News website Protocol included an extensive piece on the history and status of the popular open source video player VLC, and the story includes new details about the next major release of the software. Among other things, VLC 4.0 will bring a complete overhaul of the user interface.
“We have made the interface a bit more modern,” says Jean-Baptiste Kempf, chairman of the VideoLAN foundation. Kempf had previously released a version of a new interface about two years ago, but it’s unclear at this point how much it resembles the one the team plans to introduce with VLC 4.0.
While the article doesn’t list every upcoming change, it does outline some other possible directions and priorities for VLC.
The VideoLAN foundation has generally not looked for ways to monetize VLC, but some funding or income source could help ensure long-term support for the project. To that end, Kempf said VideoLAN is exploring a Plex-like business model, with ad-supported free video streams available in the player. “That’s something that could work for VLC,” he explained. But it was clear that nothing is final on that front yet.
VLC will eventually also receive support for the AV1 and AV2 codecs; AV1 is gaining a lot of traction for streaming services and other video products these days. Finally, VideoLAN is developing a new way to run VLC on the web, using web assembly and JavaScript.
VLC 4.0 is expected “in the coming months”, but we don’t know more at this point.
Even with the VLC 4.0 details aside, the Protocol article is worth reading just for the history behind one of the world’s most successful open source projects if you’re new to (and maybe even if you are are). Here’s a snippet describing the origins of VLC on a college campus:
The student staff running the Ecole Centrale Paris campus network had a problem. The university’s Token Ring network had become far too slow for students living on campus. For years, the technology had done its job, providing access to email and newsgroups. But in the mid-1990s, students wanted more. They wanted to download files, surf the Internet, and most importantly play Duke Nukem 3D, which was impossible on the aging network architecture.
However, the university was unable to provide a network update. In dire need of an outside sponsor, the students struck a deal with a major French broadcaster to use the campus grounds as a test bed for an early version of IP-based TV delivery. The Idea: Instead of equipping each dorm with its own satellite dish and set-top box, students would find a way to stream TV signals over their local network.
“The aim of the project was to show that you could retransmit the satellite feed and decoding [it] on normal machines, which would cost a lot less ”, says Jean-Baptiste Kempf, chairman of the VideoLAN Foundation. To achieve this, students developed a video server and a playback app, called VideoLAN Client at the time. The project was passed on as students graduated, and eventually the team behind it decided to make it open-source.
Read the article for more details.