a thousandth of those donate a fiver that should keep things going for a while…
Unfortunately there is still a lot of awful .WMV files out there.
VLC is my preferred viewer for these files.
Any suggestions for an alternative? Flip4Mac sucks.
@theloniousMac
You. Are. So. Correct.
Movist and mPlayer Extended are better anyway. They’re more lightweight, fast and works with anything I throw at it.
VLC was once the best. Not anymore.
I’m more interested in something that will convert different video formats into QT/h.264 files than something that merely plays various formats.
Fine for viewing (if that’s all you want), but for converting, VLC is just a piece of junk.
@theloniousMac
Yep.
Can’t pay the rent with source code.
Work has to be paid for.
Good work gets paid even more.
Great point thelonius. Exactly what Maobama is doing to the US. We need to stop this craziness now. VLC should start charging. I would buy a copy.
Please don’t conflate communism and socialism. They’re two different things. As I’m sure everyone knows, our roads, firefighters and police are all socialized. However, the basic point that free software is a flawed model is a good one.
As for VLC, since I installed Perian, I hardly ever use it anymore. Its time may have passed.
——RM
If VLC goes down… we all go down.
That could also kick Apple to improve QT. Yet, it pulls Apple, somehow, into a monopolistic though lame situation. VLC is a good chalendge for QT to do else than sleeping on it’s own “brave new world”.
@LordRobin
To understand that, people have to be educated instead of conditioned. The crazy McCarthysts are style on their way of blind extremism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
@macarina has it.
VLC allows us to not have our disk player region code automatically lock at the 5th play.
it is the principle value of VLC for thousands of people.
Losing VLC for the mac would be a terrible loss. I have some ancient video files in various old formats and codecs, and VLC is the only thing that will play it all. It really is a play-anything player. Not to mention that handbrake uses it. Maybe some folks from the handbrake team might help out.
It’s all part of the plan. First you lose creator codes and filetypes, next QuickTime player puts a nasty black moustache all over the screen when it launches and pauses…. Now this! Next your Mac will only tolerate one player: iTunes! Offline mode will go away next.
In fact since QT added the moustache, I use VLC exclusively.
It’s all Microsoft’s fault. Their OS is so crappy it is no competition.
NOOOOOOO! VLC is usually one of the first apps I install on any new Mac/fresh OS.
VLC is finding it hard to attract Mac developers because Mac developers realize there are FAR more interesting & powerful codecs to work with than WMV & AVI.
Mac developers have all headed to iPhone development, so it makes sense.